About

Gandalf Sax, also known as Epic Gandalf Sax, is a viral video of Lord of the Rings character Gandalf (Ian McKellen) nodding his head in a loop in time with the Epic Sax Guy music. The video became an iconic Lord of the Rings meme and became the subject of one of the most popular 10-Hour Videos in internet history during the 2010s. It's also used as an exploitable in other memes and remixes where people set the video to various music.

Origin

On September 5th, 2012, YouTuber tejulaify^[1] posted a video of Gandalf smiling and nodding along with the Epic Sax Guy music on loop. The video went on to gain over 306,000 views in 10 years (shown below, left). The original video was soon overshadowed by an HD upload posted on December 1st, 2012, by YouTuber Ukes of Hazzard, gaining over 3.1 million views in 10 years (shown below, right).

Spread

Gandalf Sax went on to inspire multiple parodies in which a person would have the video play on multiple computer screens in a single location. One of the first was posted on July 17th, 2015, by YouTuber wotservice, gaining over 370,000 views in seven years despite being unlisted (shown below, left). The most famous of these videos was posted on October 16th, 2016, by YouTuber Hunter Young, gaining over 16 million views in six years (shown below, right).

Gandalf Sax also inspired one of the most popular "10-hour" videos of all time. On March 22nd, 2017, YouTuber 10 Hours posted a 10-hour loop of the song, gaining over 35 million views in five and a half years (shown below, left). On February 1st, 2021, YouTuber Lukas Pohlreich posted a 24-hour loop of the song, gaining over 295,000 views in nearly two years (shown below, right).