The Arkenstone
‘“The Arkenstone! The Arkenstone!” murmured Thorin in the dark, half dreaming with his chin upon his knees. “It was like a globe with a thousand facets; it shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, like snow under the stars, like rain upon the Moon!”(The Hobbit, Ch. 12).
When Thráin I settled in Erebor in 1999 T.A., a jewel of exceptional beauty was discovered: the Arkenstone, the Heart of the Mountain. This spherical stone glowed with its own inner light, although the Dwarves’ intricate cutting and honing enabled it also to reflect any light that fell on it in a thousand gleams. Thorin I took the Arkenstone with him when he moved to the Grey Mountains around 2210 T.A., and it was brought back to Erebor by Thrór almost 400 years later, when it was installed in the Great Hall of Thráin’s Palace. Unfortunately, the Arkenstone was left behind when the Lonely Mountain was attacked by Smaug in 2770 T.A. Towards the end of the expedition of Thorin and Company, in 2941 T.A., Bilbo Baggins found it by chance among Smaug’s treasure, attracted by its irresistible glow. Although Thorin II Oakenshield was prepared to use any means necessary to obtain the Arkenstone and threatened to punish anybody who kept it from him, Bilbo did not mention his discovery to his companions and hid the stone, firstly in his biggest pocket and then in the pile of clothes that he used as a pillow.
This spherical stone glowed with its own inner light, although the Dwarves’ intricate cutting and honing enabled it also to reflect any light that fell on it in a thousand gleams.
It was only after several days of the siege led by Bard and Thranduil (who were claiming their share of the booty to rebuild Lake-town, which had been devastated by Smaug) that a now extremely weary Bilbo discreetly passed it on to them. Thorin had promised that he could choose his share of the treasure as payment for his services, and Bilbo picked the Arkenstone. He gave the stone to Bard and Thranduil in the hope of exchanging it for one fourteenth of the treasure.
The next day, Bard and Thranduil went to Thorin again. Thorin refused to listen to them, but they handed over the coveted stone in a box borne by Gandalf, and Bilbo confessed that he was responsible for giving them the Arkenstone. Thorin flew into a rage and banished Bilbo from the Mountain, although he did grudgingly agree to the proposal for an exchange. Thorin informed his cousin Dáin, who had taken to the road at the very start of the siege, that Bard was in possession of the Arkenstone. This aroused the fury of the Dwarves, who planned to attack both Elves and Men to recover the jewel, without sharing any of the treasure.
Eventually, Thorin apologized to Bilbo on his death bed, following the Battle of the Five Armies, and his heir, Dáin II Ironfoot, honoured his side of the agreement. Bard finally restored the stone to its owner by laying it on Thorin’s chest in his grave.
The word ‘Arkenstone’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon eorclanstán, meaning ‘precious stone’, which crops up in several Old English poems, particularly Beowulf. Tolkien also used this term to designate the Silmarils in his translation into Old English of The Annals of Valinor. Moreover, Tolkien had imagined the Arkenstone to be a rediscovered Silmaril in the initial drafts of The Hobbit. In one unfinished version of the story, Tolkien turned the stone into the Gem of Girion, which the latter would give to the Dwarves as payment for arming his sons, since the Dwarves would have offered it to Bilbo as his share of the treasure.
Glamdring and Orcrist
‘‘These look like good blades,’ said the wizard, half drawing them and looking at them curiously.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 2).
Having escaped the deadly machinations of the trolls Tom, Bert and William, the participants in the Quest of Erebor found these creatures’ lair, complete with a pile of objects, particularly swords of all shapes and sizes. Two stood out on account of their beautiful scabbards, their hilts studded with jewels and their blades engraved with runes. Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield each took one of these swords. During Thorin and Company’s stopover in Rivendell, they were told by Elrond that the two swords were extremely old, since they had been forged in the ancient Elven city of Gondolin by the High Elves of the West, at the time of the great wars against the Goblins. After deciphering the runes on the swords, Elrond further explained that Thorin’s sword was called Orcrist and that of Gandalf, Glamdring. These names were words from the Elven language of Sindarin and they meant, respectively, ‘Goblin-cleaver’ and ‘Foe-hammer’. According to its runic engraving, Glamdring had been borne by Elrond’s greatgrandfather, Turgon, the king of Gondolin. Elrond thought it likely that both swords had been looted during the sacking of Gondolin and had ended up in a Dragon’s den or as part of the Goblins’ booty, before the trolls managed to lay their hands on them. The Goblins had lost many of their number to these two swords and were duly terrified of them; they referred to Orcrist as ‘Biter’ and Glamdring as ‘Beater’. Both Gandalf and Thorin (who had promised Elrond to bear Orcrist with honour) used their swords to fight Goblins during the underground crossing of the Misty Mountains. Like all the swords from Gondolin, Glamdring and Orcrist glowed with a blue light in the presence of Goblins – Glamdring literally blazed after killing the Great Goblin. Orcrist was taken from Thorin when he was imprisoned by the Silvan Elves, before eventually being laid to rest by Thranduil on Thorin’s grave, in the depths of the Lonely Mountain – where it purportedly retained its capacity to shine in the dark at the approach of an enemy. Gandalf, for his part, kept Glamdring close at hand and used it as a weapon right up to the end of the War of the Ring.
The bestowal of names on swords forms part of the legacy of heroic literature from the Middle Ages. Charlemagne’s La Joyeuse and Roland’s Durandal in The Song of Roland, King Arthur’s legendary Excalibur, and the Nordic hero Sigurd’s Gram are just a few examples of a sword whose special status is marked by the name allotted to it. There are other swords in Tolkien’s work that bear a name: Sting, Bilbo Baggins’ sword in The Hobbit, discovered at the same time as Glamdring and Orcrist; Narsil, the broken sword of King Elendil, which was renamed Andúril when it was forged anew and was owned by Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings; and Anglachel, rechristened Gurthang by its owner Túrin, the cursed hero of The Children of Húrin.
During Thorin and Company’s stopover in Rivendell, they were told by Elrond that the two swords were extremely old, since they had been forged in the ancient Elven city of Gondolin by the High Elves of the West, at the time of the great wars against the Goblins.
Mithril
‘With that he put on Bilbo a small coat of mail, wrought for some young elf-prince long ago. It was of silver-steel which the elves call mithril, and with it went a belt of pearls and crystals.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 13).
Mithril, or True-silver, was an extremely rare precious metal that was both light and resistant. Its name in the Elvish language of Sindarin means ‘grey brilliance’, as it displayed a distinctive silvery gleam. The only known deposit of mithril in Middle-earth was situated under Mount Caradhras, in the Misty Mountains, and it was mined by the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm (more commonly known as Moria). This seam of mithril was the source of the enormous wealth of the Dwarves and Elves of this region in the Second Age.
Mithril had numerous properties. Its hardness made it ideal for making helmets and other pieces of armour. Similarly, the coat of mail given to Bilbo Baggins by Thorin II Oakenshield was also made of mithril. Bilbo later bequeathed it to Frodo, who was grateful for its protection when he received a fearsome strike from an Orc chief’s spear after the Fellowship of the Ring entered into combat in the mines of Moria.
Mithril was also highly malleable and could be processed to produce ithildin, a material developed by the Elves of Eregion that was almost invisible, as it reflected only the light of the Moon and the stars: the moon-runes hidden in Thrór’s map were made of ithildin, as were the decorations and inscriptions on Moria’s Western Gate. Finally, the splendid lustre of mithril, which never tarnished, made it perfectly suited to the creation of precious jewellery. So, Nenya, one of the Elves’ Three Rings (which was linked to Sauron’s One Ring) was made of mithril. It was decorated with a diamond and worn by Galadriel.
Its name in the Elvish language of Sindarin means ‘grey brilliance’, as it displayed a distinctive silvery gleam.
The immense wealth derived from mithril proved to be the downfall of Moria. The Dwarves became increasingly greedy for mithril and thus dug ever deeper in the base of the mountain in the hope of finding larger deposits. In 1980 T.A., they unleashed a Balrog, an evil winged creature of shadow and flame which had been imprisoned under the mountain since the First Age. This monster wreaked havoc on the mines of Moria, forcing the Dwarves to abandon them. Mining of mithril ceased, making it more precious and coveted than ever. It was not until the end of the War of the Ring, in 3019 T.A., that the mines of Moria were restored and repopulated, allowing mining to be resumed.
Mithril was not mentioned in the first edition of The Hobbit (although there were references to steel-silver) and the term did not appear in Bilbo’s story until 1966. Mithril evokes parallels with the orichalcum of Greek legends, which was also a highly prized metal used for both jewellery and elaborate armour.
According to Plato, only gold was more precious than orichalcum, which was abundant on the island of Atlantis and made its inhabitants rich – whereas in Middle-earth, the rarity of mithril made it the most coveted metal of all.
The One Ring
‘Not far away was his island, of which Bilbo knew nothing, and there in his hiding-place he kept a few wretched oddments, and one very beautiful thing, very beautiful, very wonderful. He had a ring, a golden ring, a precious ring.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 5).
When Bilbo Baggins recovered consciousness after becoming separated from Thorin and Company (who were being chased by Goblins underneath the Misty Mountains), he found himself alone, in total darkness. While trying to orientate himself, crawling across the floor of a gallery, one of his groping hands suddenly noticed a small metal ring. Bilbo slipped this object into his pocket without giving it a second thought. It was only a while later that he discovered that this gold ring belonged to Gollum, with whom he staked his own life in a game of riddles. Bilbo won the game with a question – ‘What have I got in my pocket?’ – that Gollum was unable to answer correctly. Gollum was enraged when he realized that his much-loved ring had disappeared and, moreover, that Bilbo had found it. Bilbo managed to evade Gollum’s fury by putting the ring on his index finger – which was when he learned that the jewel bestowed invisibility on whomever was wearing it.
Even so, Bilbo still did not suspect that he had found a Ring of Power, the One Ring, which also endowed its wearer with an indefinite prolongation of their life. It was the Master Ring, forged secretly, with evil intent, by Sauron in the flames of Mount Doom in the Second Age. It governed all the rings created by Eregion’s Elven blacksmiths, with the deceitful assistance of Sauron. The One Ring was captured by King Isildur at the end of the Second Age, but the immense capacity to dominate and entrance that Sauron had instilled in it soon proved to be the downfall of Isildur, who eventually lost the Ring in the waters of the River Anduin. This was where it would be found, centuries later, by the Hobbit Déagol, who was then killed by his friend Sméagol out of eagerness to possess the Ring for himself. Sméagol became so corrupted by the Ring that he gradually transformed into a creature named Gollum, who was endowed with exceptional longevity. After escaping the clutches of Gollum and falling into the hands of Bilbo, the One Ring rendered numerous services to the Hobbit by affording him invisibility. It allowed Bilbo to leave the depths of the Misty Mountains without being seen by the Goblins; to come to the assistance of his Dwarf friends against the Spiders of the Forest of Great Fear; to escape from the Silvan Elves who had captured the Dwarves; to steal a cup from the Dragon Smaug, and to draw Smaug into a conversation in which invisibility protected him from the Dragon’s murderous designs; to surrender to the besiegers of Erebor in order to entrust Bard with the Arkenstone; and, finally, to stay out of sight of the Goblins during the Battle of the Five Armies.
Once he had returned home, to Bag End, Bilbo kept the secret of the magical ring and used it primarily to avoid unwelcome visitors. In the year 3001 of the Third Age, Bilbo became, with the help of Gandalf, the first guardian of the Ring to dispose of it voluntarily, when he entrusted it to his heir Frodo before retiring to Rivendell at an advanced age. A few years later, Gandalf discovered the properties of the Ring. Frodo then undertook a dangerous journey, from the Shire to Mordor, with the support of the Fellowship of the Ring, in order to destroy the One Ring in the place where it was forged, as this was the only possible means of preventing Sauron from subjugating Middle-earth.
The most striking characteristic of the One Ring in The Hobbit is its power of invisibility, echoing similar magical jewels found in ancient texts. The ring of Gyges, in Book II of The Republic by the Greek philosopher Plato, is the oldest known example of a ring that made its bearer invisible. A similar object crops up in medieval literature: in the story Yvain, the Knight of the Lion by Chrétien de Troyes, the eponymous hero is given a ring (by a woman called Lunete) that allows him to become invisible and thus evade the grim fate intended for him by his pursuers. More recently, in the 19th century, rings of invisibility are featured in two stories, The Enchanted Ring and The Dragon of the North, contained, respectively, in The Green Fairy Book (1892) and The Yellow Fairy Book (1894), two British collections of fairy stories edited by Andrew Lang. In The Water of the Wondrous Isles, one of William Morris’s last fantasy novels (published posthumously in 1897), the protagonist, a young girl named Birdalone, is given a ring that will make her invisible if she recites a magical formula when she puts it on her finger, thereby allowing her to prepare her escape from a witch who has held her captive. So, rings of invisibility appear in both medieval and Victorian literature, and Tolkien was familiar with – and influenced by – both of them. Moreover, the Ring of Power in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion, seen as a source of corruption and misfortune, as a revealer of the dark side of those who wear it, recalls magical rings from Scandinavian mythology, which were symbols of power, acclaim and wealth, but also of fate, or, in some cases, inevitable tragedy. This was particularly true, for example, of Andvaranaut, a ring that once belonged to the dwarf Andvari. The Eddas and several other Scandinavian sagas describe how Andvaranaut was stolen by the god Loki, causing Andvari to put a curse on it that would destroy anybody who possessed it.
Bilbo managed to evade Gollum’s fury by putting the ring on his index finger – which was when he learned that the jewel bestowed invisibility on whomever was wearing it.
Pipes and pipe-weed
‘After some time he felt for his pipe. It was not broken, and that was something. Then he felt for his pouch, and there was some tobacco in it, and that was something more. Then he felt for matches and he could not find any at all, and that shattered his hopes completel.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 5).
The first time we meet Bilbo Baggins, he is blowing smoke circles with his pipe in front of his smial. He invites Gandalf to smoke with him and enjoy the sunny morning, but Gandalf turns down the offer. We do not see Bilbo with a pipe again until the party in Bag End, where he is trying to outdo Thorin’s smoke rings. And the very last time that we encounter Bilbo in The Hobbit, he again asks Gandalf if he wants to smoke. When Bilbo found himself alone and lost in Gollum’s cave, his first instinct was to light up his pipe. Pipe-weed represented for Bilbo the cosiness and tranquillity of his smial; in the most agitated moments of his life, he turned to smoking as a means of consolation.
The other Hobbits also made this connection between the act of smoking and a life free of upheavals. During the War of the Ring, the young Merry and Pippin celebrated the fall of Isengard by inviting their friends to share their discovery of pipe-weed and thus attempt to return to a state of peace and serenity. Similarly, Merry and Pippin celebrated their survival after the Battle of the Pelennor Fields by lighting up a pipe. Smoking thus became a symbol for the peaceful lives of the Hobbits, and they were in fact the first peoples to experiment with it, even though the pipe-weed plant was indigenous to Númenor and was also grown in Gondor. This plant, known as Sweet Galenas or Westman’s Weed, was initially used only for decoration, and the idea of smoking its dried leaves originated in Bree, a crucial hub for exchanges between the Shire and the Big Folk. So, both the Dwarves and the Men discovered pipe-weed, although the Elves, in contrast, showed no interest at all in smoking. Gandalf (and, through him, his fellow Wizard Saruman) also took up the habit. Gandalf found that, over and above blowing elaborate smoke rings, this practice helped him to reflect and it increased his patience, whether in the White Council of 2851 T.A. or during his crossing of Moria in the War of the Ring. Saruman was prompted by Gandalf’s enthusiasm and bought a substantial quantity of pipe-weed, marking another step in his control over the Shire and its resources.
Pipe-weed represented for Bilbo the cosiness and tranquillity of his smial; in the most agitated moments of his life, he turned to smoking as a means of consolation.
Tolkien used the word ‘tobacco’ in The Hobbit, but this later gave way to the term ‘pipe-weed’. He added a note on smoking and Meriadoc Brandybuck’s Shire Herbarium in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings. He also specified that pipe-weed was a variety of Nicotiana.
The Red Book of Westmarch
‘There was a big book with plain red leather covers; its tall pages were now almost filled.’(The Lord of the Rings, VI, 9).
The Red Book was written by Bilbo Baggins, his nephew Frodo and the latter’s heir, Samwise ‘Sam’ Gamgee, and it owed its name to its red cover. It comprised five volumes: the first contained Bilbo’s account of his adventures with Thorin and Company, along with several chapters added by Frodo to tell the story of the destruction of the One Ring; the next three volumes, also written by Bilbo, were entitled Translations from the Elvish and recounted Elven legends and poems which Bilbo had heard in Rivendell, while the fifth and final volume collected genealogical tables and supplementary details about the main story.
Bilbo started the Red Book on his return to the Shire, following his exploits in Erebor. His initial title was There and Back Again, A Hobbit’s Holiday, but he eventually opted for My Diary, My Unexpected Journey. There and Back Again. Bilbo continued writing the book up to his retirement in Rivendell, in the home of the Half-Elf Elrond. It was there that he produced the three volumes of translations of Elven stories and legends. When Frodo arrived in Rivendell in October 3018 T.A., Bilbo asked him to note down as much as possible during his journey, in order to put on record the events surrounding the destruction of the One Ring. Frodo passed through Rivendell again a year later, when Bilbo gave him a red box containing the first four volumes of the Red Book and asked him to continue writing the text. Frodo then took the box to Bag End, in the Shire, and recounted his own adventures, before bequeathing the book to Sam when he set off to the Grey Havens in 3021 T.A. Sam, in his turn, passed it on to his daughter Elanor when he left the Shire for good in year 61 of the Fourth Age. After her wedding, Elanor herself left to live in the Westmarch of the Shire (hence the complete title of the Red Book), and her descendants went on to add genealogies and commentaries to the original four volumes. Several copies were subsequently produced: the first, The Tháin’s Book, was commissioned by Aragorn, the new King of Gondor. After Aragorn’s death in 120 of the Fourth Age, the Red Book was supplemented by the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen. This version was the most exhaustive of all, containing ‘much that was later omitted or lost’. A second copy saw the light of day in the reign of Eldarion, the son of Aragorn and Arwen. This was transcribed by the royal scribe Findegil and stored in the Great Smials, the ancestral home of the Took family, in the Shire.
The main inspiration for the Red Book was undoubtedly the famous Red Book of Hergest, a manuscript containing numerous Celtic legends, such as the Mabinogion, with which Tolkien was very familiar. This medieval manuscript with red binding was written in Welsh around 1400 and is preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Tolkien owned a copy of this text and even translated the first part, Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed.
It owed its name to its red cover. It comprised five volumes: the first contained Bilbo’s account of his adventures with Thorin and Companye.
Smials
‘All Hobbits had originally lived in holes in the ground, or so they believed, and in such dwellings they still felt most at home; but in the course of time they had been obliged to adopt other forms of abode.’(The Lord of the Rings, Prologue, 1).
A smial, a word purported to be the English translation of the Hobbitish trân and the Rohanese trahan, was a Hobbit’s underground dwelling. It was also crucial to the etymology of the word ‘Hobbit’ itself, which was derived from the Old English translation, holbytla, of the Rohanese kûddûkan, which meant ‘digger’ or ‘underground builder’. Smials were holes that were usually burrowed into hills, with a tunnel on a single level that opened onto various rooms. They were snug and comfortable, in keeping with the Hobbits’ tastes. The main rooms were placed on the sides of a hill, so that windows could be installed to take advantage of the natural light. These windows, like the doors, were made of wood and were round, like portholes, while the walls were convex. These features were typical of the Hobbits’ domestic architecture.
A smial, a word purported to be the English translation of the Hobbitish trân and the Rohanese trahan, was a Hobbit’s underground dwelling.
In the early days, all the Hobbits lived in holes of this type. According to King Théoden, the legends of the Rohirrim spoke of Half-Men dwelling in holes in the sand dunes when they still lived in the northeastern part of Middle-earth, to the west of the Forest of Great Fear. They continued this practice after their migration to the source of the River Anduin, sometime before 2510 T.A., as was confirmed by Gandalf. He described how, in around 2440 T.A., Gollum’s family used to live in a smial on the banks of the Anduin, alongside the Gladden Fields. In Bilbo’s time, however, this tradition was mainly perpetuated by the poorest and the richest Hobbits, and most especially by the Harfoots. The poorest Hobbits dug rudimentary holes with only basic comforts (there was sometimes no window). In contrast, the richest could afford luxurious smials with numerous offshoots. These were capable of housing a large family spanning several generations, as inthe Great Smials of the Tooks and Brandy Hall, which belonging to the Brandybucks and provided accommodation for over 200 Hobbits. Bag End, home to Bilbo and, later on, his heir Frodo, was another example of a plush smial. Most smials were concentrated in the Shire, but there were others in Staddle, next to Bree. Smials therefore required a particular topography, but some Hobbits were obliged to build above ground level, giving rise to houses that imitated smials and were equally as comfortable: these would be long and low, with no upper storeys, and they would invariably display the rounded forms typical of a smial. Their roofs would be made of dried grass, straw or peat. One example of this trend was the new house that Frodo bought in Crickhollow, built by the Brandybucks, which had a roof covered in grass. Tolkien invented the word smial from the Old English smygel (also the root for the names Smaug and Sméagol). These underground homes recall the burrows of Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit and, above all, of Badger and Mole in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (a favourite of Tolkien).
Sting
‘Things were looking pretty bad again, when suddenly Bilbo appeared and charged into the astonished spiders unexpectedly from the side. ‘Go on! Go on!’ he shouted. ‘I will do the stinging!’(The Hobbit, Ch. 8).
After the trolls Tom, Bert and William were turned to stone by the rising sun, thanks to a trick played on them by Gandalf, the participants in the Quest of Erebor discovered an array of objects in the trolls’ underground den, including swords of various shapes and sizes. Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield took possession of two of these swords (Elrond would later tell them, in Rivendell, that they were called Glamdring and Orcrist). Bilbo Baggins, for his part, took a knife protected by a leather sheath that was big enough for him to use as a short sword. This knife shared the same origins as Glamdring and Orcrist, which were forged in Gondolin by the High Elves of the West at the time of the great wars against the Goblins, many years, or even centuries, before the start of the Quest of Erebor.
After Gandalf saved Thorin and Company once again by freeing them from the Goblins, Bilbo got lost in the underground galleries of the Misty Mountains. He had the chance to verify the Elven origins of his weapon, as the blade shone in response to the presence of an enemy – just like those of Glamdring and Orcrist. The light of the sword helped Bilbo move around inside the galleries and, above all, keep Gollum at bay when Bilbo finally found him by the lake that served as his home. Later on, this weapon proved invaluable when Bilbo was confronted by Spiders in the Forest of Great Fear. After killing only one of these creatures, Bilbo suddenly felt changed, imbued with renewed courage and combativeness. He christened his sword Sting, as it had enabled him to pierce his adversary with deadly jabs. He wielded his weapon with enormous energy and – with the additional help of the One Ring – managed to release his Dwarf friends from their entrapment in the Spiders’ cocoons. After the Battle of the Five Armies, which marked the end of the Quest of Erebor, Bilbo returned to Bag End, where he kept Sting with him (even hanging it above the fireplace in his home). When, in his old age, Bilbo left the Shire after his farewell party to retire in Rivendell, he packed Sting in his luggage.
Seventeen years later, Bilbo entrusted his sword to his heir Frodo, who had agreed to set off on a mission to destroy the One Ring by throwing it into the depths of Mount Doom. Sting proved extremely useful to Frodo and his servant and companion Samwise Gamgee.
He had the chance to verify the Elven origins of his weapon, as the blade shone in reaction to the presence of an enemy – just like those of Glamdring and Orcrist.
The sword enabled Samwise to rescue Frodo by overcoming a terrifying giant Spider called Shelob, the monstrous guard at the western entrance to Sauron’s realm in Mordor. Shelob was the mother of the Spiders that Bilbo himself had once fought in the Forest of Great Fear, so Sting was a weapon inextricably linked to the Hobbits’ struggles against the Spiders of Middle-earth. Once the War of the Ring had ended and Frodo had set off on a final journey towards the West, Samwise took care of Sting in the Shire.
Bilbo’s naming of his sword brings to mind the weapons used by the great warriors of heroic medieval literature, whose swords acquired a special and prestigious status when they received a name, as in the case of Excalibur (King Arthur) and Durandal (Roland, a paladin of Charlemagne). Despite the modest social standing of its owner – a simple Hobbit venturing into dangerous territories far from home – Sting acquired the same aura in the hands of Bilbo when he faced an enemy as Orcrist and Glamdring did in the respective hands of Thorin and Gandalf. Thanks to the renown attached to the name of Bilbo’s sword, he was able to acquire the status of an epic hero himself, even though it was his possession of the One Ring that ultimately gave him a major role in the adventure of the Quest of Erebor.
Thrór’s map
‘On the table in the light of a big lamp with a red shade he spread a piece of parchment rather like a map.’(The Hobbit, Ch. 1).
Thrór’s map represents the Lonely Mountain and the region known in Bilbo’s time as the Desolation of Smaug. As its name suggests, it was drawn by Thrór, Thorin Oakenshield’s grandfather, after escaping from the attack on Erebor by the Dragon Smaug in 2770 T.A. When Thrór left for Moria in 2790, he handed the map on to his son, Thráin. In 2850 T.A., when Gandalf explored Dol Guldur in search of the identity of the Necromancer, he found a dying Thráin in the dungeon. Thráin gave the map to Gandalf, along with a small key, and asked the Wizard to bequeath it to his son, without any further explanation. Ninety-one years later, at the impromptu party organized in Bilbo’s home, Gandalf returned the objects to their legitimate owner: Thorin. During Thorin and Company’s stay in Rivendell, Elrond worked out that the map hid a series of moon-runes which indicated that the secret door was connected to Durin’s Day: ‘Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the keyhole.’ (The Hobbit, Ch. 3) Durin’s Day was an astronomical phenomenon that could occur on the first day of the autumn Moon, at the Dwarves’ New Year, when the Moon and Sun are simultaneously visible in the sky. This mysterious instruction enabled Bilbo to open the secret door of Erebor and enter inside without the Dragon Smaug’s knowledge.
Like all the Dwarves’ maps, Thrór’s has the East at the top. On the eastern edge, an arrow shows the direction to the Iron Hills, which was ruled by Thorin’s cousin, Dáin. Just below, there is a drawing of the Lonely Mountain, with a red dragon flying above it and the secret entrance, facing the viewer, indicated by a rune. The southern slope plays host to the great gate, from which the Running River flows in a long meander that weaves its way around Dale before flowing towards the Long Lake, further to the south.
At the bottom of the map, two arrows pointing west indicate the site of the Forest of Great Fear and Thranduil’s kingdom. To the north, the presence of dragons is noted in the Grey Mountains. Finally, on the left of the map, a claw-like hand points to the secret door, accompanied by the runic text ‘Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast. Th. Th.’ (the ‘Th.’ and ‘Th.’ stand for Thrór and Thráin).
Tolkien placed the map in the novel’s opening chapter, facing the passage in which Gandalf returned it to the Dwarves, so that the reader would discover it at the same time as the characters themselves. Tolkien had also wanted to print the moon-runes revealed to Elrond on the other side of the map, so that the reader could make them out if the map was placed in front of a source of light. The original publisher turned down this request, on the grounds of cost, but some later editions have published the map in accordance with Tolkien’s wishes.
Thrór’s map represents the Lonely Mountain and the region known in Bilbo’s time as the Desolation of Smaug.
