Q: What Happened to the Other Dragons of Middle-earth?
ANSWER: Everyone knows about Smaug; many readers know about Glaurung. But where were all the other dragons and what were they up to and did they end with Smaug?
And in Letter No. 144 (which he wrote in April 1954) Tolkien said:
Some stray answers. Dragons. They had not stopped; since they were active in far later times, close to our own. Have I said anything to suggest the final ending of dragons? If so it should be altered. The only passage I can think of is Vol. I p. 70 : ‘there is not now any dragon left on earth in which the old fire is hot enough’. But that implies, I think, that there are still dragons, if not of full primeval stature….
Tolkien only mentioned five dragons by name or circumstance in his fiction but he made it clear there were many more and as the above citation shows he intended for the reader to infer that they did not end with Smaug. Naturally it would be a very foolish adventurer who might wander into the land of dragons; I doubt Tolkien felt many such people would survive.
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Nice to see you back. Hope the health is good.
Welcome back indeed. Its nice to have you back writing the blog.
Well met and glad you are back! I’ve been re-reading some of Christopher Tolkien’s books about his father’s various writings and re-writings. I think it was mentioned that only two Dragons survived the wrack when Angband was torn open and Beleriand destroyed. I always assumed those were Scatha and Smaug.
@Dave: there’s also mention of a “cold-drake” in RotK Appendix A III who slew Dáin I and his son Fror. That brings the number of dragons named or referred-to to 5: Glaurung, Ancalagon, Scatha, Smaug and the unnamed cold-drake.
According to the Tale of Years dragons didn’t re-appear until TA 2570, which gives them about 6000 years to be breeding up north. We needn’t assume that Scatha and Smaug were two who survived Thangorodrim: we know that Glaurung first appeared in FA260 but took another 200 years to grow fully. Based on that we can assume that it takes roughly 300-500 years for a dragon to grow from birth to adulthood; Smaug needn’t have been born before TA 2000.
Welcome back Michael from me too! 🙂
Well it is easy to speculate that most dragons probably just stayed in remote places in the world, some of them could have spread to lands of Rhun, others were roaming Forodwaith, the Northern Wastes, there also can be some dragons still sitting on their hoards in Ered Mithrin/Grey Mountains (maybe other places over the world) in the vast dwarven halls (if left alone then they wouldn’t pose as much trouble as Smaug to surrounding lands, after all Smaug was stated to be one of the most powerful dragons of his Age and they appear to have long periods of inactivity, slumbering, waking up to hunt flying about and leaving their lairs for short time), some cold drakes probably slumbered in the ice somewhere up north 🙂 hey it’s possibly they are ,,cold” after all heheh.