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Post by Vanye on Apr 11, 2011 11:53:44 GMT -6
I have just finished rereading The Hobbit & realized that the date on which Bilbo & Co. set out upon their great adventure is...Wait for it!...27 April, 1341, Third Age AND... since 27 April, 2011 is coming up...SO..I am going to start this thread in order to chronicle their journey in real time in order to bring a temporal perspective to the story we all love so much! After all the book is short but the journey is very lonnng! It will not necessarily be in daily installments as they are in some places for extended time so it will follow an irregular schedule. What do the rest of you think about this idea? 8^)
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Post by Stormrider on Apr 11, 2011 22:07:59 GMT -6
Good timing, especially with the start of the movie production! I am dusting off my copy of The Hobbit, too! We can follow along day by day to see where they are! Good idea!
Wait a minute..I was looking in the Appendix of ROTK and Thorin and Gandalf first visited Bilbo in 2941 not 1341.
Is April 27th the day they set out? What day did Gandalf actually first stop by Bilbo's hole and chat?
The 27th must have been a Thursday because the first chapter says that Bilbo forgot things unless he put a note down on his engagement tablet like this: Gandalf Tea Wednesday.
Therefore, Gandalf must have stopped by to first chat with Bilbo on Tuesday, April 25th, because the tea and invasion of the dwarfs was on Wednesday, the 26th.
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Post by Vanye on Apr 12, 2011 0:29:15 GMT -6
Well I do see where the problem seems to be-I have been using a couple of different books to figure this out & indeed in "The Atlas of Middle-earth" the year is 2941 but in the other one, "Untangling Tolkien" it is 1341. Thus far I am unable to puzzle out why the author is using this year date & I shall change that. Yes, Gandalf showed up on the 25th & Bilbo invited him to tea the next day, Wednesday & they were off the following day, Thursday 27 April 2941. Tolkien only named a few dates in the book but Fonstad & others have used those few dates to flesh out the rest of the timings for events in the story. Thanks for pointing out my faux pas! 8^)
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Post by Andorinha on Apr 12, 2011 1:16:56 GMT -6
Sounds like a great idea, Vanye, looking forward to your comments as Bilbo's journey unfolds!
Regarding the year dates, I think both are technically correct, one of them must be a Shire-Reckoning date. I sort of remember there being 1600 years difference between the calendar of Gondor/ Arnor/ Elves and that used by the hobbits. So, I guess 1341 is SR years, and 2941 is its equivalent in the Gondor calendar? Does that work out? This would make the entry of the hobbits into the Shire as the Arnor year Third Age 1600... Arithmetic is not my forte. LOL
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Post by Vanye on Apr 12, 2011 13:04:25 GMT -6
Yeah! I have found that that is indeed the case i. e. the 1341 date is Shire Reckoning. This is based on the date of the first Hobbit settlement in the Shire-the year of that settlement became Year 1 in Shire Calendar. I have been reading the Appendices in RoTK as well as the Prologue and Appendices in The Peoples of Middle-earth and am finding all sorts of interesting tidbits.
The author of Untangling Tolkien says the Shire date seems more like a time in the past as opposed to the other date which seems like it ought to be in the future. I I will use both thus:1341/2941. 8^)
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Post by Andorinha on Apr 12, 2011 21:01:16 GMT -6
Good idea, using both the dates!
RE Vanye's: "I have been reading the Appendices in RoTK as well as the Prologue and Appendices in The Peoples of Middle-earth and am finding all sorts of interesting tidbits."
You know, I have not re-read the Appendices in a long time, and as you say, there is a great wealth of "tidbits" there, hmm, think I'll wander over to the back of volume three, and have a good re-read!
Thanks!
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Post by Stormrider on Apr 14, 2011 5:56:40 GMT -6
Yes, there is a ton of info in the Appendices. Interesting info on the different races, the tale of Arwin and Aragorn, lineages, dates.
I didn't realize there was a timeline in The Peoples of Middle-earth. I'm going to check that out!
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Post by Vanye on Apr 28, 2011 0:54:23 GMT -6
Bilbo's Great Adventure:The Timeline-Day One
27 April 1341, Shire Reckoning/2941,King's Reckoning, Third Age (T. A.) @ 11:00 AM or a little bit after Bilbo, Gandalf & The 13 Dwarves rode out of Hobbiton & into great adventure! Bilbo was later to write of it in a book he titled- There & Back Again.
Over the next year I will periodically post on their progress to give us all a feel for the time span of the book (which is fairly short). I recently reread [The Hobbit] & found that quite a few details had slipped my mind in the interim since my lat previous reading. 8^)
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Post by Stormrider on Apr 28, 2011 5:58:26 GMT -6
After a night of song, tale, and business dealings, Bilbo thought they left without him...and a big breakfast mess was left for him to clean up. I think he was hoping they had forgotten about him and went about his happy (maybe grumbling under his breath) business of cleaning house.
Then Gandalf ruined it! He showed up, pointed out the note left on the mantelpiece thanking Bilbo for his hospitality and saying they would meet him at the Green Dragon Inn at 11am.
Gandalf shoved Bilbo out the door without any belongings but when he arrived at the Green Dragon, Dwalin was happy to provide him with a pony and a dark green hood. Luckily Gandalf arrived on his white horse with Bilbo's luggage after they all left the Inn.
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Post by Vanye on Apr 29, 2011 14:52:14 GMT -6
One small further word about the dates-it seems that it was in 1600, King's Reckoning that the Hobbits first settled in the Shire & that they count the following Year 1601 K.R. as their year 1 S.R. & this explains the 1600 year difference between the dates!
As to the days of the week I shan't even attempt to conform them to the Shire calendar but instead stick w/our modern calendar in order to save my sanity. 8^)
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Post by Andorinha on May 4, 2011 22:20:53 GMT -6
Yeah, I think it's smart to avoid the Shire day designations, only 30 days per month, every month, and each day of the year has the same designation... could get very confusing. I assume Tolkien was using the "normal" Julian calendar when he gave dates in The Hobbit, and I think that is the format Fonstad uses in her Atlas of Middle-earth.
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Post by Stormrider on May 5, 2011 4:28:34 GMT -6
I have that Atlas and yes, she uses our calendar dates. I'm going to get that out and see how much detail she gives to Bilbo's and the Dwarves' progress on her maps! Thanks for reminding me of that book.
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Post by Andorinha on May 11, 2011 10:06:46 GMT -6
Yeah, Stormrider, re Fonstad, I like the way she figured "miles of travel per day," and then marked down the likely camping spots for the entire journey. I think one of the old DA posts brought out the connections between William Morris, his real-life, pony-back ventures through Iceland, and Tolkien's portrayal of Bilbo and the Dwarves moving through Middle-earth. It certainly lends verisimilitude to Bilbo's trek when it is based on actual daily travels by a similar troupe of pony riders.
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Post by Vanye on May 12, 2011 19:29:20 GMT -6
Yes, Andorinha & Storm-Fonstad is my best source & according to her on 12 May 1341 S.R./2941 S.R. it looks as though they are coming close to the vicinity of Weathertop (which is not mentioned in The Hobbit). As she points out in the Atlas Tolkien only had 4 dates named in the book so she had to extrapolate from all the dates in her route maps. So, as of today they have been on the road for exactly 2 weeks. That would make it 149.8 mi. aprox. that they have traveled thus far. Turning into quite a pony ride for Bilbo & Co. Huh?8^)
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Post by Andorinha on May 13, 2011 12:44:58 GMT -6
This zone of the trek eastward to Rivendell provides me with some of my favorite, haunting, melancholic views of Middle-earth: ancient ruins of a forbidding aspect that loom above the roads and pathways...
Six days out from Bree, traveling on foot with just the pack-pony Bill, it seems Frodo and The Fellowship company reached this same area -- where Bilbo, about May 12, remarked upon the brooding presence of a series of hilltop ruins:
"Now they had gone far into the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse. Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees. On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people." (The Hobbit, annot ver p. 65)
As you point out, Vanye, there seems to be no Amon Sul (Weathertop) as yet, and of course, there were no Numenorean descended Men in the 1930s when Tolkien wrote The Hobbit. So, of course, these ruined fortifications are not yet connected with the Dunedain, and Tolkien here, has originally assigned the creation of the ruined castles to some "wicked people."
In FotR, we have Frodo's description, which does not specifically mention any castles (perhaps these could only be seen directly from the East Road and not the backwoods paths where Aragorn led the four hobbits?) :
"Along the crest on the ridge the hobbits could see what looked to be the remains of green-grown walls and dikes, and in the clefts there still stood the ruins of old works of stone."
Merry echoes the tone of menace that Bilbo first articulated ("castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people.") :
"'I wonder who made this path, and what for,' said Merry, as they walked along one of these avenues, where the stones were unusually large and closely set. 'I am not sure that I like it: it has a -- well, rather a barrow-wightish look.' Is there any barrow on Weathertop?'
"'No. There is no barrow on Weathertop, nor on any of these hills,' answered Strider. 'The Men of the West did not live here; though in their latter days they defended the hills for a while against the evil that came out of Angmar. This path was made to serve the forts along the walls.'" (FotR, pp. 249-50, pap bk ver).
I assume these "forts" were the castles Bilbo saw?
Hmm, might be fun to see which group (Bilbo's vrs Frodo's) traveled the road to Rivendell the faster?
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