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Charting the Shire lines
© Michael Martinez
Oct 13, 2000
What was so special about the year 1601 that it should be when Hobbits needed to settle in a new home? And where, exactly, did they settle?
People often ask a lot of questions about the early years of the Shire which are really hard to answer. For example, did Marcho and Blanco, the Fallohide brothers who led the first wave of migration into the Shire, have a surname? When did surnames become important to the Hobbits? How much do the surnames recorded in The Lord of the Rings reflect the social structure of early Shire clans?
If there were a complete map of the Shire available, showing placenames and folklands, it would be most helpful indeed. But there doesn't seem to be one. So all guesses are wild. Nonetheless, given what we know about Hobbits, we can make some reasonable guesses about where they would have settled first, and why.
Of course, it always helps to look at their possible motivations. In the year 1601, Argeleb II was king of Arthedain. Rhudaur had been destroyed nearly 200 years before in the War of 1409. Angmar shouldn't have been much of a threat any more because it was suppressed for a long time with help from Lindon and Imladris. In fact, the next documented war with Angmar wouldn't be until 1851, when Araval fought off an attack with help from the Elves.
Hobbits first entered Eriador in the year 1050. The Harfoots migrated over the High Pass and settled in Rhudaur, presumably between the Mitheithel and the Weather Hills, although they could also have settled in the foothills of the mountains and the northern lands which had not yet fallen into evil. 100 years later the Fallohides came down into Rhudaur and the Stoors crossed the Redhorn Pass and settled in western Dunland near Tharbad. But some of the Stoors also migrated north to settle in the Angle, the lands of Rhudaur between the Mitheithel and Bruinen.
So, things got rough in the old homeland (the Vales of Anduin) around the year 1050, then conditions worsened about the year 1150. In that century of time the power of Gondor achieved its height, but the power of Dol Guldur began to rise, and Sauron was quietly encouraging Easterlings to settle in the southern vales of Anduin (or in southern Mirkwood, as Greenwood the Great was now called). The Northmen who lived in the Vales of Anduin, the forest, and the eastern lands became restless, and some of them openly attacked Gondor in alliance with the Easterlings.
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