Maybe only once have I ever seen anyone on the Internet ask how many Rangers would have been guarding Sarn Ford the day the Nazgul showed up. And then no one was able to provide a satisfactory answer. It’s a tough question because, so far as we know, J.R.R. Tolkien himself never tried to answer it. And in trying to answer that question for ourselves, we quickly get drawn into digressions and tangents.
Any attempt to figure out how many Rangers were stationed there inevitably gets bound up in an effort to calculate how many Rangers there must have been altogether. An interesting question which also occasionally gets asked is, where did they all go during the War of the Ring? And were the thirty Rangers whom Halbarad led to Rohan the last of their kind? Halbarad’s words to Aragorn, “I have thirty with me; that is all of our kindred that could be gathered in haste,” seem to imply there were more Rangers who stayed home.
But if Halbarad couldn’t gather them all in his haste, where were the other Rangers? They certainly weren’t guarding the Shire any more, because Saruman’s ruffians were in the process of taking over. They weren’t guarding Bree, because Bree was having its own problems with Saruman’s ruffians.
The Rangers are a mysterious group. Tolkien never gives us an explicit history of the organization. Nor does he tell us how they managed to survive as a people. It seems most likely that the Rangers were merely a special group supported by the larger Dunadan tribe or nation. When Aranarth decided not to re-establish the Kingdom of Arnor, he took the title of Chieftain of the Dunedain, but he also retained the title of Lord of the Dunedain.
Since Tolkien left no word unturned, but used them all in both innovative and traditional ways, it may help to examine where the words chieftain, lord, and ranger come from, or at least how they are integrated into Middle-earth’s mythology. Tolkien believed that a good mythology was interwoven with the language which expressed that mythology. In Letter 180 he wrote:
…It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that ‘legends’ depend upon the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the ‘legends’ which it conveys by tradition. (For example, that the Greek mythology depends far more on the marvellous aesthetic of its language and so of its nomenclature of persons and places and less on its content than people realize, though of course it depends on both. And vice versa. Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends.) So though being a philologist by nature and trade (yet one always primarily interested in the aesthetic rather than the functional aspects of language) I began with language, I found myself involved in inventing ‘legends’ of the same ‘taste’….
The fruits of Tolkien’s labors in forging a confluence between language and mythology are apparent to anyone who has perused “The Etymologies” in The Lost Road and Other Writings, or “Quendi and Eldar” in The War of the Jewels. To those who are familiar with this material, it may be overreaching to postulate that he derived the legend of the first Elves from the three numbers min, atta/tata, and nel; but then again, who is to say what went through his mind when Tolkien devised the names of the first three numbers? The words would have to have meaning to the Elves who used them, and in that usage they would have to accrue new meanings and associations through the generations. What if the mythology of the Elves had explanations for the earliest meanings?
But the process of developing legends for the languages didn’t stop with Elvish. Tom Shippey likes to point out that the place-names in Rohan all have significance with respect to the geography of Rohan. The Emnet, for example, is appropriately named (in Anglo-Saxon), representing literally the kind of name the Rohirrim would have given to the grasslands in their own language: “The first Rohirric place-name we hear is ‘Eastemnet’, followed soon by ‘Westemnet’. An ’emnet’ is a thing in Middle-earth, also a place in Norfolk [England], also an asterisk-word [reconstructed, hypothesized] *emnmaeth for ‘steppe’ or ‘prairie’, also the green grass which the Riders use as a touchstone for reality.” (T.A. Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth).
In fact, what Tolkien does, Shippey says, is give “The Lord of the Rings a dinosaur-like vitality which cannot be conveyed in any synopsis, but reveals itself in so many thousands of details that only the most biased critical mind could miss them all.” And he concludes by adding that “everything Tolkien wrote was based on fusions like that, on ‘woses’ and ’emnets’ and eoreds, on ‘elvish’ or orthanc or panaches.” (Ibid.)
In essence, every noun and verb Tolkien uses has a capacity for telling us something about Middle-earth: we can learn about its past, its cultures, its races, even its geography by examining the vocabularies. One need not be a linguist to see the value in understanding the etymology of the words. The transfomational processes studied by the linguists don’t reveal much about who the people are, as much as the development of root-words and derivatives. But it is evident that even the English words chosen by Tolkien represent the integration of language and mythology. His unique fiction of offering the reader a translation of a long-lost work is closer to reality than we suspect. That is, the translation comes from Tolkien’s imagination, from the original expression of this imaginary time in our past, and is not merely a faux attribution of his creativity.
The world exists, grows, and recedes in Tolkien’s mind as he writes about it. The long, painful process of working out the geography, races, and history of Middle-earth must be viewed as distinct from the final product. The revisionism Tolkien introduced was a process of clarification, sometimes born of purely non-literary needs, but which optimized the development of the translation and capitalized on the rich depth that preceded it.
In short, we can probably figure out a few things about the Rangers simply by looking at the facts we are given. The word itself, ranger, is a good, old-fashioned Middle English word which stems from a French root, which in turn goes back to ancient German, even Anglo-Saxon, roots. Ultimately, it is traceable back to a postulated Indo-European root-word. The modern meaning of the word is not clearly defined. It could denote a specific type of soldier, or merely a wanderer.
And Tolkien does say that Aragorn’s people were “a wandering folk” who dwelt in the wilds east of Bree. But was that really all he intended the word ranger to convey, or was there more? Actually, we are first introduced to the Rangers in “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony”, as Tolkien introduces the reader to Bree: “In those days no other Men had settled dwellings so far west, or within a hundred leagues of the Shire. But in the wild lands beyond Bree there were mysterious wanderers. The Bree-folk called them Rangers, and knew nothing of their origin….They roamed at will southwards, and eastwards even as far as the Misty Mountains; but they were now few and rarely seen.”
The name Rangers is thus associated with wanderers, but they are never referred to by an Elvish term, such as randiri. That is a curious omission from a story which seeks to marry the Dunedain to Sindarin traditions. Their names are Sindarin (Aragorn, Halbarad, Arathorn) in origin. The names of their kingdoms (Arthedain, Rhudaur, Cardolan) are usually Sindarin. Even their cities (Fornost Erain, Tharbad) are often named in Sindarin. So why are the Rangers not referred to by a Sindarin term, even by the Elven-folk, who seem to name everyone in their own language? And why do most readers believe that Aragorn’s people lived some sort of nomadic life?
Well, the answer to that last question is found in Appendix A, in the section titled “Of the North-kingdom and the Dunedain”. This essay provides the only background information on Aragorn’s people that is available to most readers. After the history of Arnor has been related, up through the defeat of Angmar, the essay notes:
‘When the kingdom ended the Dunedain passed into the shadows and became a secret and wandering people, and their deeds and labours were seldom sung or recorded. Little is now remembered of them since Elrond departed….’
The use of the single quote marks (‘) implies that the passage is a translation from the original Red Book of Westmarch. This paragraph, therefore, is a part of the primary mythology, a continuation of the narrative of the story and not the author’s own intrusive commentary. It’s an explanation by the mythology of the mythology itself. And since the passage insists that most of what was known about the Dunedain of the north has been lost or forgotten by the time the Red Book was composed (sometime in the second century of the Fourth Age), we are not expected to trust the literal explanation. It may be erroneous.
The veracity of the Hobbit historians cannot be wholly discounted, but the function of the word ranger may shed more light on their role in Eriadorian society than we have previously considered. Although a ranger may indeed be nothing more than “a wanderer; a rover”, he may also be “a member of an armed troop employed in patrolling a specific region”. Now, that sounds very much like Faramir’s Rangers, who worked together to maintain Gondor’s claim to Ithilien, but it could also describe Halbarad’s thirty hastily gathered Rangers.
On the other hand, there are other meanings for the word. For example, “One of a body of mounted troops, formerly armed with short muskets, who range over the country, and often fight on foot.” Now, this sounds a bit more like Halbarad’s Rangers, although instead of muskets their ranged weapons were bows. However, Halbarad seems to imply that they didn’t normally work together as a company.
So one must consider the possibility that Tolkien had something like the forest ranger in mind: “The keeper of a public park or forest; formerly, a sworn officer of a forest, appointed by the king’s letters patent, whose business was to walk through the forest, recover beasts that had strayed beyond its limits, watch the deer, present trespassers to the next court held for the forest, etc. [Eng.]”
Aragorn’s rangers do, in many ways, resemble sworn officers of the forest. But were all of his people in fact Rangers? In seeking the hidden location of Aragorn’s people, readers have speculated on which regions of Eriador might have provided a relatively safe and comfortable haven for them. The Emyn Uial, north of the Shire, and the North Downs are popular suggestions. The South Downs are also considered a possibility. Tolkien actually made a note, now filed among his papers at Marquette University, which stated that Aragorn’s people lived in the Angle, between the Bruinen and Mitheithel rivers. The Mitheithel river, as it turns out, does lie about 100 leagues (or 300 miles) east of the Shire.
So if Aragorn’s people lived in the Angle, they could hardly have been wandering all over Eriador. The true wanderers were the Rangers themselves, and it would seem reasonable that the Rangers were only a small corps of special officers or soldiers charged with patrolling Eriador, specifically with policing the highways. The Dunedain could not maintain a court and prison system, but they could ensure that local justice received their support. Furthermore, by maintaining the Rangers, the Dunedain continued to assert a royal claim to all of Eriador.
That is, Aranarth seems to have realized that if he simply abandoned Eriador, his descendants would never have the legal authority to re-establish the Kingdom of Arnor. But if at least some of the services of the Kingdom of Arnor were maintained by the Dunedain, then they would have the legal authority to re-establish their realm. The local populations, protected by the Dunedain, would have no reason to oppose the restoration of royal authority. It may even be that Aranarth consulted with Tharbad, the Shire, and Bree (and any other surviving communities) and shared his plan with them. And then, a thousand years later, people had simply forgotten the whole deal, except for the Dunedain.
As a special corps of officers charged with patrolling Eriador, the Rangers would represent the rightful King. But without a court system, they could not really enforce the King’s Law. Unlike the Rangers of medieval England, therefore, they would not be protecting the King’s Land, but instead were protecting the legacy of the kingdom. All of Eriador’s inhabitants were therefore, perhaps, free to settle where they would. Tradition, ties to family and friends, and economics kept the Hobbits and Bree-folk from spreading too far.
Aranarth’s appointment of royal officers would derive from his authority as Lord of the Dunedain. A lord has legal authority over a region. A chieftain, on the other hand, is either the leader of a tribe or clan, or “a captain, leader, or commander; a chief; the head of a troop, army, or clan”.
As Chieftain of the Dunedain, Aranarth may have established his authority as their captain, rather than as their tribal leader. He was already their lord, which title Aragorn inherited from Aranarth. And though it may be that Tolkien intended the two words to be used interchangeably, I believe he was implying a distinction between the two offices that Aranarth retained. When the Battle of the Pelennor Fields was over, Aragorn said to Eomer and Imrahil:
‘Behold the sun setting in a great fire! It is a sign of the end and fall of many things, and a change in the tides of the world. But this City and realm has rested in the charge of the Stewards for many long years, and I fear that if I enter it unbidden, then doubt and debate may arise, which should not be while this war is fought. I will not enter in, nor make any claim, until it be seen whether we or Mordor shall prevail. Men shall pitch my tents upon the field, and here I will await the welcome of the Lord of the City.’
Now, while Eomer and Imrahil recognized the wisdom of Aragorn’s conservative approach to Minas Tirith, they also felt he deserved better than to “remain like a beggar at the door”. To which Aragorn replied, “Not a beggar. Say a captain of the Rangers, who are unused to cities and houses of stone.”
Aragorn’s assertion has always seemed like a dissimilation, but that would be uncharacteristic of him. In fact, it would be contrary to his purposes for him suddenly to reverse course and distance himself from the royal claim he had just said he was standing by. Although Aragorn expresses some uncertainty earlier in the story, he is by now resolute and committed to the course of action he has taken. He is not going to back down. So his claim to be a captain of the Rangers implies that he is merely asserting one of his titles. He would never lie about something like that, nor would it be necessary for Aragorn to rely upon a generic application of a word with such special meanings.
Which is not to say that Tolkien doesn’t use the word chieftain in the sense of a tribal or clan leader. That usage occurs throughout the book, from the Prologue, where he speaks of the Hobbit chieftains of the Shire who elect their Thain, to the chieftains of the Haradrim. Some of the uses, however, appear to be similar to the way Aragorn speaks of himself. There is the orc-chieftain in Moria who attacks Frodo. Later on, Aragorn tells his companions that the “orcs will often pursue foes for many leagues into the plain, if they have a fallen captain to avenge”.
The Lord of the Nazgul, referred to as the Black Captain, and the Captain of Mordor, is also the Chieftain of the Nazgul. So how is the reader to know whether Tolkien is speaking of a clan or tribal leader, or of a military leader? The distinction seems to be defined only by the application of both words to a given character. There are no captains among the Hobbits. There are captains among the Orcs. There are both captains and chieftains among the Rohirrim. So a chieftain among the Hobbits is a traditional leader of a people or clan; yet a chieftain among the Orcs or Dunedain, or in Sauron’s direct service, is a captain. Among the Rohirrim, a chieftain of a local people (such as Dunhere, the “chieftain of the folk of Harrow-dale”) may be appointed a captain within the Muster of Rohan, although Tolkien’s description of the Muster of Rohan in Unfinished Tales does not allow for the placement of captains within the formal structure. He seems to use the term generically to refer to the leaders of the Rohirrim.
Therefore, a distinction between captain and chieftain, if it exists, supplies an entirely new meaning to Faramir’s speech to the people of Gondor before Minas Tirith, when Aragorn formally presents his claim to the throne to the people of the South-kingdom:
‘Men of Gondor hear now the Steward of this Realm! Behold! one has come to claim the kingship again at last. Here is Aragorn son of Arathorn, chieftain of the Dúnedain of Arnor, Captain of the Host of the West, bearer of the Star of the North, wielder of the Sword Reforged, victorious in battle, whose hands bring healing, the Elfstone, Elessar of the line of Valandil, Isildur’s son, Elendil’s son of Númenor. Shall he be king and enter into the City and dwell there?’
Now, it’s entirely reasonable to argue that Aragorn’s title of Chieftain of the Dunedain of Arnor means nothing more than that he is the leader of the northern Dunedain. When Elrond introduces Aragorn to Boromir, the Lord of Rivendell says, “He is the Chief of the Dúnedain in the North, and few are now left of that folk”. But Aragorn’s claim to the kingship of Gondor may have been asserted as one of a successful captain in war.
Another question readers often ask is why none of Aragorn’s ancestors ever tried to claim the throne of Gondor. Arvedui tried to claim the throne, of course, but his claim was rejected by the Council of Gondor. Since Arvedui had asserted his claim as the Heir of Isildur, no Heir of Isildur would ever again be able to claim the throne of Gondor. Aragorn’s claim was asserted as the Heir of Elendil. When Boromir confided in Elrond’s Council about Gondor’s troubles, Aragorn asked him, “Do you wish for the House of Elendil to return to the land of Gondor?”
When the Company of the Ring debated what course of action they should take, Aragorn was thrown into doubt. “His own plan,” the narrative tells the reader, “while Gandalf remained with them, had been to go with Boromir, and with his sword help to deliver Gondor. For he believed that the message of the dreams was a summons, and that the hour had come at last when the heir of Elendil should come forth and strive with Sauron for the mastery.”
When Galadriel gave the green Elfstone to Aragorn in Lorien, she told him, “In this hour take the name that was foretold for you, Elessar, the Elfstone of the house of Elendil!” He called himself “the heir of Isildur Elendil’s son of Gondor” when he introduced himself formally to Eomer, who in turned recognized Aragorn as “the heir of Elendil”. When Aragorn revealed himself to Sauron, he somehow conveyed the knowledge to Sauron that he was Elendil’s heir (probably by showing Sauron Anduril).
And, finally, when Faramir spoke with Eowyn about why she remained in Minas Tirith despite Eomer’s repeated requests that she join him at Cormallen, Faramir guessed “you do not go, because only your brother called for you, and to look on the Lord Aragorn, Elendil’s heir, in his triumph would now bring you no joy.”
It should therefore not seem a mistake that Faramir refers to Aragorn as “Chieftain of the Dunedain of Arnor”. In fact, why would the people of Gondor care about Aragorn’s position as a tribal leader in the north? They had had no contact with Arnor for a thousand years. On the other hand, Aragorn had already established his position as the captain of the Rangers of the north. The Rangers were all Dunedain of Arnor. Arnor no longer existed, but as a royally commissioned force, the Rangers represented the legal authority of the kingdom of Arnor.
Furthermore, the last time Gondor awarded the crown to a claimant, he had been a victorius captain in war. Earnil, descendant of Telumehtar Umbardacil, had been Captain of the Southern Army of Gondor during the war with the Wainriders and their allies. When King Ondoher and both his sons died in battle, Earnil, already victorius in the south, rushed north and assumed command of the Northern Army. He routed the enemy and saved Gondor. Earnil was eventually awarded the crown of Gondor at least in part because of his victory.
A precedent had therefore been established whereby a claimant of royal blood might be chosen on the basis of his military achievements on behalf of Gondor. Aragorn had entered Gondor as the captain of his small force of Rangers. He had used his authority as the Heir of Isildur to summon the army of the Dead Men of Dunharrow and defeat the Haradrim and Corsairs. He had then taken command of the freed slaves on the ships, expanding his forces. When Angbor of Lamedon and other men of Gondor arrived at Pelargir, they joined Aragorn’s growing army.
When Aragorn arrived at Minas Tirith he came as a victorious captain of war in charge of Gondorian forces. He then led the Army of the West in its march upon Mordor. So, when Faramir recounted Aragorn’s military pedigree for the people of Gondor, he put Aragorn’s title of “Chieftain of the Dunedain of Arnor” first, and followed it with “Captain of the Host of the West”. Aragorn’s military credentials were thus impeccable under Gondor’s tradition. He had led Gondorian troops in war, but also came to Gondor as a captain in his own right. He was the captain of the Rangers of the north.
So, in essence, Aranarth’s legal contrivances had prepared the way for Aragorn. Aranarth couldn’t restore the kingdom of Arnor. He had too few people to do that. But he preserved the royal authority of the Kings of Arnor through his title Lord of the Dunedain (in “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”, Aragorn introduced himself as “Aragorn, Arathorn’s son, Isildur’s Heir, Lord of the Dunedain”). And Aranarth also took the title Chieftain of the Dunedain, which may have denoted a diminution in the status of the Dunedain of Arnor. But it seems possible that the title was in fact a self-appointed military rank.
By extension, one must ask if the title, or rank, of chieftain inducted all the Dunedain (including women and children) into a formal military order. That is not really necessary. Instead, Aranarth became their captain in war, and his descendants inherited the office. But the Rangers were probably not the principal military force of the Dunedain. That is not to say that the Dunedain maintained a standing army. Rather, it may be that they initiated the custom of maintaining a muster, and the chieftain was the captain of the muster. The Shire-folk appointed their Thain “to hold the authority of the king that was gone”.
It’s a curious expression to use for a hereditary leader who was replacing a king, but the word thain appears to be a derivative of thane, from Anglo-Saxon thegn. A thane was “a freeman granted land by the king in return for military service in Anglo-Saxon England”. Or, a thane was “a dignitary under the Anglo-Saxons and Danes in England. Of these there were two orders, the king’s thanes, who attended the kings in their courts and held lands immediately of them, and the ordinary thanes, who were lords of manors and who had particular jurisdiction within their limits. After the Conquest, this title was disused, and baron took its place.”
The Shire’s Thainship therefore established a hereditary military office with some civil duties. “The Thain was the master of the Shire-moot, and captain of the Shire-muster and the Hobbitry-in-arms,” Tolkien notes in the Prologue. A moot was “an ancient English meeting, especially a representative meeting of the freemen of a shire”. Tolkien used the word moot in other ways, such as in the Entmoot and the Folkmoot of Brethil (the latter term is used only in reference to a meeting of the Folk of Haleth in “The Wanderings of Hurin”, published in The War of the Jewels).
So, instead of appropriating the royal authority for themselves the Shire chieftains (most likely the clan or family leaders) acted to preserve the royal authority. They expected, or hoped for, the return of the king. Aranarth was the rightful king, and the Thain was elected in 1979, four years after Aranarth took the title of Chieftain of the Dunedain. The Thainship must therefore have been appointed to the Shire-folk by Aranarth. In essence, he established a feudal relationship with them. They continued to recognize his royal authority, but they also enacted a practical measure for their own defense, which the Dunedain were no longer able to provide for directly.
Tolkien doesn’t tell us when Aranarth’s people settled in the Angle. It may have been generations before they migrated to that region, and their purpose in doing so is not entirely clear. But what is clear is that Aranarth (or one of his descendants) established the Rangers as a special service to maintain the authority of the king throughout Eriador. Bree and Tharbad may have had similar local military offices which were eventually lost, either as the populations of those regions diminished, or as the Rangers gradually cleared Eriador of most of its evil intruders.
Technically, Arnor ceased to function as a kingdom or nation. There was no king to govern the people or to act on their behalf in dealing with other nations. But the last rightful king bequeathed to his heirs the authority over all military forces in Eriador, as well as the claim to nobility and royal prerogatives. The kingship became dormant, passing into a sort of regency under which the rightful heirs of the kings acted as their own regents. However, the symbols of Arnor’s kings, the Sceptre of Annumninas and the Star of Elendil, were given to Elrond. Elrond was therefore appointed the trustee of the royal authority of Arnor, holding its emblems in escrow until such time as an Heir of Isildur proved able to reestablish the kingdom.
Rather than dissolve Arnor and divest himself of the kingship, Aranarth simply created a public trust to hold the kingdom in perpetual abeyance. Everyone recognized that the kingdom of Arnor still existed, but only in a legal state of suspension. In this way Arnor’s surviving peoples became autonomous but remained subjects of the crown. And yet Tolkien writes that “after Arvedui the North-kingdom ended”. That is, the North-kingdom ceased to exist as a state, and it neither enforced its laws nor enacted new ones. But some of its institutions survived, or were preserved through inheritance by new institutions.
It thus seems most likely that Rangers constituted only a small part of the male population of the Dunedain of Arnor. Elrond was not wrong to say there were now few Dunedain left, but they probably numbered in the thousands, rather than the hundreds. When Frodo sat upon Amon Hen and beheld visions of a world moving toward war, he saw that “the Misty Mountains were crawling like anthills: orcs were issuing out of a thousand holes”. Most of those orcs probably attacked the Beornings and Woodmen, or Lorien. But some of them had to turn toward Eriador. And it would have fallen to the Dunedain to defend Eriador against invasion. In such a time of need, the Rangers would have been called back to defend the homeland and patrol the frontier. Halbarad’s ability to muster a company of Rangers would therefore have been hampered not by fewness of men, but by the necessity to leave his people (and Rivendell) defended.
Some people are quick to point out, however, that Elrond had summoned Arwen back to Rivendell in order to protect her. True, but Lorien was threatened by even greater forces than Rivendell. Dol Guldur and the Misty Mountains presented formidable threats to Lorien, and Sauron controlled all the lands between Mirkwood and Mordor, as well as many lands to the east. Lorien was thus in considerably greater peril than Rivendell. Sauron’s ability to threaten Eriador was thus limited, but it was not non-existent. Gandalf pointed out to Frodo that Rivendell, the Shire, and similar enclaves would “soon become islands under siege, if things” were allowed to continue as they were proceeding prior to the Council of Elrond.
Later on, after the Company of the Ring failed to cross over the Misty Mountains via the Redhorn Pass, Gandalf held out the prospect of returning to Rivendell. But he pointed out that “to go back is to admit defeat and face worse defeat to come. If we go back now, then the Ring must remain there: we shall not be able to set out again. Then sooner or later Rivendell will be besieged, and after a brief and bitter time it will be destroyed.” So Rivendell was not a safe haven for anyone. It was simply farther removed from the front lines than Lorien. It therefore seems reasonable to infer that most of the Dunedain capable of wielding arms were busy during the War of the Ring, and the Rangers had been summoned to reinforce what was probably a capable but at best semi-professional folk-muster.
Finally, if the Rangers were in fact a standing force of road and forest-wardens, how were they organized? If the nine Nazgul were unable or unwilling to face the Rangers stationed at Sarn Ford, how large a body of men had Aragorn stationed there? It’s not like there would have been a fort just beyond the border of the Shire with a sign above the door saying “Ranger post number 4”. But Aragorn had doubled the guard on the Shire at Gandalf’s request, and presumably that included doubling the guard at Sarn Ford. The Rangers assigned to the ford may have numbered in the tens or dozens, and perhaps were briefly reinforced as scouts and sentries fell back to the Baranduin to warn the main body of the approach of the Nazgul.
“The Hunt for the Ring” in Unfinished Tales tells us that
Night was waning on the twenty-second day of September when drawing together again [the Nazgul] came to Sarn Ford and the southernmost borders of the Shire. They found them guarded, for the Rangers barred their way. But this was a task beyond the power of the Dunedain; and maybe it would still have proved so even if their captain, Aragorn, had been with them. But he was away to the north, upon the East Road near Bree; and the hearts even of the Dunedain misgave them. Some fled northward, hoping to bear news to Aragorn, but they were pursued and slain or driven away into the wild. Some still dared to bar the ford, and held it while day lasted, but at night the Lord of Morgul swept them away, and the Black Riders swept into the Shire….
Boromir’s account of how the Lord of the Nazgul defeated his force at Osgiliath indicates that even a small army of several hundred men probably would not have prevailed against the Nazgul at night, when they were all together and led by their captain. So it’s not necessary to suppose that there were many Rangers at Sarn Ford. But there were probably more than twenty, though most likely less than fifty. A company similar in size to Halbarad’s troop may have been assigned to patrol the Shire’s southern border. A similar number of Rangers could have been assigned to watch the Shire’s western border, and perhaps another company may have patrolled the lands around Bree.
Some Rangers had passed near Weathertop a few days before Aragorn and the Hobbits arrived there, probably before Gandalf had shown up. They left wood piled behind a rock in the little dell that Aragorn selected as a camp for the party. It seems there must have been roving patrols which watched over the lands east of Bree, between Bree and the Angle, in fact. These patrols probably went as far north as the ruins of Fornost Erain (where Gandalf told Barliman the Rangers visited on occasion) and as far south as Tharbad. There may have been no more than three hundred Rangers in all, not necessarily organized into companies of thirty, but patrolling assigned regions. The Rangers may always have kept some men close to home for emergencies, as well as to replace troops in the field on some sort of rotating basis.
The function of the Rangers could not be to take and hold territory like an army. Instead, they would report on the intrusions of evil creatures and probably gather whatever forces would be necessary to repel roving bands of Orcs and Trolls, evil men, or packs of wolves. They may also have helped keep the roads clear of bandits, thus ensuring the safe passage of merchants and travelers. The Rangers were as close to a police force as Eriador had, and were undoubtedly an elite force of soldiers who were highly motivated, well-trained, and well-equipped. The thirty who accompanied Halbarad were all dressed in uniform attire, and they possessed similar weapons: swords, bows, and spears. Their somber discipline (observed by Legolas, Gimli, and Meriadoc at Helm’s Deep) similarly implies they were professional warriors.
In the end, attempting to answer the question of how many Rangers guarded Sarn Ford leads to unsatisfactory guesses and yet more questions. But the quest for an answer reveals some interesting implications about the relationships between the Dunedain and other inhabitants of Eriador. It also illuminates just exactly how Aragorn was able to formally claim the crown of Gondor and re-establish the Kingdom of Arnor without having a large population of Dunedain to empower him. We may also have a better understanding of how Eriador maintained a semblance of civilization throughout the last thousand years of the Third Age.
This article was originally published on March 30, 2001.
