![]() Their role in Middle-earth is nearing its end. ![]() They will soon sail away to the Undying Lands, though. To put it shortly, Gildor and his company are Elves of the First Age who once dwelt in Valinor (the Undying Lands) but came to Middle-earth and never returned to their original home. If you haven’t read The Silmarillion, ‘Noldor’ and ‘Finrod’ won’t mean very much to you. Chance, if chance it is, has them crossing paths with a group of Noldor Elves led by Gildor Inglorion of the House of Finrod. Out in the woods, with one of the riders close on their trail he nearly succumbs to that urge but is saved at the last moment by the singing of Elves. Frodo doesn’t yet know what these riders are, only that they frighten him and whenever they are near he has a strange urge to put the Ring on. This throws the riders off the trail for a while, but they nearly catch up in the forest near the village of Woodhall. Frodo barely escaped them.įrodo, Sam, and Pippin have few issues on the road, but after another near-encounter with a black rider, they leave the road and cut across country. The enemy agents are already in the Shire. It’s not until later that he discovers the Gaffer was, in fact, talking to a black rider. Assuming that it’s yet another hobbit poking around, Frodo hurries on. This works in his favor in more than one way, because on his way out he hears his neighbor, Gaffer Gamgee (Sam’s father), talking to a stranger about Frodo’s business. When September 22nd arrives and Frodo is finally ready to go (having finalized the sale to the loathsome Sackville-Bagginses), he leaves at night to avoid notice. It’s been the best summer that anyone can remember, and faced with the thought of leaving his doltish neighbors, he realizes that they really can be lovely people. Though he once said he thought an earthquake or dragon invasion would be good for the hobbits, he’s changed his mind. They spend the rest of the summer sticking their collective nose into every last bit of Frodo’s business while Frodo is trying to prepare to leave forever even as he realizes he doesn’t want to go. This is more important to them than reports of giants and other portents on the border. Hobbits are gossip-mongers, after all, and when the news that Frodo Baggins is selling Bag-End and moving to Crickhollow, it’s all anyone talks about. He can’t disappear overnight or word could reach unfriendly ears that Baggins is leaving. Gandalf returned with his terrible news the spring after Frodo turned fifty, and while he knows he must flee the Shire or bring dark forces down upon his neighbors’ heads, it takes him all summer to make his preparations. ![]() This works for a movie but not for the Shire Tolkien actually wrote. In Peter Jackson’s 2001 film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, Ian McKellan’s Gandalf returns to the Shire a few weeks or months after Bilbo leaves and sends Frodo (played by a seventeen-year-old Elijah Wood) on his journey that same night.
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