A Day in the Life of a Hobbit

Happy Tolkien Reading Day and Gondorian New Year!

A special theme is selected for every Tolkien Reading Day. This year, the theme is “Home and Hearth: The many ways of being a Hobbit.” So I thought it would be fun to follow a little Hobbit along her day in The Lord of the Rings Online with the help of Professor Tolkien’s own words.

[…] Hobbits are an unobtrusive but very ancient people, more numerous formerly than they are today; for they love peace and quiet and good tilled earth: a well-ordered and well-farmed countryside was their favourite haunt. They do not and did not understand or like machines more complicated than a forge-bellows, a water-mill, or a hand-loom, though they were skilful with tools.

[…] As for the Hobbits of the Shire, with whom these tales are concerned, in the days of their peace and prosperity they were a merry folk.

[…] Those days, the Third Age of Middle-earth, are now long past, and the shape of all lands has been changed; but the regions in which Hobbits then lived were doubtless the same as those in which they still linger: the North-West of the Old World, east of the Sea. Of their original home the Hobbits in Bilbo’s time preserved no knowledge.

[…] A love of learning (other than genealogical lore) was far from general among them, but there remained still a few in the older families who studied their own books, and even gathered reports of old times and distant lands from Elves, Dwarves, and Men. Their own records began only after the settlement of the Shire, and their most ancient legends hardly looked further back than their Wandering Days.

[…] At no time had Hobbits of any kind been warlike, and they had never fought among themselves. In olden days they had, of course, been often obliged to fight to maintain themselves in a hard world; but in Bilbo’s time that was very ancient history. The last battle, before this story opens, and indeed the only one that had ever been fought within the borders of the Shire, was beyond living memory: the Battle of Greenfields, S.R. 1147, in which Bandobras Took routed an invasion of Orcs. Even the weathers had grown milder, and the wolves that had once come ravening out of the North in bitter white winters were now only a grandfather’s tale. So, though there was still some store of weapons in the Shire, these were used mostly as trophies, hanging above hearths or on walls, or gathered into the museum at Michel Delving.

The Mathom-house it was called; for anything that Hobbits had no immediate use for, but were unwilling to throw away, they called a mathom. Their dwellings were apt to become rather crowded with mathoms, and many of the presents that passed from hand to hand were of that sort.

[…] All Hobbits had originally lived in holes in the ground, or so they believed, and in such dwellings they still felt most at home; but in the course of time they had been obliged to adopt other forms of abode. Actually in the Shire in Bilbo’s days it was, as a rule, only the richest and the poorest Hobbits that maintained the old custom.

[…] The houses and the holes of Shire-hobbits were often large, and inhabited by large families. (Bilbo and Frodo Baggins were as bachelors very exceptional, as they were also in many other ways, such as their friendship with the Elves.)

– Concerning Hobbits, The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

Now for the surprise — a giveaway in honor of Tolkien Reading Day!

Head over our Facebook page and leave a comment under the post for this article sharing a screenshot of your favourite Hobbit in The Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO)! It can be either your own character or one of the NPCs. Your Facebook comment will enter you in a drawing to win one of these prizes:

• Funko POP Aragorn and Arwen.
• Vintage paperback edition of a Tolkien book.

Giveaway Rules

• The winner will be drawn at random from the comments. Only one entry per person, please!
• The giveaway is open for everyone, regardless of location.
• The winner will be drawn on March 31, 2018 by 6:00 PM EDT. The decision of the Middle-earth News staff is final.
• The winner will be contacted through email. Be sure to use a valid email address with your comment so that we can contact you if you win!
• If we cannot contact the winner, or if they fail to respond to our email, we will choose a new winner at random from the other comments.