Q: Was Gollum A Hobbit?
ANSWER: Yes, Gollum was a hobbit. He came from the hobbits J.R.R. Tolkien referred to as the “Stoors of the Gladden Fields” in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings. Some readers are unsure of this identification, however, because Gandalf tells Frodo in “The Shadow of the Past”:
“…very long ago, there lived by the banks of the Great River on the edge of Wilderland a clever-handed and quiet-footed little people. I guess they were of hobbit-kind; akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors, for they loved the River, and often swam in it, or made little boats of reeds….
In this context, Gandalf is speaking to Frodo of the Stoors who live in the Shire and the Buckland, not implying that all Stoors lived in those regions, but simply giving Frodo a contemporary reference.
Historically, the Stoors had crossed the Misty Mountains by the Redhorn Pass around the Third Age year 1150, settling at first in Dunland and the Angle. The Stoors of the Angle became divided into two groups in the year 1356, when some of them fled the wars with Angmar back to Wilderland over the Misty Mountains; the remaining Stoors of the Angle fled to Dunland. The Stoors of Dunland became divided in the year 1630 when many of their families migrated to the Shire, settling in the Marish along the western bank of the Baranduin river.
The Stoors who remained in Dunland all perished in the Great Plague of 1636. Tolkien does not say whether the Stoors of the Gladden Fields suffered in this plague but the text implies that all northern peoples suffered to some extent from the plague. The Stoors of the Gladden Fields survived at least until the year 2463, when Deagol the Stoor found the One Ring. By 2470 Smeagol, who had murdered Deagol for the Ring, had fled to the Misty Mountains. There is no further trace of the Stoors of the Gladden Fields.
Eorl led his people down the eastern bank of the Anduin when he rode to Gondor’s aid in the year 2510. By this time there was no mention of the Stoors of the Gladden Fields. It is conceivable that since Goblins had been infesting the Misty Mountains since 2480 that the Stoors had fled the region, but there is no indication of where they might have gone.
It is probable that the Stoors were no longer living near the Gladden Fields by the time of the War of the Dwarves and Orcs (2793-99). They could have been wiped out by the Orcs or driven away. They might also simply have died out. By Third Age year 3018, according to “The Hunt for the Ring”, “the villages of the Stoors by the Gladden had long been deserted” by the time the Nazgul began looking for Gollum and Bilbo in the Vales of Anduin.
In any event, Gollum was clearly a hobbit of Stoorish ancestry to begin with. His people had been separated from those Stoors who were the ancestors of the Shire’s Stoors for about 1100 years by the time he was born.
So Why Didn’t Gollum Know What Hobbits Were?
Gollum was unfamiliar with the term hobbit. He had never heard the word, which according to Tolkien was probably derived from the older holbytla (Old English “hole-builder”). The original Northman word was kuduk-kan and the original Shire word for “hobbit” was kuduk.
Gollum’s speech was already idiosyncratic, and his perspective was limited to his own long experience living under the mountains. Even though he had spent some time living outdoors and traveling near different peoples after he left the mountains, Gollum still would have thought of himself as unique in the world. He never mentions any clan-name for his own people. Nor does Gandalf mention such a name, and our information about Gollum’s past (youth) comes through Gandalf.
The Tale of Years in The Lord of the Rings speaks of “the Stoors of the Gladden Fields”, but it may be that Tolkien meant the reader to understand that terminology as being used by the compilers of the Red Book of Westmarch. The original authors were hobbits of the Shire (Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, and Sam’s heirs). The book was edited and revised in Gondor.
So to say that “Gollum was a hobbit” is to some extent retroactively applying the word to him. In fact, Gandalf says he was of “hobbit-kind”, and that may be a subtle hint from Tolkien that the people of Gollum’s clan would not have called themselves hobbits.
It’s kind of similar to referring to the Men of Númenor as Arnorians or Gondorians. They didn’t call themselves by such names, but they were clearly the ancestors of the Arnorian and Gondorian Dúnedain.
Or maybe a better comparison would be relationship between the Folk of Haleth and the Dead Men of Dunharrow. They were all descended from the same group of early Men, but they were not the same peoples. They shared similar physical characteristics with the Men of Bree and some of the coastland Gondorians, as well as the Dunlendings. But these were still all separate peoples known by different names.
So, technically, it would be more appropriate to say that “Gollum was of hobbit-kind” than to say that Gollum was precisely and specifically a hobbit.
Conclusion
It’s okay to say that Gollum was a hobbit. It’s a convenient label for a close relative of the Hobbits of the Marish (the Stoors). But it would be as inappropriate to think of Gollum as a (Shire-)Hobbit as it would be to think of, say, someone from Denmark as being a German. They share common ancestry but as peoples they went their separate ways over a thousand years ago.
The differences between Gollum’s “Stoors of the Gladden Fields” and the Stoors of the Marish would be similar in scope.
See also
When Did Hobbits become Divided into Fallohides, Stoors, and Harfoots?
Where Did Gollum’s People Come From?
How Many Independent Hobbit Countries Were There in Middle-earth?
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