The White Council

Re: Who? or Better Yet. What was Beorn?

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : : IIRC the Beornings were the decendants of Beorn, not his : : : followers. In The Hobbit Gandalf states that Beorn was a : : : "skinchanger" in that he could take the form of a bear or a : : : man.

: : Where does it say they were his decendants? How could such a : : thing be possible? We know of no mate or offspring of Beorn at : : the time of the hobbit yet scarsely 90 years later at the start : : of the fellowship we learn the there are a large number of : : Beornings and that orcs and wargs don't make much trouble in : : the lands under their keep. If you give 15 years for a : : generation. that only makes 4 generations old enough to fight : : If each child had 4 children and everyone was a warrior that : : would make 340 but that is a ridiculas amount to hope for now : : if Beorn had 10 kids and everyone had 10 we would have 10,000 : : Beorning warriors running around :) No there wouldn't likely : : be more than 100 to 200 decentants and they wouldn't all be men : : and they would all have lived or have been fighters

: The Beornings were the men of whom Beorn became the chieftain. His leadership is mentioned at the end of THE HOBBIT. He invites many men to a feast with Bilbo and Gandalf, and the narrative says that later he became a chieftain of many men.

: His only named descendant is his son Grimbeorn the Old.

Beorn is a man with Lycanthropy, an inherited form thereof. He becomes the leader of his people (some of whom he goes to see whilst Thorin and Co are at his house), the people THEN become known as Beornings after their illustrious and famous leader. There are probably a few thousand of them scattered around the Anduin vales, esp. around the Carrock, and he is NOT lord of the Woodmen, there is no reason to assume that at all. One must remember poetic license of the author - Tolkein does not have the time or space to describe every village passed by or individual seen in Hobbit or LotR, that does not mean they do not (logically) exist. And poetic license is used to great effect in LoTR where Eriador is described as 'empty' - this is to give the idea of a wild area, however it is totally fanciful and illogical to assume there was no mannish settlement there - it must have had a population of nearly a million even at the time of the war of the ring, so back to the beornings, there could easily be thousands of them swarming about fighting orcs without treading on the professors toes or being 'uncanonical' at all. Don Quixote