NPC: Bilbo Baggins

'Well hello there, have you come for a bit of poetry? It won't be completely finished until I have the Dúnadan look it over.'

	Passage to Darkness The Undiscovered Path My Dwarf Friends Preparing for the Dark The Riddle-game The Riddle-finder

NPC: Bilbo Baggins

More often than not, great events in Middle-earth occur because of individuals willing to sacrifice all in order to bring about change for the better. In The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the most unassuming of characters, the diminutive Hobbits, are the focal points amid legendary events. A scholar chronicling the great heroes of Middle-earth might easily overlook the Hobbits, but that would be a mistake. Hobbits are considered strong for their size, yet they are not as strong as Dwarves or Men. They are also fleet of foot and able to move in complete silence through even wooded lands. It is the intangible qualities of Hobbits, however - their resistance to corruption, strong bonds of kinship, loyalty to friends, love of simple pleasures and the giving of gifts, and a sense of what is important in life - that truly sets them apart as an influential force during the War of the Ring.

Bilbo Baggins was well-known as peculiar among Hobbits, having travelled some years before on a mysterious adventure only to return far wealthier than when he left. For many years afterward, events in Bilbo's home at Bag End were a popular topic of conversation and gossip throughout the Shire. If only half of the stories told were half-true, old Bilbo would be one of the most unusual hobbits in history! For the most part, though, Bilbo lived a pleasant and unremarkable existence in Bag End ... except for occasional visits from Dwarves or sightings of Gandalf, the wandering wizard, at the door of Bag End.

[edit] Bilbo Baggins

[edit] Quick Facts

Timeline:
Dates:	Born 22 September III 2890, passed over the Sea 29 September III 3021 (1290-1421 by the Shire-reckoning)
Race:	Hobbits
Culture:	Shire-hobbits
Family:	Baggins

[edit] The Ring-finder

Bungo Baggins		Belladonna Took
	BILBO BAGGINS

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.

Bilbo's records of his travels, and those of his heir Frodo, were compiled into the Red Book of Westmarch, and became the basis of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

[edit] Life in the Shire III 2890 - III 2941

The only son of the wealthy and respectable Bungo Baggins and Belladonna Took, Bilbo grew up at Bag End, which his father had excavated in Hobbiton Hill. He seems to have visited his mother's family at Great Smials, for he remembered Gandalf's firework displays there.

Bilbo's father Bungo died in 2926, and his mother Belladonna in 2934, after which Bilbo lived alone at Bag End for seven years until a fateful morning in the spring of 2941, when his pleasant, uneventful life was disturbed by the arrival of Gandalf.

[edit] Bilbo and the Quest of Erebor III 2941

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.

[edit] Footnotes