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Emeraldstar
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Post Not your own Shire...
on: February 21, 2010 01:21
I was re-reading FotR, and I had a question.

In chapter 3, "Three is Company," Frodo's talking to Gildor. One thing that Gildor said made me wonder. Here it is:

"But it is not your own Shire," said Gildor. "Others dwelt here before hobbits were; and others will dwell here again when hobbits are no more."


Does anyone know who/what dwelt in the Shire before hobbits?
starofdunedain
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Post RE: Not your own Shire...
on: February 21, 2010 01:37
He is talking about the Second Age when Gondor still held that area and techincally it still belongs to Gondor because at the end Gandalf says
and the King will come there again one day; and then you'll have some fair folk riding through
(talking to Barliman Butterbur in Homeward Bound, RotK) The beginning of the Appendicies explains it all, how it was divided into three kingdoms, who ruled, what happened, and why. It's quite interesting.
EA games actually made an expansion of Battle for Middle-earth 2 called Rise of the Witch-king. It deals with that time period and the battles between the kingdoms and Sauron and the Nazgul.

[Edited on 21/2/2010 by starofdunedain]
Emeraldstar
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Post RE: Not your own Shire...
on: February 21, 2010 02:00
Thanks Star! I thought I looked in the Appendices... Maybe I didn't look in the right place.
cirdaneth
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Post RE: Not your own Shire...
on: November 04, 2010 12:32
During the First Age, Eriador was covered in vast forests, with settlements of men and elves in the clearer parts. These were joined by the remnants of folk fleeing the destruction of Beleriand.

At the end of the Second Age, Elendil established the Numenorean Kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor. The Shire was in the northern kingdom of Arnor and it was here in Third Age 1600 that the King granted a homeland to the hobbits who named it The Shire.

The forests by this time were badly depleted, communities of Men still lived in the rest of Arnor they and the Hobbits were severely depleted by insurgence, climate change and Plague.

After the death of Arvedui, Arnor was divided into three kingdoms and the Shire fell within the kingdom of Cardolan. These kingdoms ultimately failed and withered away. The Hobbits survived, protected unknowingly by the remnant of the Dunedain, and the rest of the Big people reverted to subsistence farming and homesteading in tiny hamlets such as existed around Bree.

The Elves held themselves aloof and dwelt in woods and isolated valleys hidden from Men, or in their own fiefdoms of Harlindon and Forlindon, remnants of Beleriand, west of the Ered Luin. Dwarves lived and mined in the Ered Luin, especially the North and criss-crossed Eriador, trading with Men and Hobbits, but rarely with Elves.

By the end of the Third Age, the whole of Eriador was seriously deforested and depopulated and the Shire was a protected haven where the Hobbits lived mostly unaware of the wider world.
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