88-625: The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien 's fictional Middle-earth , described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire is an inland area settled exclusively by hobbits , the Shire-folk , largely sheltered from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is in the northwest of the continent, in the region of Eriador and the Kingdom of Arnor. The Shire is the scene of action at
176-465: A Catholic , realised he had created a dilemma for himself , as if these beings were sentient and had a sense of right and wrong, then they must have souls and could not have been created wholly evil. Dragons (or "worms") appear in several varieties, distinguished by whether they have wings and whether they breathe fire (cold-drakes versus fire-drakes). The first of the fire-drakes ( Urulóki in Quenya)
264-762: A tightrope unaided. Their eyesight is keen. Elves are immortal, unless killed in battle. They are re-embodied in Valinor if killed. Men were "the Secondborn" of the Children of Ilúvatar: they awoke in Middle-earth much later than the Elves. Men (and Hobbits) were the last humanoid race to appear in Middle-earth: Dwarves, Ents and Orcs also preceded them. The capitalized term "Man" (plural "Men")
352-570: A 365-day year. The two Yuledays signify the turn of the year, so each year begins on 2 Yule. The Lithedays are the three non-month days at midsummer, 1 Lithe, Mid-year's Day, and 2 Lithe. In leap years (every fourth year except centennial years) an Overlithe day is added after Mid-year's Day. There are seven days in the Shire week. The first day of the week is Sterday and the last is Highday . The Mid-year's Day and, when present, Overlithe have no weekday assignments. This causes every day to have
440-793: A catastrophic transition from a flat to a spherical world, known as the Akallabeth, in which Aman became inaccessible to mortal Men. Tolkien described the region in which the Hobbits lived as "the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea", and the north-west of the Old World is essentially Europe , especially Britain . However, as he noted in private letters, the geographies do not match, and he did not consciously make them match when he
528-475: A level in the evil campaign where the player invades in control of a goblin army, and as a map in the game's multiplayer skirmish mode. In the 2007 MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online , the Shire appears almost in its entirety as one of the major regions of the game. The Shire is inhabited by hundreds of non-player characters , and the player can get involved in hundreds of quests. The only portions of
616-424: A little glorified by enchantment of distance in time. ...if it were 'history', it would be difficult to fit the lands and events (or 'cultures') into such evidence as we possess, archaeological or geological, concerning the nearer or remoter part of what is now called Europe; though the Shire , for instance, is expressly stated to have been in this region...I hope the, evidently long but undefined gap in time between
704-542: A rival to Sauron for absolute power in Middle-earth. Other races involved in the struggle against evil were Dwarves , Ents and most famously Hobbits . The early stages of the conflict are chronicled in The Silmarillion , while the final stages of the struggle to defeat Sauron are told in The Hobbit and in The Lord of the Rings . Conflict over the possession and control of precious or magical objects
792-414: A short-hand term for Tolkien's legendarium , his large body of fantasy writings, and for the entirety of his fictional world. Middle-earth is the main continent of Earth (Arda) in an imaginary period of the past, ending with Tolkien's Third Age , about 6,000 years ago. Tolkien's tales of Middle-earth mostly focus on the north-west of the continent. This region is suggestive of Europe, the north-west of
880-577: Is a recurring theme in the stories. The First Age is dominated by the doomed quest of the elf Fëanor and most of his Noldorin clan to recover three precious jewels called the Silmarils that Morgoth stole from them (hence the title The Silmarillion ). The Second and Third Age are dominated by the forging of the Rings of Power , and the fate of the One Ring forged by Sauron, which gives its wearer
968-533: Is called Khuzdul , and was kept largely as a secret language for their own use. Like Hobbits, Dwarves live exclusively in Middle-earth. They generally reside under mountains, where they are specialists in mining and metalwork. Tolkien identified Hobbits as an offshoot of the race of Men. Another name for Hobbit is 'Halfling', as they were generally only half the size of Men. In their lifestyle and habits they closely resemble Men, and in particular Englishmen, except for their preference for living in holes underground. By
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#17327798747621056-468: Is called "January" and Sterday is called "Saturday". Shippey writes that not only is the Shire reminiscent of England : Tolkien carefully constructed the Shire as an element-by-element calque upon England. There are other connections; Tolkien equated the latitude of Hobbiton with that of Oxford (i.e., around 52° N). The Shire corresponds roughly to the West Midlands region of England in
1144-576: Is equivalent to the Miðgarðr of Norse mythology and Middangeard in Old English works, including Beowulf . Middle-earth is the oecumene (i.e. the human-inhabited world, or the central continent of Earth ) in Tolkien's imagined mythological past . Tolkien's most widely read works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , are set entirely in Middle-earth. "Middle-earth" has also become
1232-660: Is razed by the forces of Mordor . Games Workshop produced a supplement in 2004 for The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game entitled The Scouring of the Shire . This supplement contained rules for a large number of miniatures that depicted the Shire after the War of the Ring had concluded. Middle-earth Middle-earth is the setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien 's fantasy. The term
1320-579: Is taken by his lieutenant Sauron , a Maia . The Valar withdrew from direct involvement in the affairs of Middle-earth after the defeat of Morgoth, but in later years they sent the wizards or Istari to help in the struggle against Sauron. The most important wizards were Gandalf the Grey and Saruman the White . Gandalf remained true to his mission and proved crucial in the fight against Sauron. Saruman, however, became corrupted and sought to establish himself as
1408-476: Is the known world, "recalling the Norse Midgard and the equivalent words in early English", noting that Tolkien made it clear that this was " our world ... in a purely imaginary ... period of antiquity". Tolkien explained in a letter to his publisher that it "is just a use of Middle English middle-erde (or erthe ), altered from Old English Middangeard : the name for the inhabited lands of men 'between
1496-543: Is used as a gender-neutral racial description, to distinguish humans from the other human-like races of Middle-earth. In appearance they are much like Elves, but on average less beautiful. Unlike Elves, Men are mortal, ageing and dying quickly, usually living 40–80 years. However the Númenóreans could live several centuries, and their descendants the Dúnedain also tended to live longer than regular humans. This tendency
1584-742: The Ainur entered Arda, following the creation events in the Ainulindalë and long ages of labour throughout Eä , the fictional universe . Time from that point was measured using Valian Years , though the subsequent history of Arda was divided into three time periods using different years, known as the Years of the Lamps , the Years of the Trees and the Years of the Sun . A separate, overlapping chronology divides
1672-710: The Black Speech (Burzum) for his slaves (such as Orcs ) to speak. In the Third Age , five of the Maiar were embodied and sent to Middle-earth to help the free peoples to overthrow Sauron. These are the Istari or Wizards , including Gandalf , Saruman , and Radagast . The Elves are known as "the Firstborn" of Ilúvatar: intelligent beings created by Ilúvatar alone, with many different clans . Originally Elves all spoke
1760-730: The Edain who did not reach Beleriand in the First Age, remaining east of the mountains in Eriador ; or they came from the same stock as the Dunlendings . The name Bree means "hill"; Tolkien justified the name by arranging the village and the surrounding Bree-land around a large hill, named Bree-hill. The name of the village Brill , in Buckinghamshire , a place that Tolkien often visited, and which inspired him to create Bree, has
1848-453: The Old World , with the environs of the Shire reminiscent of England , but, more specifically, the West Midlands , with the town at its centre, Hobbiton , at the same latitude as Oxford . Tolkien's Middle-earth is peopled not only by Men , but by Elves , Dwarves , Ents , and Hobbits , and by monsters including Dragons, Trolls , and Orcs . Through the imagined history, the peoples other than Men dwindle, leave or fade, until, after
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#17327798747621936-853: The Ainur entered Eä, and the greatest of these were called the Valar . Melkor , the chief agent of evil in Eä, and later called Morgoth , was initially one of the Valar. With the Valar came lesser spirits of the Ainur, called the Maiar . Melian, the wife of the Elven King Thingol in the First Age , was a Maia. There were also evil Maiar, including the Balrogs and the second Dark Lord, Sauron . Sauron devised
2024-565: The Appendices of later editions. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that all the same, they provided the " depth ", the feeling in the reader's mind that this was a real and complex place, a quality that Tolkien believed essential to a successful fantasy. In Tolkien's fiction, the Shire is described as a small but beautiful, idyllic and fruitful land, beloved by its hobbit inhabitants. They had agriculture but were not industrialized. The landscape included downland and woods like
2112-619: The Crebain, evil crows who become spies for Saruman , and the Ravens of Erebor , who brought news to the Dwarves. The horse-line of the Mearas of Rohan, especially Gandalf's mount, Shadowfax, also appear to be intelligent and understand human speech. The bear-man Beorn had a number of animal friends about his house. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , both set in Middle-earth, have been
2200-533: The Dwarves. To resolve this linguistic puzzle, he created the fiction that the languages of parts of Middle-earth were "translated" into different European languages, inventing the language of the Riders of Rohan , Rohirric , to be "translated" again as the Mercian dialect of Old English which he knew well. This set up a relationship something like ancestry between Rohan and the Shire. The Shire had little in
2288-540: The English countryside . The Shire was fully inland; most hobbits feared the Sea . The Shire measured 40 leagues (193 km, 120 miles) east to west and 50 leagues (241 km, 150 miles) from north to south, with an area of some 18,000 square miles (47,000 km): roughly that of the English Midlands . The main and oldest part of the Shire was bordered to the east by the Brandywine River, on
2376-818: The Eye of Sauron when Frodo puts on the Ring. In Ralph Bakshi 's animated 1978 adaptation of The Lord of the Rings , Alan Tilvern voiced Bakshi's Butterbur (as "Innkeeper"); David Weatherley played Butterbur in Jackson's epic, while James Grout played him in BBC Radio 's 1981 serialization of The Lord of the Rings . In the 1991 low-budget Russian adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring , Khraniteli , Butterbur appears as "Lavr Narkiss", played by Nikolay Burov. In Yle's 1993 television miniseries Hobitit , Butterbur ("Viljami Voivalvatti" in Finnish, meaning "William Butter")
2464-484: The Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for 'literary credibility', even for readers acquainted with what is known as 'pre-history'. I have, I suppose, constructed an imaginary time, but kept my feet on my own mother-earth for place. I prefer that to the contemporary mode of seeking remote globes in 'space'. In another letter, Tolkien made correspondences in latitude between Europe and Middle-earth: The action of
2552-523: The Fell Winter of S.R. 1311–12, white wolves from Forodwaith invaded the Shire across the frozen Brandywine river. The protagonists of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings , Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, lived at Bag End , a luxurious smial or hobbit-burrow, dug into The Hill on the north side of the town of Hobbiton in the Westfarthing. It was the most comfortable hobbit-dwelling in
2640-539: The Kings' Reckoning, but maintained their old names of the months. In the "King's Reckoning", the year began on the winter solstice . After migrating further to the Shire, the hobbits created the "Shire Reckoning", in which Year 1 corresponded to the foundation of the Shire in the year 1601 of the Third Age by Marcho and Blanco. The Shire's calendar year has 12 months, each of 30 days. Five non-month days are added to create
2728-481: The Rings , the Shire was represented by countryside and constructed hobbit-holes on a farm near Matamata in New Zealand, which became a tourist destination . Tolkien took considerable trouble over the exact details of the Shire. Little of his carefully crafted fictional geography, history, calendar, and constitution appeared in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings , though additional details were given in
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2816-514: The Rings , Tolkien writes: "Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed..." The Appendices make several references in both history and etymology of topics "now" (in modern English languages) and "then" (ancient languages); The year no doubt was of the same length,¹ [ the footnote here reads : 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 46 seconds.] for long ago as those times are now reckoned in years and lives of men, they were not very remote according to
2904-1127: The Rings: The Return of the King received 11 Academy Award nominations and won all of them, matching the totals awarded to Ben-Hur and Titanic . Two well-made fan films of Middle-earth, The Hunt for Gollum and Born of Hope , were uploaded to YouTube on 8 May 2009 and 11 December 2009 respectively. Numerous computer and video games have been inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien 's works set in Middle-earth. Titles have been produced by studios such as Electronic Arts , Vivendi Games , Melbourne House , and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment . Aside from officially licensed games, many Tolkien-inspired mods , custom maps and total conversions have been made for many games, such as Warcraft III , Minecraft , Rome: Total War , Medieval II: Total War , The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim . In addition, there are many text-based MMORPGs (known as MU*s ) based on Middle-earth. The oldest of these dates back to 1991, and
2992-434: The Shire is based partly on Tolkien's childhood at Sarehole , partly on English village life in general with, in Tolkien's words, "gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmland". The Shire's capital, Michel Delving, embodies a philological pun : the name sounds much like that of an English country town , but means "Much Digging" of hobbit-holes, from Old English micel , "great" and delfan , "to dig". The industrialization of
3080-465: The Shire was based on Tolkien's childhood experience of the blighting of the Worcestershire countryside by the spread of heavy industry as the city of Birmingham grew. " The Scouring of the Shire ", involving a rebellion of the hobbits and the restoration of the pre-industrial Shire, can be read as containing an element of wish-fulfilment on his part, complete with Merry's magic horn to rouse
3168-509: The Shire was taken over by Saruman through his underling Lotho Sackville-Baggins. They ran the Shire in a parody of a modern state, complete with armed ruffians, destruction of trees and handsome old buildings, and ugly industrialisation. The Shire was liberated with the help of Frodo and his companions on their return at the Battle of Bywater (the final battle of the War of the Ring ). The trees of
3256-617: The Shire were restored with soil from Galadriel 's garden in Lothlórien (a gift to Sam). The year S.R. 1420 was considered by the inhabitants of the Shire to be the most productive and prosperous year in their history. The hobbits of the Shire spoke Middle-earth's Westron or Common Speech . Tolkien however rendered their language as modern English in The Hobbit and in Lord of the Rings , just as he had used Old Norse names for
3344-527: The Shire." It was bounded to the east by the Old Forest , separated by a tall thick hedge called the High Hay. It included Crickhollow, which serves as one of Frodo's five Homely Houses . The Westmarch or West Marches was given to the Shire by King Elessar after the War of the Ring. To the east of the Shire was the isolated village of Bree , unique in having hobbits and men living side-by-side. It
3432-592: The ability to give conscious life to things. The precise origins of Orcs and Trolls are unclear, as Tolkien considered various possibilities and sometimes changed his mind, leaving several inconsistent accounts. Late in the Third Age, the Uruks or Uruk-hai appeared: a race of Orcs of great size and strength that tolerate sunlight better than ordinary Orcs. Tolkien also mentions "Men-orcs" and "Orc-men"; or "half-orcs" or "goblin-men". They share some characteristics with Orcs (like "slanty eyes") but look more like men. Tolkien,
3520-494: The ancestral Took dwelling of Great Smials, the village of Tuckborough, and the area of The Tookland . He held the largely ceremonial office of Thain of the Shire. Tolkien devised the "Shire calendar" or "Shire Reckoning" supposedly used by the Shire's hobbits on Bede 's medieval calendar. In his fiction, it was created in Rhovanion hundreds of years before the Shire was founded. When hobbits migrated into Eriador, they took up
3608-451: The area was returned to its natural state, but even without the set from the movie the area became a prime tourist location . Because of bad weather, 18 of 37 hobbit-holes could not immediately be bulldozed; before work could restart, they were attracting over 12,000 tourists per year to Ian Alexander's farm, where Hobbiton and Bag End had been situated. Jackson's Bree is constantly unpleasant and threatening, complete with special effects and
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3696-738: The beginning and end of Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . Five of the protagonists in these stories have their homeland in the Shire: Bilbo Baggins (the title character of The Hobbit ), and four members of the Fellowship of the Ring : Frodo Baggins , Samwise Gamgee , Merry Brandybuck , and Pippin Took . At the end of The Hobbit , Bilbo returns to the Shire, only to find out that he has been declared "missing and presumed dead" and that his hobbit-hole and all its contents are up for auction. (He reclaims them, much to
3784-473: The book for the benefit of readers, despite the expense involved. The definitive and iconic map of Middle-earth was published in The Lord of the Rings . It was refined with Tolkien's approval by the illustrator Pauline Baynes , using Tolkien's detailed annotations, with vignette images and larger paintings at top and bottom, into a stand-alone poster, " A Map of Middle-earth ". In Tolkien's conception, Arda
3872-666: The borders and kept out intruders. Generally the only strangers entering the Shire were Dwarves travelling on the Great Road from their mines in the Blue Mountains , and occasional Elves on their way to the Grey Havens. In S.R. 1147 the hobbits defeated an invasion of Orcs at the Battle of Greenfields. In S.R. 1158–60, thousands of hobbits perished in the Long Winter and the famine that followed. In
3960-515: The events in Tolkien's stories take place in the north-west of Middle-earth. In the First Age , further to the north-west was the subcontinent Beleriand ; it was engulfed by the ocean at the end of the First Age. Tolkien prepared several maps of Middle-earth. Some were published in his lifetime. The main maps are those published in The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings , The Silmarillion , and Unfinished Tales , and appear as foldouts or illustrations. Tolkien insisted that maps be included in
4048-418: The first big screen adaptation of the fictional setting was introduced in Ralph Bakshi 's animated The Lord of the Rings . New Line Cinema released the first part of director Peter Jackson 's The Lord of the Rings film series in 2001 as part of a trilogy; it was followed by a prequel trilogy in The Hobbit film series with several of the same actors playing their old roles. In 2003, The Lord of
4136-406: The gift of life but under the condition that they be taken and put to sleep in widely separated locations in Middle-earth and not to awaken until after the Firstborn were upon the Earth. They are mortal like Men, but live much longer, usually several hundred years. A peculiarity of Dwarves is that both males and females are bearded, and thus appear identical to outsiders. The language spoken by Dwarves
4224-425: The history into 'Ages of the Children of Ilúvatar'. The first such Age began with the Awakening of the Elves during the Years of the Trees (by which time the Ainur had already long inhabited Arda) and continued for the first six centuries of the Years of the Sun. All the subsequent Ages took place during the Years of the Sun. Arda is, as critics have noted, "our own green and solid Earth at some quite remote epoch in
4312-403: The inhabitants to action. The Shire makes an appearance in both the 1977 The Hobbit and the 1978 The Lord of the Rings animated films. In Peter Jackson 's The Lord of the Rings motion picture trilogy , the Shire appeared in both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King . The Shire scenes were shot at a location near Matamata, New Zealand . Following the shooting,
4400-418: The latitude of ancient Troy . In another letter he stated: ...Thank you very much for your letter. ... It came while I was away, in Gondor ( sc. Venice ), as a change from the North Kingdom, or I would have answered before. He did confirm, however, that the Shire , the land of his Hobbit heroes, was based on England , in particular the West Midlands of his childhood. In the Prologue to The Lord of
4488-544: The memory of the Earth. Both the Appendices and The Silmarillion mention constellations, stars and planets that correspond to those seen in the northern hemisphere of Earth, including the Sun, the Moon, Orion (and his belt), Ursa Major and Mars . A map annotated by Tolkien places Hobbiton on the same latitude as Oxford , and Minas Tirith at the latitude of Ravenna , Italy. He used Belgrade , Cyprus , and Jerusalem as further reference points. The history of Middle-earth, as described in The Silmarillion , began when
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#17327798747624576-445: The middle-earth sent unto men. This is from the Crist 1 poem by Cynewulf . The name Éarendel was the inspiration for Tolkien's mariner Eärendil , who set sail from the lands of Middle-earth to ask for aid from the angelic powers, the Valar . Tolkien's earliest poem about Eärendil, from 1914, the same year he read the Crist poem, refers to "the mid-world's rim". Tolkien considered middangeard to be "the abiding place of men",
4664-414: The north by uplands rising to the Hills of Evendim , on the west by the Far Downs, and on the south by marshland. It expanded to the east into Buckland between the Brandywine and the Old Forest , and (much later) to the west into the Westmarch between the Far Downs and the Tower Hills. The Shire was subdivided into four Farthings ("fourth-ings", "quarterings"), as Iceland once was ; similarly, Yorkshire
4752-403: The original map by Christopher Tolkien that are missing from the game are some parts of the West Farthing and the majority of the South Farthing. A portion of the North Farthing also falls within the in-game region of Evendim for game play purposes. In the 2009 action game The Lord of the Rings: Conquest , the Shire appears as one of the game's battlegrounds during the evil campaign, where it
4840-410: The past." As such, it has not only an immediate story but a history, and the whole thing is an "imagined prehistory" of the Earth as it is now. The Ainur were angelic beings created by the one god of Eä, Eru Ilúvatar . The cosmological myth called the Ainulindalë , or "Music of the Ainur", describes how the Ainur sang for Ilúvatar, who then created Eä to give material form to their music. Many of
4928-498: The period described in the books, only Men are left on the planet. Tolkien's stories chronicle the struggle to control the world (called Arda ) and the continent of Middle-earth between, on one side, the angelic Valar , the Elves and their allies among Men ; and, on the other, the demonic Melkor or Morgoth (a Vala fallen into evil), his followers, and their subjects, mostly Orcs , Dragons and enslaved Men. In later ages, after Morgoth's defeat and expulsion from Arda, his place
5016-490: The physical reality of creation as a whole. In careful geographical terms, Middle-earth is a continent on Arda, excluding regions such as Aman and the isle of Númenor. The alternative wider use is reflected in book titles such as The Complete Guide to Middle-earth , The Road to Middle-earth , The Atlas of Middle-earth , and Christopher Tolkien 's 12-volume series The History of Middle-earth . Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter states that Tolkien's Middle-earth
5104-428: The physical world in which Man lives out his life and destiny, as opposed to the unseen worlds above and below it, namely Heaven and Hell . He states that it is "my own mother-earth for place ", but in an imaginary past time, not some other planet. He began to use the term "Middle-earth" in the late 1930s, in place of the earlier terms "Great Lands", "Outer Lands", and "Hither Lands". The first published appearance of
5192-421: The place where three counties once met. Pippin was born in Whitwell in the Tookland. Within the Farthings there are unofficial clan homelands: the Tooks nearly all live in or near Tuckborough in Tookland's Green Hill Country. Buckland, also known as the "East Marches", was just to the east of the Shire across the Brandywine River. Named for the Brandybuck family, it was settled "long ago" as "a sort of colony of
5280-430: The power to control or influence those wearing the other Rings of Power. In ancient Germanic mythology , the world of Men is known by several names. The Old English middangeard descends from an earlier Germanic word and so has cognates such as the Old Norse Miðgarðr from Norse mythology , transliterated to modern English as Midgard . The original meaning of the second element, from proto-Germanic gardaz ,
5368-412: The remote past, extending to Worcestershire (where Tolkien grew up), forming in Shippey's words a "cultural unit with deep roots in history". The name of the Northamptonshire village of Farthinghoe triggered the idea of dividing the Shire into Farthings. Tolkien said that pipe-weed "flourishes only in warm sheltered places like Longbottom;" in the seventeenth century, the Evesham area of Worcestershire
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#17327798747625456-405: The rest of the physical world), which itself was part of the wider creation he called Eä. Aman and Middle-earth are separated from each other by the Great Sea Belegaer , though they make contact in the far north at the Grinding Ice or Helcaraxë. The western continent, Aman, was the home of the Valar , and the Elves called the Eldar . On the eastern side of Middle-earth was the Eastern Sea. Most of
5544-463: The restored monument took place on 27 April 1998. The possible loss of the stone prompted organisations, including Friends of Real Lancashire , to raise money for its restoration. The National Trust moved the car park away from the restored stone, and placed some cobbles in the turf to mark the county boundaries radiating from it. The stone was found fallen and damaged in summer 2017, but was once again repaired and restored to its original location. It
5632-444: The road / And flung his cobweb cloak on me..." C. S. Lewis 's 1938–1945 Space Trilogy calls the home planet "Middle-earth" and specifically references Tolkien's unpublished legendarium; both men were members of the Inklings literary discussion group. Within the overall context of his legendarium , Tolkien's Middle-earth was part of his created world of Arda (which includes the Undying Lands of Aman and Eressëa , removed from
5720-422: The same Common Eldarin ancestral tongue, but over thousands of years it diverged into different languages. The two main Elven languages were Quenya , spoken by the Light Elves, and Sindarin , spoken by the Dark Elves. Physically the Elves resemble humans; indeed, they can marry and have children with them, as shown by the few Half-elven in the legendarium. The Elves are agile and quick footed, being able to walk
5808-413: The same meaning: Brill is a modern contraction of Breʒ-hyll . Both syllables are words for "hill" – the first is Celtic and the second Old English . The Shire was first settled by hobbits in the year 1601 of the Third Age (Year 1 in Shire Reckoning); they were led by the brothers Marcho and Blanco. The hobbits from the vale of Anduin had migrated west over the perilous Misty Mountains , living in
5896-415: The same weekday designation from year to year, instead of changing as in the Gregorian calendar . For the names of the months, Tolkien reconstructed Anglo-Saxon names , his take on what the English would be if it had not adopted Latin names for the months such as January and March. In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings , the names of months and week-days are given in modern equivalents, so Afteryule
5984-403: The seas'." There are allusions to a similarly- or identically-named world in the work of other writers both before and after him. William Morris 's 1870 translation of the Volsung Saga calls the world "Midgard". Margaret Widdemer 's 1918 poem "The Gray Magician" contains the lines: "I was living very merrily on Middle Earth / As merry as a maid may be / Till the Gray Magician came down along
6072-508: The spite of his cousins Otho and Lobelia Sackville-Baggins .) The main action in The Lord of the Rings returns to the Shire near the end of the book, in " The Scouring of the Shire ", when the homebound hobbits find the area under the control of Saruman 's ruffians, and set things to rights. Tolkien based the Shire's landscapes, climate, flora, fauna, and placenames on Worcestershire , a rural county in England where he lived. In Peter Jackson 's films of both The Hobbit and The Lord of
6160-400: The story takes place in the North-west of 'Middle-earth', equivalent in latitude to the coastlands of Europe and the north shores of the Mediterranean. ... If Hobbiton and Rivendell are taken (as intended) to be at about the latitude of Oxford , then Minas Tirith , 600 miles south, is at about the latitude of Florence . The Mouths of Anduin and the ancient city of Pelargir are at about
6248-434: The subject of a variety of film adaptations. There were many early failed attempts to bring the fictional universe to life on screen, some even rejected by the author himself, who was skeptical of the prospects of an adaptation. While animated and live-action shorts were made of Tolkien's books in 1967 and 1971, the first commercial depiction of The Hobbit onscreen was the Rankin/Bass animated TV special in 1977 . In 1978
6336-440: The time of The Hobbit , most of them lived in the Shire , a region of the northwest of Middle-earth, having migrated there from further east. The Ents were treelike shepherds of trees, their name coming from an Old English word for giant. Orcs and Trolls (made of stone) were evil creatures bred by Morgoth . They were not original creations but rather "mockeries" of the Children of Ilúvatar and Ents, since only Ilúvatar has
6424-545: The time of The Lord of the Rings , there were many more Bounders than usual, one of the few signs for the hobbits of that troubled time. The heads of major families exerted authority over their own areas. The Master of Buckland, hereditary head of the Brandybuck clan, ruled Buckland and had some authority over the Marish, just across the Brandywine River. Similarly, the head of the Took clan, often called "The Took", ruled
6512-406: The town; there were smaller burrows further down The Hill. In S.R. 1341 Bilbo Baggins left the Shire on the quest recounted in The Hobbit . He returned the following year, secretly bearing a magic ring. This turned out to be the One Ring . The Shire was invaded by four Ringwraiths in search of the Ring. While Frodo , Sam , Merry , and Pippin were away on the quest to destroy the Ring,
6600-514: The way of government. The Mayor of the Shire's capital, Michel Delving, was the chief official and was treated in practice as the Mayor of the Shire. There was a Message Service for post, and the 12 " Shirriffs " (three for each Farthing) of the Watch for police; their chief duties were rounding up stray livestock. These were supplemented by a varying number of "Bounders", an unofficial border force. At
6688-627: The wilds of Eriador before moving to the Shire. After the fall of Arnor, the Shire remained a self-governing realm; the Shire-folk chose a Thain to hold the king's powers. The first Thains were the heads of the Oldbuck clan. When the Oldbucks settled Buckland, the position of Thain was peacefully transferred to the Took clan. The Shire was covertly protected by Rangers of the North , who watched
6776-428: The word "Middle-earth" in Tolkien's works is in the prologue to The Lord of the Rings : "Hobbits had, in fact, lived quietly in Middle-earth for many long years before other folk even became aware of them". The term Middle-earth has come to be applied as a short-hand for the entirety of Tolkien's legendarium, instead of the technically more appropriate, but lesser known terms "Arda" for the physical world and " Eä " for
6864-578: Was "enclosure", cognate with English "yard"; middangeard was assimilated by folk etymology to "middle earth". Middle-earth was at the centre of nine worlds in Norse mythology, and of three worlds (with heaven above, hell below) in some later Christian versions . Tolkien's first encounter with the term middangeard , as he stated in a letter, was in an Old English fragment he studied in 1913–1914: Éala éarendel engla beorhtast / ofer middangeard monnum sended. Hail Earendel, brightest of angels / above
6952-663: Was Glaurung the Golden, bred by Morgoth in Angband , and called "The Great Worm", "The Worm of Morgoth", and "The Father of Dragons". Middle-earth contains sapient animals including the Eagles , Huan the Great Hound from Valinor and the wolf-like Wargs . In general the origins and nature of these animals are unclear. Giant spiders such as Shelob descended from Ungoliant , of unknown origin. Other sapient species include
7040-517: Was created specifically as "the Habitation" ( Imbar or Ambar ) for the Children of Ilúvatar ( Elves and Men ). It is envisaged in a flat Earth cosmology, with the stars, and later also the sun and moon, revolving around it. Tolkien's sketches show a disc-like face for the world which looked up to the stars. However, Tolkien's legendarium addresses the spherical Earth paradigm by depicting
7128-607: Was cut in the Lancashire village of Cartmel in 1816 for the Furness roadmaster William Field; however, it was not erected until 1860, after his death. The front of the stone is inscribed with the word Lancashire . On the reverse side is the inscription W.F. 1816 . It is grade II listed . In 1997, the stone was smashed into four pieces, probably as the result of a motor accident. It was restored in 1998 by stonemason Gordon Greaves of Troutbeck Bridge . The unveiling ceremony of
7216-655: Was historically divided into three " ridings ". The Three-Farthing Stone marked the approximate centre of the Shire. It was inspired by the Four Shire Stone near Moreton-in-Marsh , where once four counties met, but since 1931 only three do. There are several Three Shire Stones in England, such as in the Lake District , and formerly some Three Shires Oaks, such as at Whitwell in Derbyshire , each marking
7304-714: Was known as Middle-earth MUD , run by using LPMUD . After the Middle-earth MUD ended in 1992, it was followed by Elendor and MUME . Three Shire Stone (Lake District) The Three Shire Stone is a boundary stone that marks the location where the historic English counties of Lancashire , Cumberland and Westmorland meet. The point is in the English Lake District at the summit of Wrynose Pass ; latitude 54°25' North, longitude 3°7' West, elevation 1289 feet (393 m) above sea level ( grid reference NY276027 ). The limestone monolith
7392-595: Was played by Mikko Kivinen. Bree and Bree-land can be explored in the PC game The Lord of the Rings Online . Jackson revisited the Shire for his films The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies . The Shire scenes were shot at the same location. In the 2006 real-time strategy game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II , the Shire appears as both
7480-463: Was served by an inn named The Prancing Pony , noted for its fine beer which was sampled by hobbits, men, and the wizard Gandalf . Many inhabitants of Bree, including the inn's landlord Barliman Butterbur, had surnames taken from plants. Tolkien described the butterbur as "a fat thick plant", evidently chosen as appropriate for a fat man. Tolkien suggested two different origins for the people of Bree: either it had been founded and populated by men of
7568-477: Was weakened both by time and by intermingling with lesser peoples. The Dwarves are a race of humanoids who are shorter than Men but larger than Hobbits. The Dwarves were created by the Vala Aulë, before the Firstborn awoke due to his impatience for the arrival of the children of Ilúvatar to teach and to cherish. When confronted and shamed for his presumption by Ilúvatar, Eru took pity on Aulë and gave his creation
7656-623: Was well known for its tobacco. Tolkien made the Shire feel homely and English in a variety of ways, from names such as Bagshot Row and the Mill to country pubs with familiar names such as "The Green Dragon" in Bywater, "The Ivy Bush" near Hobbiton on the Bywater Road, and "The Golden Perch" in Stock , famous for its fine beer. Michael Stanton comments in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia that
7744-478: Was writing: As for the shape of the world of the Third Age , I am afraid that was devised 'dramatically' rather than geologically , or paleontologically . I am historically minded. Middle-earth is not an imaginary world. ... The theatre of my tale is this earth, the one in which we now live, but the historical period is imaginary. The essentials of that abiding place are all there (at any rate for inhabitants of N.W. Europe), so naturally it feels familiar, even if
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