How the Beginning of the First Age Depends on Which Tolkienian Reckoning Is Being Used Ask when the First Age began, and the obvious answer seems to be: Year 1. That answer is useful—and also potentially misleading. The familiar chronology of Beleriand numbers the first rising of the Sun as the beginning of its solar … Read more
When Sam Gamgee returned to Hobbiton, one loss struck him with particular force. The houses could be rebuilt. Bagshot Row could be dug again. Damaged villages could be repaired, sheds replaced, gardens replanted, and the ugly works of Sharkey's regime pulled down. But the trees were different. Along the road toward Hobbiton, the returning Travellers … Read more
The Red Book begins with some of the most personal writing imaginable. Bilbo records his own adventure. Frodo continues the history through the War of the Ring. Sam, after carrying Frodo home and watching him depart across the Sea, becomes the final keeper of the book. Yet the volume does not remain merely the possession … Read more
Samwise Gamgee wakes beneath the trees expecting, for one bewildered moment, that Mordor may have been a dream. Then he sees Frodo. The Ring is gone. Sauron has fallen. Barad-dûr has collapsed. The armies gathered at the Black Gate have survived a battle they were never supposed to win. Frodo and Sam have been carried … Read more
Tuor’s story ends with one of the most extraordinary claims in the history of Middle-earth. He is a Man: son of Huor, father of Eärendil, heir to the mortality of the Edain. Yet after surviving the ruin of Gondolin and dwelling for a time near the Mouths of Sirion, Tuor grows weary with age and … Read more
The Isle of Balar was never one of the great kingdoms of the Eldar. It had no hidden city like Gondolin, no thousand caves like Menegroth, and no long royal history like Nargothrond. Yet near the end of the First Age, when almost every greater refuge had failed, Balar became something more immediately valuable: a … Read more
When the Fellowship finally finds the West-door of Moria, the entrance seems at first almost impossible to detect. The cliff is smooth. There are no hinges or visible seams. Only when moonlight and starlight touch the surface do silver lines appear: an arch, trees, stars, a crown, and words written in Elvish letters. Those words … Read more
When Aragorn reaches the Stone of Erech, the object itself does almost nothing. It does not speak. It does not blaze with power. No weapon is drawn from it, and no hidden door opens. It is simply an enormous black stone, half-buried on a lonely hill, carried long ago from Númenor and set there by … Read more
When Bilbo first reached Lake-town, the Lonely Mountain was still occupied by Smaug. Dale was a ruin. Erebor’s halls were silent except for a dragon sleeping on stolen wealth. Yet one thing had never entirely died: the movement of goods along the waterways of the North. Lake-town still lived by trade coming up the great … Read more
When Aragorn reaches the summit of Weathertop, he is looking for Gandalf. Instead, he finds something far less reassuring: scorched grass, blackened stones, and the remains of a fire fierce enough to have swept across the ruined crown of Amon Sûl. To the hobbits, the damage is another ominous mystery. To Aragorn, it is evidence. … Read more