It is difficult to find many obscurities concerning hobbits. They have been studied, catalogued, and discussed incessantly ever since THE HOBBIT first appeared in print. Robert Foster's THE
COMPLETE GUIDE TO MIDDLE-EARTH probably gives the most facts concerning hobbits of
any reference work published to date. But here are a few tidbits I've gleaned from Tolkien's
works.
Where did Hobbits come from?
Tolkien gives us a concise history of the Hobbits in the Prologue to THE LORD OF THE
RINGS, where he writes that their beginnings "lie far back in the Elder Days". He tells us the Hobbits themselves had all but forgotten their earliest legends by the end of the Third Age, and that they only recalled having left the Vales of Anduin when a Shadow fell on Greenwood the
Great.
The Elder Days were sometimes applied to the First Age of the Sun and the ages preceding it
because those were the periods when the Elves (the Elder Children of Iluvatar) were the
dominant creatures in Middle-earth. But Tolkien also wrote that "Elder Days" properly applied to the first three Ages of the Sun. What then did he mean when he was speaking of the Hobbits'
origins?
I think he had in mind a sort of dual meaning. In speaking of their origins, he meant that Hobbits had become a distinct group sometime in the First Age, but his references to their earliest
legends were only to legends of the Third Age, because all previous legends had been forgotten.
In a very lengthy letter to Milton Waldman which Humphrey Carpenter suggests was written late
in 1951, Tolkien says this about Hobbits:
In the middle of this [the Third] Age hobbits appear. Their origin is unknown (even to
themselves) † for they escaped the notice of the great, or the civilised peoples with records, and kept none themselves, save oral traditions, until they had migrated from the borders of Mirkwood, fleeing from the Shadow, and wandered westward, coming into contact with the last remnants of
the Kingdom of Arnor.
† The Hobbits are, of course, really meant to be a branch of the specifically human race (not
Elves or Dwarves) -- hence the two kinds can dwell together (as at Bree), and are called just the Big Folk and Little Folk....
So Hobbits are human. They are Men. That means their ancestors awoke in Hildorien, and they
participated in the Great Fall of Man, from which the Edain and a few other peoples fled early in the First Age. It would seem that the Hobbits themselves fled that darkness, but they may have
taken a more northerly path and found themselves following part of the path of the Great Journey undertaken by the Eldar many ages previously.
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It's interesting to look for parallels between the Hobbits and the Elves. The Hobbits, like the Elves, were divided into three kindreds: the Fallohides, Harfoots, and Stoors. The Fallohides, the more adventurous hobbits, were friendly with the Elves and could in some ways be equated with
the Vanyar. Yet the most numerous Hobbits were the Harfoots, who abhorred water (whereas
the Lindar/Teleri, the most numerous Elves, loved water). The Stoors were the water-loving
Hobbits and they also got along better with the Dwarves than others, whereas the Harfoots got
along better with Men. So there are really few parallels between Hobbits and Elves.
But can we infer something about the Hobbits' ancient roots from their "historical" associations?
Perhaps. For instance, they probably at first entered Greenwood the Great from the southeast.
The Fallohides could there have been the leaders of the migration, and would have encountered
the Nandor and Avari who were becoming the Silvan Elves. The forest itself was not then evil so the Hobbits might have felt quite safe living there, and they probably had little to do with the Elves.
When Oropher of Doriath established his kingdom in southern Greenwood it might have been
time for the Hobbits to move on, or perhaps they continued to dwell close by the Silvan Elves
until Oropher started moving his people north. Then the Hobbits would have had to move as
well. Perhaps by the middle of the Second Age the Stoors were living close to the Anduin.
The Harfoots might originally not have been intimidated by water, but they may have suffered
some great disaster that left them shaken enough to pass on a fear of water to later generations.
They would have had to cross Anduin by the ancient Dwarf-bridge that existed in the Second
Age north of the Gladden River. This guess implies the Harfoots may have been the most
northern branch of the Hobbits, which seems to coincide with what Tolkien says about their
entry points into Eriador in the Third Age.
The time of the Hobbits' arrival in what came to be called Rhovanion is a mystery. However,
THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH tells us something about the history and cultures of the
region known as Rhovanion in the Third Age. Edainic peoples had lived there since the First
Age, and they in many places developed a close relationship with the Dwarves of Durin's Folk.
In time some of the Edain also came to develop a relationship with the Hobbits, living in joint communities or close by one another much as the Hobbits and Men of Bree did in the Third Age.
The most critical information to be gleaned from THE PEOPLES OF MIDDLE-EARTH is that
Hobbits were not present among the Edainic communities prior to the War of the Elves and
Sauron. The Edainic civilization was destroyed, and it would be many centuries before these
peoples recovered. Hence, the Hobbits must have arrived sometime after the war. Perhaps the
war itself stirred them up and caused the migration.
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There are no ancient records from the Edain of the Second Age. Hence, the only mention of
Hobbits among any northern people is what Theoden alludes to when he meets Merry and
Pippin. His people, being descended of the Ëothëod, survivors of the ancient Kingdom of
Rhovanion, remembered some of the lore their fathers had brought out of the north. Before
settling in the distant north, the Ëothëod lived for over a hundred years near the Gladden River at a time when clans of Stoors still dwelt there. This is probably the source of Theoden's lore about the "Hole-builders".
Because the Host of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men marched south along the Anduin, one
should expect Tolkien to have at least dropped in a casual mention of an encounter between the
Hobbits and the Last Alliance if the Hobbits were living there. But there is no such reference. So it may be that placing the Hobbits in Greenwood the Great and the Vales of Anduin during the
Second Age is incorrect.
If so, they would have had to enter Greenwood before Sauron settled on Amon Lanc, but how
long could they have lived in the forest? Also, the ancient Dwarf bridge had become a ford by
the time Gil-galad and Elendil led their armies through the Vales, so how would the Harfoots
have crossed the river? Could they perhaps have suffered a disastrous crossing in the Third Age?
Thranduil's people were living in the Emyn Duir for the first 1000 years of the Third Age. The
ancient Dwarf-road ran straight past their lands to some obscure point on the Celduin. Perhaps
the Hobbits came up the Celduin from the Sea of Rhun, passed through Greenwood by the Old
Forest Road (the Men-i-Naugrim), and managed to find a way across the river at the Old Ford.
The Fallohides might thus have been the last group on the "march", and would have stayed in the forest.
Either way, the Fallohides appear to be the group who started the migration which brought the
Hobbits over the Hithaeglir. Tolkien writes that Men were increasing in number and that a
Shadow fell on the forest, so the Fallohides must have crossed the Anduin and settled among the Harfoots, who became concerned about the evil taking shape in Greenwood and crossed the
mountains. It may be that memories of the War of the Last Alliance existed among the Hobbits,
either drawn from ancient experience or from exchanging tales with Men and Elves in
Rhovanion.
But what is certain is that the Stoors were the most southern branch of the Hobbits, and they
probably had developed a trading relationship with the Dwarves of Khazad-dum before crossing
the Redhorn Pass. The Harfoots and Fallohides may have been familiar to the Woodmen and the
Elves of Thranduil's realm.
What happened To Smeagol's people?
We can only speculate, but in UNFINISHED TALES Tolkien writes that the Stoors of the
Gladden Fields may have fled north late in the Third Age. There is no mention of other Hobbits
when Bilbo passes through the Vales of Anduin, but at the time Tolkien wrote THE HOBBIT he
had not envisioned the Stoors of the Gladden Fields (and in fact may not have quite known what
Gollum was).
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Hobbits were not easy to kill. They would either fight back against their enemies or move away, so the Stoors may have just picked up and moved on. They were close to Lorien and Moria, and
when Sauron began to settle Orcs in the mountains, the Stoors might have decided to find
another home somewhere farther north. This would have happened in the Twenty-sixth Century,
a few generations after Smeagol left his people.
We know that there were no longer Stoors living near the Gladden River by 2851, when
Saruman started searching in the region for the One Ring. So, sometime between 2463 (when
Smeagol killed his cousin Deagol) and 2851 the Stoors of the Gladden Fields either moved away
or died out. It is possible they perished or fled in the Long Winter of 2758-9
How did Hobbits go to sea?
Tolkien wrote that some of the more adventurous Hobbits of the Shire would occasionally take
off, sometimes never to return. Where did they go and how did they get there? The Tooks were
infamous for succumbing to this wanderlust, and one Isengar Took, youngest son of Gerontius
the Old Took, was said to have gone to sea in his younger days.
Isengar lived from SR 1262 to 1360. In the Stewards' Reckoning that would be the years 2862 to
2960.
Could the Hobbits have visited Mithlond? Possibly. The Shire was actually overrun by the
Kingdom of Angmar during the last war in Eriador in TA 1974. Many people of Arnor fled
across the Lhun to take refuge in Lindon. The Hobbits are said to have fled into hiding. Perhaps some of them wandered into the Elvish lands. It would have been possible for a Hobbit to walk
from the Shire to Harlond, the southern haven of Lindon. It seems remotely possible that Isengar took ship with some of Cirdan's mariners, either from Mithlond or from Harlond (if Harlond was
still being used).
It may also be that ships from Gondor occasionally visited Lindon even in the late centuries of the Third Age. Isengar could, in theory, have gone aboard a Dunadan ship and seen the world,
though he may never have set foot in Gondor itself (which supposedly never saw a Halfling
before Peregrin Took showed up on the back of Shadowfax). Another possibility is that Isengar made his way to Tharbad. The city (probably no more than just a town by his day) still existed
and had once been a port for the Dunedain of Arnor and Gondor. He could have taken a boat or
ship from Tharbad and gone down to the coast lands, where fisher-folk lived (more-or-less
Druedain). Isengar's sea voyage might have been nothing more than a boat-ride along the coast, a rather inglorious type of travel to us, but still a bit of an adventure to a Hobbit.
It is also possible that some of the northern Dunedain lived along and kept boats on the Lhun
river. They might have taken a Hobbit to sea on occasion, but Tolkien never wrote about any
sea-faring Dunedain of Arnor in the Third Age.
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