11 days to the release of
Return of the King!
31 week anniversary of the Countdown Calendar!
I apologize for the lateness of the fact today: I confess, I forgot about it when I got back from the fund drive (in the middle of a massive snowstorm!). This one is really long, folks.
Bonus Fact: Relative Lifespans
The average lifespan of hobbits seems to be approximately 100 years, based on the family trees in Appendix C at the end of Return of the King. The Old Took was known for being exceptionally long-lived, and he lived from 1190-1320 (Shire-reckoning), which makes him 130 when he died. Hobbits are not even considered to be fully adults until their thirty-third birthday : "[At the time of the Party] Frodo was going to be thirty-three, 33, an important number: the date of his 'coming of age'." [Fellowship of the Ring]
Dwarves seem to have lifespans ranging from the 240s to about 340 (assuming they don't die in battle, which an awful lot of them seem to do). This is based on the geneology in Appendix A, Section III (Durin's Folk)
Most men in Middle Earth seem to have lifespans that we would consider normal, ie men who are healthy and prosperous tend to live into their 70s or older. I base this on the lifespans of the kings of Rohan, from Appendix A, Section II (The House of Eorl). Most of the kings (who died of natural causes) lived into their 80s or even 90s, and one lived to be 101 (but he is referred to as "Aldor the Old").
However, the men who came to the west part of Middle Earth in the First Age and aided the Eldar in the fight against Morgoth were rewarded with "life more enduring than any others of mortal race have possessed" [The Akallabeth]. Most of these men went to the island of Numenor which the Valar created (also as a reward) just in sight of the Undying Lands. The first king of Numenor was Elros, who was the brother of Elrond. Because of the mixed heritage of Elrond and Elros, they were given a choice at the end of the First Age: Elrond chose the immortality of the elves, and Elros chose the mortality of men. However, Elros and his descendants were granted especially long lives, even in comparison to the already longer lives of the rest of the Numenoreans; Elros himself lived to be five hundred years old.
At one point JRR Tolkien stated that ordinary Numenoreans died at around two hundred years or a little older, while Elros' descendants lived to be around four hundred (from Note 1 to "The Line of Elros"; an oversimplification, I acknowledge). Over time, though, the lifespans of the people of Numenor began to diminish: the first twelve rulers of Numenor after Elros live to be about 400, but after that the lifespans of the kings (and presumably of the rest of the Numenoreans) grow steadily shorter. Tar-Palantir, the twenty-fourth king of Numenor and the last king to die of old age before the Downfall, lived to be only 220.
Unfortunately the list of kings and stewards of Gondor in the Appendices in Return of the King only show the date of death, so it is difficult to calculate lifespans. It is noted, however, that it continued to gradually diminish, due to intermarriage with people who were not of Numenorean blood, and probably also due "to the slow withdrawing of the gifts" of the Valar to the Numenoreans after the downfall of Numenor [Appendix A, Section I, part iv]. At the beginning of this waning, a king (Eldacar) was 235 when he died in 1490. When Denethor (Boromir's father) married at 46, he is said to have married late. This in contrast to Aragorn's father Arathorn, who, when he asked at the age of 56 to marry Gilraen, was said to be merely "of full age". Gilraen's father objected, because he forsaw that Arathorn would be "short-lived" (he was killed four years later, at 60) and also because Gilraen, at twenty, "had not reached the age at which the women of the Dunedain were accustomed to marry." On the other hand, Denethor, who is 88 at the time of the War of the Ring, is said to have been "aged before his time by his contest with the will of Sauron". It seems likely that both in Gondor and among the Rangers in the north, those families that maintain a purer Numenorean descent still manage to live to be well over 100, possibly even to 200; that is, at least half again if not twice as long as normal men in Middle Earth.
(Sources: Appendices A, B, and C of LOTR; also "The Akallabeth" from The Silmarillion, and "The Line of Elros" from the Unfinished Tales)
Here ends the commentary on relative lifespans in Middle Earth. Before finishing, though, I would like to address the concerns recently expressed by a reader regarding the ages of the Fellowship that I posted last week. It is connected to the issue of lifespans, so it seems appropriate.
This reader felt that Aragorn could not possibly be 87, and that the hobbits were all in the 25-30 range. This reader also said that the (supposedly incorrect ages) must have been gathered from the Unfinished Tales, "because in the Return of the King Aragorn was in his forties."
It is worth noting that there may be differences in opinion about the validity of placing JRR Tolkien's other writings in equal standing with the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, the only books published in his lifetime. It is certainly true that there are sometimes contradictions between LOTR and the Silmarillion, the Unfinished Tales, and all of the other writings of Tolkien that I have not read yet such as the Book of Lost Tales. Some of the contradictory material was actually written by Tolkien after LOTR was published, and had he lived longer, he might have reconciled the contradictions in future publications. There is precedent, by the way, for Tolkien deciding to change something he had already published, notably the chapter in the Hobbit where Bilbo encounters Gollum, which as originally published contradicted the Lord of the Rings. Personally, I regard all of Tolkien's writings as equally valid, and am willing to view them with an open mind, and a grain of salt.
Be that as it may, the ages I quoted last week were not taken from Tolkien's later writings, but directly from the Appendices published at the end of Return of the King, notably the Tale of Years in Appendix B. Ages were calculated by subtracting the listed birthdate of a member of the Fellowship from the year 3018, which is the year the Fellowship set out from Rivendell.
There are very few explicit age references in the text, but there are a couple: in Fellowship it says that Frodo had decided "to leave [to take the Ring to Rivendell] on his fiftieth birthday" (indeed, if he had not delayed after finding out what the Ring was, but had left right away, he would probably have avoided the Ringwraiths entirely); and then in the Return of the King, Pippen tells someone in Gondor that he is "nearly twenty-nine". Aragorn says to the hobbits in Bree "I am older than I look." In the Return of the King Aragorn says "of the race of the West unmingled, I shall have life far longer than other men...[but] when those who are now in the wombs of women are born and have grown old, I too shall grow old." Aragorn was 88 when he said this. He lived to be 210.
Hopefully this clarifies any confusion.
8:40:06 AM 
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