Charting the Shire lines - Page 10
© Michael Martinez
Who were these "queer folk" Sam's cousin and the Bounders were running into, especially on the north moors? Saruman had sent agents abroad to spy upon and watch the Shire, but were they all working for him? Or were people slowly moving across Eriador, looking for safer lands to dwell in, as word spread north and west of the troubles brewing in Mordor?
Tolkien writes there were no settled dwellings of Men (besides Bree) closer than about 300 miles (more-or-less the Angle, where Aragorn's people lived). But what constitutes a settled dwelling? He does note "there were probably many more Outsiders [Hobbits who lived beyond the Shire and Buckland] scattered about in the West of the World in those days than the people of the Shire imagined."
So, it seems there were still Hobbits living outside the Shire and Bree, and that many of these Hobbits may have been restless wanderers. But there could also have been many Men, living alone or in groups too small to form real communities. These Men could have been simple farmers, hunters, or wanderers. They might have supported themselves wholly in the wild or through occasional work in the Shire and Bree-land.
There were no towns, not even villages. All the former communities were gone. Tharbad, the last town beyond Bree had vanished in floods in 2912, more than 100 years before the War of the Ring. The Shire itself continued to flourish and grow, although there were setbacks during the centuries. After the Brandybuck migration in 2340 there would have been the Long Winter and the Days of Dearth in 2758-60, and the Fell Winter in 2911. So every 300-350 years or so the Hobbit populations seem to have been reduced by famine, war, or plague. It was enough to prevent them from spreading across Eriador, but insufficient to reduce them to a haggard, struggling people.
Inevitably, in the Fourth Age, the Hobbits must have come to play a significant if undercredited role in the revival of Arnor. Just as there was another migration to the lands between the Far Downs and the Tower Hills in the year FoA 31 (Shire Reckoning 1451, which would have been the year 3051 of the Third Age), so there may have been other Hobbit expansions northward to the refounded Annuminas and eastward to former lands once occupied by ancient Hobbits.
1050-1150 represented the first migration period. Then came the migration period of 1300-1356, and then the Shire migrations of 1600-1630, and a long hiatus interruped by the Great Plague in 1636 and the final war with Angmar in 1974-5. Another migration began in 2340, and agsin a setback occurred in 2758-60. It would seem that Tolkien looked very carefully at the calendar and realized that the Hobbits, if unchecked, should have flourished and expanded continually into the lands formerly occupied by Elendil's people. But he ensured that enough hardships afflicted them that they would make only slow progress. The history of Hobbits in Eriador is very well-conceived.
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