Middle-earth objects
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy legendarium includes several noteworthy objects; the following list includes weapons, ships, musical instruments and other items. A wondrous large white gem, the royal jewel of the Dwarf-kingdom of Erebor, it was sought by the claimant to the kingdom, in The Hobbit. The Arkenstone had been discovered at the heart of the Mountain by Thorin's ancestor, King Thráin I the Old, shaped by the Dwarves. Thráin ruled from T. A. 1981 to 2190, the Arkenstone became the royal heirloom of his successors, Durin's line. However the great jewel was lost when the dragon Smaug captured the Lonely Mountain from the Dwarves in T. A. 2770. The Arkenstone shone of its own inner light, but having been cut and fashioned by the Dwarves, it reflected and multiplied any light glancing upon its surface with marvellous beauty, it was called the Heart of the Mountain, as Thorin describes to Bilbo Baggins: "It shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, like snow under the stars, like rain upon the moon..."
Thorin, the heir of Thráin, arrived at the Lonely Mountain with Bilbo in T. A. 2941. When Bilbo found the Arkenstone on Smaug's golden bed deep inside the Lonely Mountain he pocketed it, having learned how much Thorin valued it. While his Dwarf companions sorted the treasure, Thorin sought only the Arkenstone, unaware that Bilbo was hiding it in his pillow; when the Dwarves refused to share any of the treasure with Bard and King Thranduil, Bilbo crept out of the Dwarves' fort inside the Mountain, gave them the Arkenstone. Bard and Gandalf tried to trade it for Bilbo's fourteenth share of Smaug's hoard; the dispute was interrupted by goblins and wargs from the Misty Mountains, the Battle of Five Armies ensued, Thorin was killed. When Thorin was buried deep under Erebor, Bard placed the Arkenstone on Thorin's breast. Tolkien took the name from Old English earcanstān or Old Norse jarknasteinn, meaning "precious stone"; the word appears in several Old English poems. The Arkenstone is compared with the Silmarils, the great jewels at the centre of The Silmarillion.
Though the Arkenstone is not a Silmaril, it is an import from Tolkien's writings of the "mythology" into his children's story which were, at the time of The Hobbit's composition, unrelated writings. In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the Arkenstone is portrayed as a round glowing gem, similar to a luminous white opal; the gem was inserted into Thrór's throne, the king viewed it as a symbol of his rule by divine grace. He attempted to take it with him when Smaug invaded Erebor, but dropped it into a pile of gold where it was lost. In The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, it is revealed that the entire purpose of the dwarves' quest was to retrieve the Arkenstone, since possessing it would have given Thorin the authority required to unite all the dwarven clans and launch an assault to liberate Erebor; the chief token of royalty of Gondor. It is referred as the Winged Crown, the Silver or White Crown, the Crown of Elendil. Tolkien describes the crown in The Lord of the Rings thus: It was shaped like the helms of the Guards of the Citadel, save that it was loftier, it was all white, the wings at either side were wrought of pearl and silver in the likeness of the wings of a sea-bird, for it was the emblem of kings who came over the Sea.
In a letter Tolkien describes the crown as "very tall, like that of Egypt, but with wings attached, not set straight back but at an angle". The Hedjet of Upper Egypt was, like Gondor's crown known as the White Crown. Tolkien made a sketch of the crown of Gondor, reproduced in J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator; the first Crown of Gondor was the helmet. His brother Anárion's helmet had been crushed by the stone that killed him during the Siege of Barad-dûr. During the reign of King Atanatar II Alcarin, a new crown was made of silver and jewels; this Crown was worn by all the subsequent Kings of Gondor. Traditionally, a father passed the Crown to his heir. If the heir was not present when the King died, the Crown was set in the King's tomb in the Hallows, where his heir would go alone to retrieve it. In 2050, the Lord of the Nazgûl challenged King Eärnur to single-combat. Eärnur left the Crown on the tomb of his father Eärnil II and he went to Minas Morgul and was never seen again. From that time on, the Stewards ruled Gondor in the absence of a King.
The Crown remained in the Hallows, the Stewards bore a white rod as the token of their office. To prepare for the coronation of Aragorn as King Elessar, the Steward Faramir went to the Hallows and retrieved the Crown from Eärnil's tomb; the Crown was placed in a casket of black lebethron wood bound with silver. On the day of the coronation, 1st'May' T. A. 3019, the casket was carried to the Great Gate of Minas Tirith by four Guards of the Citadel. Aragorn lifted the Crown and, quoting his ancestor Elendil as he arrived in Middle-earth, said: "Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta!" At Aragorn's request, Frodo Baggins brought the Crown forward and gave it to Gandalf, who set it upon Aragorn's head. As King, Aragorn bore both the Crown of Gondor and the Sceptre of Annúminas, the chief token of royalty of Arnor, an
Troll (Middle-earth)
Trolls are fictional characters in J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, they are portrayed as large humanoids of poor intellect. While in Norse mythology, trolls were magical and sometimes beautiful creatures, with special skills, in Tolkien's writings they are portrayed as cruel and stupid, with crude habits, although still intelligent enough to communicate with a known language. In The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins and the Dwarf company encountered three trolls on their journey to Erebor; the trolls captured the Dwarves and prepared to eat them, but Gandalf managed to distract them until dawn, when exposure to sunlight turned them into stone. They spoke with thick Cockney accents, had English names: Tom and William. In The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard remarked that trolls were "made... in mockery of Ents", as Orcs were of Elves. Trolls' origins are detailed in The Silmarillion. Morgoth, the evil Vala, created the first trolls before the First Age of Middle-earth, they were stupid creatures. Their major weakness was.
During the wars of Beleriand, Gothmog had a bodyguard of trolls. During the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, in which Morgoth defeated the united armies of Elves and Dwarves, the great human warrior Húrin faced Gothmog's trolls to protect the retreat of the Elven king Turgon; as Morgoth had ordered to capture Húrin alive, the warrior managed to wipe out the trolls before being captured by orcs. Many trolls died in the War of Wrath, but some survived and joined Sauron, the greatest surviving servant of Morgoth. In the Second Age and Third Age, trolls were among Sauron's most dangerous warriors. Tolkien created several different terms for types of trolls, though there seems to have been some overlap in meanings, they could speak, used a debased form of Westron. Hill-trolls in the Coldfells north of Rivendell killed Arador, Chieftain of the Rangers of the North and grandfather to Aragorn. Tolkien described the trolls of Eriador and the troll-shaws, including the three from The Hobbit, as stone-trolls, suggesting that "hill-trolls" was an alternative name, or referred to a sub-class.
At the Black Gate the Army of the West fought "hill-trolls" of Gorgoroth, which are taken to be Olog-hai. Cave trolls attacked the Fellowship of the Ring in Moria. One is described as having black blood, their hide was so thick that when Boromir struck one in the arm his sword was notched and did no damage. However, Frodo Baggins was able to impale the "toeless" foot of the same troll with the enchanted dagger Sting. Mountain trolls are mentioned once, wielding the great battering ram Grond in shattering the gates of Minas Tirith. Snow trolls are mentioned only in the story of Helm Hammerhand; when Helm went out clad in white during the Long Winter to stalk and slay his enemies, he was described as looking like a snow-troll. Otherwise nothing is known of them. Olog-hai are described in Appendix F of Return of the King, they were "strong, agile and cunning" trolls created by Sauron, not unlike the Uruk-hai. Unlike other trolls, they could withstand sunlight while under the sway of Sauron's will, they spoke and were said to know no language other than the Black Speech, in which Olog-hai means "troll-folk".
They appeared toward the end of the Third Age and could be found near Dol Guldur and in the mountains around Mordor. Since the "hill-trolls" of Gorgoroth that fought in the Battle of the Morannon could withstand sunlight, these are taken to be the Olog-hai of Appendix F, they are described as being wider than men, with hide or armour of horny scales. They had black blood. Peregrin Took slew their leader. Rankin/Bass' animated adaptation of The Hobbit depicts Bilbo's encounter with the trolls. In this film, the trolls are presented with tan-colored skin, large bulbous noses, tusks; as in the book, they turn to stone. Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings follows the book faithfully in its depiction of the encounter with the troll in the Chamber. Tolkien toeless. There are no other trolls depicted. Numerous trolls appear in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo Baggins recounts his altercation with the three stone-trolls and on, the four hobbits and Aragorn are shown resting in the shelter of the petrified trolls.
In the mines of Moria, a single cave troll is among the attackers. First sighted by Boromir, the troll barges through the open doors, smashes much of the Chamber, including Balin's tomb, in the ensuing fight, it has a collar with a trailing chain, is undisciplined enough to inadvertently crush some of its goblin allies in the skirmish with Gandalf's company. The troll appears to impale Frodo with a metal stave, but Frodo is saved from fatal injury by his mithril shirt. In the book it is an Orc captain. After a hard fight, the troll is killed by the members of the Fellowship, who stab and hack at it until Legolas kills it with a well-aimed arrow shot through the roof of its mouth. In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, shackled trolls open and close the Black Gate to an army of approach
Middle-earth wars and battles
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy writings include many wars and battles set in the lands of Aman, Beleriand, Númenor, Middle-earth; these are related in his various books such as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and other posthumously published books edited by his son Christopher Tolkien. These are given below in an in-universe, fictional chronology: The Battle of the Powers called the War of the Powers, occurred between the god-like Valar and their former member Melkor in primeval Middle-earth. After a long titanic conflict the Valar defeated Melkor, confined in a massive chain for three ages; the battle caused massive changes to Middle-earth's original geography. The Kinslayings are the collective term for the three battles fought among the Eldar; the first battle, the Kinslaying at Alqualondë, appears in print in The Silmarillion. It involves the Noldorin Elves under their king, Fëanor, against their fellow Elves, the Teleri whose Lord was Olwë, who did not take part in the battle.
Against the will of the godlike Valar, Fëanor had induced the Noldor to leave Valinor to make war upon the Dark Lord Morgoth in revenge for the murder of his father Finwë and the theft of his Silmarilli jewels. As the easiest route to Middle-earth was by sea, Fëanor and his sons led one host of the Noldor to the city of Alqualondë and asked the seafaring Teleri of Alqualondë for their vessels; the Teleri refused to help. Bitter fighting broke out and many of Elves on both sides were slain. Though the Teleri were armed, they were able to defend themselves to some degree until a second host of the Noldor, led by Fëanor's half-nephew Fingon, arrived together with some of his father Fingolfin's people. Fingon's people assumed erroneously that the Teleri had attacked the Noldor under orders of the Valar. In the end, many of the Teleri were slain and the ships taken. Afterward, the sea destroyed many of the boats to punish the Noldor for this cruel act. Though the Teleri forgave the Noldor by the end of the First Age of Middle-earth, they still refused to fight in the War of Wrath.
All Elves that followed Fëanor and continued towards Middle-earth fell under the Doom of Mandos. This episode appears in Tolkien's earliest Middle-earth-related writings, published in The Book of Lost Tales. In the earliest surviving version, the "Noldoli" steal the ships of the "Solosimpi" without any fighting; when a concept of a battle was developed, the location was first called "Kopas Alqalunten". In a late version of the legendarium, Galadriel fought on the side of the Teleri, her mother Eärwen's people, against the Fëanorians; the second battle is the Sack of Doriath made by the Sons of Fëanor. Caranthir and Curufin died there, Celegorm dies killing the son of Beren and Luthien. Although the fëanorians won the battle, they did not manage to obtain the Silmaril; the third battle in the Kinslaying is the attack by the Sons of Fëanor on the Mouths of Sirion where Elwing was attacked. The last Kinslaying is considered the cruellest of them all because many women and children were murdered by the Fëanorians.
And still the Silmaril is not taken back. It was stated by Eönwë herald of Manwë that because of these evil deeds the remaining Sons of Fëanor had lost all right to the Silmarils, when Maedhros and Maglor retrieved them, the Silmarils burned their hands, driving Maedhros to suicide and Maglor to wander the Earth forever; the battles between the Elves of Beleriand and the forces of Morgoth are referred to as the Battles of Beleriand, but as the War of the Jewels as the Silmarilli were behind them all. The battles spanned the last several centuries of the First Age. In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, the First Battle of Beleriand was, as the name suggests, the first battle of the Wars of Beleriand, fought by the Sindarin Elves, led by Elu Thingol, King of Doriath and Lord of Beleriand, against the armies of Morgoth, the Great Enemy and original Dark Lord; the First Battle of Beleriand was fought before the Noldor arrived, was fought by the Sindar and Laiquendi Elves. The Second Battle was Dagor-nuin-Giliath, fought by the Noldor following Fëanor and his Seven Sons, in which the Noldor were victorious but Fëanor was slain by Balrogs.
During this battle the Battle of Lhammoth was fought by the host of Fingolfin. The Third Battle was Dagor Aglareb. Various minor battles were fought during the Siege; the Fourth Battle was the Dagor Bragollach, in which the Siege was broken and Fingolfin was slain by Morgoth. The Fifth Battle was the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, in which the Noldor were utterly defeated and Fingon, Azaghâl and Huor are killed and Hurin captured. Years the Battle of Tumhalad, in which the elven forces under Orodreth and Túrin were defeated by Angband forces under Glaurung, led to the sack of Nargothrond, it was the last battle of the Elves of the kingdom of Nargothrond. It was fought on the plain of Tumhalad between the river Narog and its tributary, the river Ginglith. In year 510 FA the Fall of Gondolin takes place, it was fought between the Elves of Gondolin led by Turgon their king and the city's houses leaders and the hosts of Morgoth swarmed from Angband led by Gothmog. At the end the elves are defeated, the city is lost and destroyed, the king, most of the houses' leaders
Dragon (Middle-earth)
J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium features dragons based on those of European legend. Besides dragon, Tolkien variously used worm. Dragons are present in The Book of Lost Tales, the earliest Middle-earth-related narratives written by Tolkien, starting in 1917; the Book of Lost Tales was posthumously published in two volumes as part of The History of Middle-earth series, edited and includes commentary by his son Christopher. In the earliest drafts of "The Fall of Gondolin", the Lost Tale, the basis for The Silmarillion, Morgoth sends mechanical war-machines in the form of dragons against the city; these machines do not appear in the published Silmarillion edited by Christopher Tolkien, in which real dragons attack the city. As in the conception of the dragons in the Legendarium, the winged dragons had not yet been devised by Morgoth at the time of the Fall of Gondolin; the first winged dragons were coeval with Ancalagon the Black. In the late Third Age, the dragons bred in the Northern Waste and Withered Heath north of the Grey Mountains.
The Dragons were inspired by Fafnir from Germanic mythology, The Dragon from Beowulf, the Dragon from the legend of Saint George and the Dragon. In Tolkien's works, dragons are quadrupedal, like Komodo dragons or other lizards, are either flightless or winged and capable of flight. Winged dragons are stated to have first appeared during the War of Wrath, the battle that ended the First Age; some dragons are capable of breathing fire, known as "Fire-drakes", or "Urulóki" in Quenya. It is not clear whether the term "Urulóki" referred only to the first dragons such as Glaurung that could breathe fire but were wingless, or to any dragon that could breathe fire, thus include Smaug. In Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien mentions that Dáin I of Durin's folk and his son Frór were killed by a "Cold-drake", prompting their people to leave the Grey Mountains, it is assumed, though not directly stated, that this term indicates a dragon which cannot breathe fire, rather than one who breathes ice or snow.
Dragon-fire is described as not being hot enough to melt the One Ring. Tolkien does not explicitly explain the term. All of Tolkien's dragons share a love of treasure, subtle intelligence, immense cunning, great physical strength, a hypnotic power called "dragon-spell", they are powerful and dangerous but mature slowly. Because of this, Melkor's first attempts to use them against his enemies fail, as they are not yet powerful enough to be useful in battle. Tolkien named only four dragons in his Middle-earth writings. Another, Chrysophylax Dives, appears in Farmer Giles of Ham, a story separate from the Middle-earth corpus. Chrysophylax is a fire-breathing dragon, described as a "hot" one. Glaurung, first introduced in The Silmarillion, is described as the Father of Dragons in Tolkien's legendarium, the first of the Urulóki, the Fire-drakes of Angband, he is a main antagonist in The Children of Húrin, in which he sets in motion events that bring about the protagonist Túrin's eventual suicide before being slain by him.
Glaurung is shown to use his ability to control and enslave Men using his mind to wipe the memory of Túrin's sister Nienor, though it was restored after Glaurung had perished. He is described as having the ability to breathe fire, but no wings. Ancalagon the Black was a dragon bred by Morgoth during the First Age of Middle-earth, as told in The Silmarillion, he was one of Morgoth's most powerful servants, bred to be the greatest and mightiest of all dragons, the first of the winged "fire-drakes". He arose like a storm of wind and fire from the infernal pits of Angband beneath the Iron Mountains, as a last defense of the realm of Dor Daedeloth. Near the end of the War of Wrath that pitted Morgoth's hosts against the Host of the Valar, Morgoth sent Ancalagon to lead a fleet of winged dragons from the fortress of Angband to destroy the Dark Lord's enemies. So powerful was the assault of the dragon flight that the Host of the Valar was driven back from the gates of Angband onto the ashy plain of Anfauglith.
Eärendil'The Blessed' in his powerfully hallowed Elven airborne ship Vingilot, aided by Thorondor and the great Eagles, battled Ancalagon and his dragons for an entire day. At length Eärendil prevailed, casting Ancalagon upon the triple-peaked towers of Thangorodrim, destroying both Ancalagon and the towers. With his last and mightiest defender slain, Morgoth was soon utterly defeated and made captive, thus ending the War of Wrath. Ancalagon the Black was the greatest dragon of Middle-earth, undoubtedly the largest, is referred to as the "father of the winged-drakes". Like all other Urulóki, Ancalagon breathed fire, said to be hotter than any other known flame. Two extinct genera have been named inspired by Tolkien's dragon. In 1977, an extinct genus of worms from the Cambrian Burgess Shale was named Ancalagon and in 1980, an extinct genus of mammal was named Ankalagon. Scatha was a mighty "long-worm" of the Grey Mountains. Little is known of Scatha except. After slaying Scatha, Fram's ownership of his recovered hoard was disputed by the Dwarves of that region.
Fram rebuked this claim
Dwarf (Middle-earth)
In the fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Dwarves are a race inhabiting Middle-earth, the central continent of Earth in an imagined mythological past, they are based on the dwarfs of Germanic myths: small humanoids that dwell in mountains, are associated with mining, metallurgy and jewellery. They appear in his books The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, the posthumously published The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, The History of Middle-earth series, the last three edited by his son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien. In The Book of Lost Tales the few Dwarves who appear are portrayed as evil beings, employers of Orc mercenaries and in conflict with the Elves—who are the imagined "authors" of the myths, are therefore biased against Dwarves. Tolkien was inspired by the dwarves of Norse myths and dwarves of Germanic folklore, from whom his Dwarves take their characteristic affinity with mining, metalworking and avarice; the representation of Dwarves as evil changed with The Hobbit. Here the Dwarves became comedic and bumbling, but seen as honourable, serious-minded, but still portraying some negative characteristics such as being gold-hungry proud and officious.
Tolkien was now influenced by his own selective reading of medieval texts regarding the Jewish people and their history. The dwarves' characteristics of being dispossessed of their homeland, living among other groups whilst retaining their own culture are all derived from the medieval image of Jews, whilst their warlike nature stems from accounts in the Hebrew Bible. Medieval views of Jews saw them as having a propensity for making well-crafted and beautiful things, a trait shared with Norse dwarves. For The Hobbit all dwarf-names are taken from the Dvergatal or "Catalogue of the Dwarves", found in the Poetic Edda. However, more than just supplying names, the "Catalogue of the Dwarves" appears to have inspired Tolkien to supply meaning and context to the list of names—that they travelled together, this in turn became the quest told of in The Hobbit; the Dwarves' written language is represented in illustrations by Anglo-Saxon Runes. The Dwarf calendar invented; the dwarves taking Bilbo out of his complacent existence has been seen as an eloquent metaphor for the "impoverishment of Western society without Jews".
When writing The Lord of the Rings Tolkien continued many of the themes he had set up in The Hobbit. When giving Dwarves their own language Tolkien decided to create an analogue of a Semitic language influenced by Hebrew phonology. Like medieval Jewish groups, the Dwarves use their own language only amongst themselves, adopted the languages of those they live amongst for the most part, for example taking public names from the cultures they lived within, whilst keeping their "true-names" and true language a secret. Along with a few words in Khuzdul, Tolkien developed runes of his own invention, said to have been invented by Elves and adopted by the Dwarves. Tolkien further underlines the diaspora of the Dwarves with the lost stronghold of the Mines of Moria. In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien uses the main dwarf character Gimli to reconcile the conflict between Elves and Dwarves through showing great courtesy to Galadriel and forming a deep friendship with Legolas, seen as Tolkien's reply toward "Gentile anti-Semitism and Jewish exclusiveness".
Tolkien elaborated on Jewish influence on his Dwarves in a letter: "I do think of the'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their own private tongue..." After preparing The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien returned again to the matter of the Silmarillion, in which he gave the Dwarves a creation myth. The most Dwarf-centric story from The Book of Lost Tales, "The Nauglafring", was not redrafted to fit with the positive portrayal of the dwarves from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, nor other events in the Silmarillion, leading Christopher Tolkien to rewrite it with input from Guy Gavriel Kay in preparation for publication. Sometime before 1969 Tolkien wrote the essay Of Dwarves and Men, in which detailed consideration was given to the Dwarves' use of language, that the names given in the stories were of Northern Mannish origin, Khuzdul being their own secret tongue and the naming of the Seven Houses of the Dwarves.
The essay represents the last of Tolkien's writing regarding the Dwarves and was published in volume 12 of The History of Middle-earth in 1996. In the last interview before his death, after discussing the nature of Elves says of his Dwarves: "The dwarves of course are quite wouldn't you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic constructed to be Semitic." The original editor of The Hobbit "corrected" Tolkien's plural dwarves to dwarfs, as did the editor of the Puffin paperback edition of The Hobbit. According to Tolkien, the "real ` historical"' plural of dwarf is dwerrows, he referred to dwarves as "a piece of private bad grammar". In Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings it is explained that if we still spoke of dwarves English might have retained a special plural for the word dwarf as with goose—geese. Despite Tolkien's fondness for it, the form dwarrow only appears in his writing as Dwarrowdelf, a name for Moria. Tolkien used Dwarves, which corresponds with Elf and Elves.
In this matter, one has to consider the fact that the
Lonely Mountain
In J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, the Lonely Mountain is a mountain in the north of Wilderland, it is the source of the Celduin River, the location of the Kingdom under the Mountain. The town of Dale lies in a vale on its southern slopes; the mountain is called Erebor in Sindarin. This name, a translation of "Lonely Mountain", does not appear in The Hobbit, where the mountain is called by the English name throughout, or the Mountain. In The Lord of the Rings, the name "Erebor" occurs only once in the main narrative text: in chapter 9, book V of The Return of the King; the Lonely Mountain is the goal of the protagonists in The Hobbit, the scene of the climax. The story of The Hobbit is sometimes referred to as the Quest of Erebor. Erebor stood hundreds of miles from the nearest mountain range. Tolkien's rendering of Thrór's map in The Hobbit shows the mountain with six ridges stretching out from a central peak, snowcapped well into spring; the whole mountain was ten miles in diameter.
The mountain was the habitat for a variety of plants and animals, including thrushes, crows and pines. The most well-known were the ravens of Ravenhill, a spur of the mountain; some wildlife survived the Desolation of Smaug, a dragon who invaded the Mountain and dominated its surrounds for nearly 200 years in the Third Age. Erebor became the home of the Folk of Durin, a clan of Dwarves known as the Longbeards, after they were driven from their ancestral home of Khazad-dûm. In the latter days of the Third Age, this Kingdom under the Mountain held one of the largest dwarvish treasure hoards in Middle-earth. Dale, a town of Men built between the two southern spurs of Erebor, formed an economically symbiotic relationship with the dwarves; the Kingdom under the Mountain was founded by Thráin I the Old. His son, Thorin I, left the mountain with much of the Folk of Durin to live in the Ered Mithrin on account of the great riches to be found in that range. After dragons plundered their hoards, the Longbeards, led now by Thrór, a descendant of Thorin, returned to Erebor to take up the title King under the Mountain.
Under Thrór's reign, Erebor became a great stronghold where the dwarves became a numerous and prosperous people. The Dwarves of Erebor were at that time well known for the making of matchless weapons and armour, there was great demand for their work by the surrounding peoples; the Longbeards amassed a large treasure hoard during this time. In 2770 T. A. while the young Thorin II Oakenshield was out hunting, the dragon Smaug flew south from the Grey Mountains, killed all the dwarves he could find, destroyed the town of Dale. Smaug took over the mountain, using the dwarves' hoard as a bed. King Thrór, his son Thráin II, several companions escaped death by a secret door. Although Thrór and Thráin perished, Thorin lived in exile in the Ered Luin, far to the west. In T. A. 2941 he was on a journey. Together they formed a plan to reclaim the mountain. Gandalf insisted that burglary was the best approach and recommended the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, whom he represented to be a professional thief, thus Bilbo and Thorin's company of twelve other Dwarves travelled to the Lonely Mountain to regain the treasure.
They planned to use the secret door, whose key and map Gandalf had managed to obtain from Thráin, whom he had found at the point of death in the pits of Dol Guldur. On Durin's Day, when the setting sun and the last moon of autumn were in the sky together, the day's last sunlight would fall on the door and expose its keyhole so that it could be unlocked. By a fortunate coincidence, this happened soon after Bilbo and the dwarves arrived, the hobbit was able to enter the mountain and steal a golden cup. Smaug, enraged by the theft, emerged from the mountain and flew south to destroy Lake-town, which he thought to be the source of the "thieves". During this attack Smaug was slain by Bard the Bowman. However, the Men of Esgaroth, supported by Thranduil and the Elves of Mirkwood, marched in force to the mountain to demand a part of the dragon's hoard as recompense for the destruction. Thorin, mad with greed, refused all claims and sent word to his second cousin Dáin II Ironfoot, chief of the Dwarves of the Iron Hills, who brought reinforcements to the aid of Thorin and Company.
However before any battle began, an army of Orcs and Wargs descended on Erebor. Dwarves and Men joined ranks against them, which led to the Battle of Five Armies. During this battle, Thorin's nephews Fíli and Kíli were slain, Thorin himself was mortally injured and died shortly afterwards; the title of King under the Mountain passed to Dáin. With the restoration of the Kingdom under the Mountain the area became prosperous again. Dale was rebuilt under Bard's leadership, Dwarves and Men reforged their friendship; some of the Dwarves, led by Balin, left Erebor to reclaim the ancient Dwarvish Kingdom of Khazad-dûm. They established a colony there but five years Balin was killed by an Orc, soon after Moria was overrun by Orcs and the rest of the Dwarves were killed. Gimli, a dwarf of Erebor and the son of Glóin, one of Thorin's twelve companions, was chosen to represent his people in the Fellowship of the Ring and helped Aragorn II regain the throne of Gondor. In the War of the Ring, an emissary from Sauron, the lord of Mordor, twice came to Erebor and spoke to Dáin Ironfoot, still King under the Mountain.
The messenger asked for as
