Baggins Challenge

As Mr. Tolkien explains, Hobbits are a very ancient people. Peaceful and well ordered. They love food and are never in a hurry. Smaller than dwarves, ranging between two and four feet tall. They seldom wore shoes because their feet were covered in thick curly hair, and have tough leathery soles. They loved parties and presents, you would never ask for a better host

Head of the Baggins family, he dwelt alone at Bag End, Hobbiton, until Gandalf involved him in the Quest of Erebor in 2941 (Third Age), and so drew the Hobbits into the great affairs of the end of the Third Age. During his journey to the Lonely Mountain, Bilbo came upon the One Ring in an orc-hold of the Misty Mountains.

More than a hundred and fifty years before Gandalf disturbed Bilbo in his garden that spring morning, the dragon Smaug had descended in flame on Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, an ancient kingdom of the Dwarves far to the east of the Shire. Those Dwarves that survived scattered throughout the northern lands, and many, led by Thorin the rightful heir to the kingdom, travelled into the west and settled in the Blue Mountains near the borders of the Shire. Now, with Gandalf’s aid, Thorin had begun to plot his revenge on Smaug.

Gandalf convinced Thorin that a Hobbit should accompany his party, both because of the Hobbits’ natural stealth, and because he wanted to involve them in the wider world, as a preparation against the coming darkness. He chose Bilbo largely because of his Took inheritance, but he later suggested that Bilbo might in some sense have been ‘fated’ to go on the Quest.

So it was that on an evening at the end of April1 2941, Gandalf returned to Bilbo’s house with Thorin and his twelve companions, and the Quest of Erebor was begun.

Bibliography

the hobbit (novel)