J. R. R. Tolkien's presentation of heroism in The Lord of the Rings is based on medieval tradition, but modifies it, as there is no single hero but a combination of heroes with contrasting attributes. Aragorn is the man born to be a hero, of a line of kings; he emerges from the wilds and is uniformly bold and restrained. Frodo is an unheroic, home-loving Hobbit who has heroism thrust upon him when he learns that the ring he has inherited from his cousin Bilbo is the One Ring that would enable the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the whole of Middle-earth. His servant Sam sets out to take care of his beloved master, and rises through the privations of the quest to destroy the Ring to become heroic.
Scholars have seen the quest of the dissimilar heroes Aragorn and Frodo as a psychological journey of individuation, and from a mythic point of view of marking the end of the old—in Frodo's quest with its bitter ending, and the start of the new, in Aragorn's.
The heroic aspects of The Lord of the Rings derive from sources including Beowulf and Anglo-Saxon culture, seen especially in the society of the Riders of Rohan and its leaders Théoden, Éomer, and Éowyn; and from Germanic, especially Old Norse, myth and legend, seen for example in the culture of the Dwarves.
Origins
Beowulf's heroic culture
Tolkien was a philologist and an expert in heroic Anglo-Saxon culture and literature, especially Beowulf. He derived many aspects of The Lord of the Rings from the poem, including the heroic culture of the Riders of Rohan, who resemble the Anglo-Saxons in everything including their Old English language, except for Rohan's widespread use of horses. Théoden's hall, Meduseld (the word means "mead hall" in Beowulf), is modelled on Beowulf's Heorot, as is the way it is guarded, visitors being repeatedly but courteously challenged. The warhorns of the Riders of Rohan exemplify, in Shippey's view, the "heroic Northern world", as in what he calls the nearest Beowulf has to a moment of Tolkien-like eucatastrophe, when Ongentheow's Geats, trapped all night, hear the horns of Hygelac's men coming to rescue them; the Riders blow their horns wildly as they finally arrive, turning the tide of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields at a climactic moment in The Lord of the Rings.
Norse heroic culture
Tolkien took the concept of Northern courage from Norse mythology, where even the gods know they are doomed and everything comes to an end. The Tolkien scholar Marjorie Burns writes that the theme of courageous action in the face of inevitable loss in The Lord of the Rings is borrowed from the Nordic world view which emphasises "imminent or threatening destruction". In Norse mythology, this began during the creation: in the realm of fire, Muspell, the jötunn Surt was even then awaiting the end of the world. Burns comments that "Here is a mythology where even the gods can die".
Receiving the magic sword
The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that heroes like Sigurd in the Volsungasaga have named, magic swords, and that acquiring such a weapon is a key moment in becoming a hero. Frodo is given his sword by his "uncle", Bilbo – Flieger comments that the uncle-nephew relationship is also traditional for pairs of heroes, such as Cuchulainn and Conchobar, Tristan and Mark, Roland and Charlemagne, Gawain and Arthur, and Beowulf and Hygelac.
Flieger notes however that while Sigmund's sword was broken, and it was reforged for Sigurd, Frodo already had a sword: it was broken by the Lord of the Nazgûl, and he never carries it again. In the Volsungasaga, the god Odin thrusts the sword into a tree; Sigmund acquires it by pulling it out. Similarly, Arthur pulls his sword out of an iron anvil; Galahad, in another Arthurian legend, pulls his sword from a stone, magically floating in a lake. Flieger writes that Tolkien reverses the order of events: Frodo's sword has already been broken, so Bilbo produces his own small sword, Sting, from his adventures long ago, as narrated in The Hobbit, casually thrusts it into a wooden beam in his room in Rivendell, and suggests that Frodo might like it. Frodo pulls it out without fuss, an unheroic hero, but "the torch has passed" and Frodo is "align[ed] with his epic forebears".