Was Gollum really a hobbit?

[Goro Shimura]

I got into an argume-- (ahem)-- I mean discussion on this point the other day and I just wanted to know if the answer to this question really is at all debatable.

Was Gollum a hobbit?

Yes... No... Sortof...??

[WarriorMay]

Wasn't he the race of men?

[daisy]

On the Gollum-Good or Evil thread, I just mentioned this point about ten minutes ago, not that I have an answer. Oh wait....

" ...a clever-handed and quietfooted little people. I guess they were of hobbit-kind:akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors..."

So I guess there you have it - looks like a yes to me. This quote is from The Shadow of the Past.

daisy the non-hobbit narcissus

[zingers]

What is it that makes you think he might have been?:confused:

[Silme]

I would go to "sort of".... As Daisy said, it's says in LOTR that Gollum's people were "hobbit-like". Then of course he turned into something unique after getting the Ring...

[Harad]

JRRT wasnt a biologist but he did live well after living things were classifed into animals and plants, mammals etc. In LOTR he defined a number of "races" including Men, Dwarfs, Elves, Ents...

If Gollum wasnt a hobbit, then he was one of the others. Or he was a memeber of ANOTHER race. If we discount that Gollum was another unnamed race--and after all he was only 500 years old, hardly a creature from pre-history--then if we rule out the other known races, he had to be a hobbit. The only remote possibilty is that he was a Man, but that seems unlikely given the description of him cited above.

[Mormegil]

I always thought that Gollum was of a species related to Hobbits, but not quite Hobbits. Perhaps his race died out or something, I don't know.
Anyway, the easiest thing I can think of to explain my point is the way that a Zebra is like a Horse, but not quite a Horse.

:confused:

[Harad]

Why not? Maybe it was like Homo Neandertal and Homo Erectus. Both members of the same family tree but one died out and the other didnt. One has to presume that species died out on ME a bit faster since Gollum found the Ring about 600 years earlier. Thats like finding a Homo Neandertal during the Middle Ages on Earth.

Animals as close as zebras and horses can breed, altho the offspring is often infertile. We dont want to go there with Gollum and certain Hobbiton lasses, now do we?

[Snaga]

Daisy is right. Here is some other supporting evidence.

The men of Rohan have heard of hobbits before. They lived in the Vale of Anduin, somewhat north of the Gladden Fields before the ride of Eorl the Young.

The elves of Lothlorien also have some knowledge of hobbits. Haldir says:"We had not heard of - hobbits, or halflings, for many a long year, and did not know that any yet dwelt in Middle Earth. You do not look evil!". Given how close they are to the Gladden Fields, that fits too.

This too from 'Of hobbits' in the prologue to LotR:Their own records began only after the settlement of the Shire, and their most ancient legends hardly looked further back than their Wandering Days. It is clear, nonetheless, from these legends, and the evidence of their own peculiar words and customs, that like many other folk Hobbits had in the distant past moved westward. Their earliest tales seem to glimpse a time when they dwelt in the upper vales of Anduin, between the eaves of Greenwood the Great and the Misty Mountains. Why they undertook the hard and perilous crossing of the mountains into Eriador is no longer certain. Their own accounts speak of the multiplying of Men in the land, and of a shadow that fell of the forest, so that it became darkened, and its new name was Mirkwood.

The quote from Daisy is from Gandalf talking to Frodo. Gandalf seems very sure of it. And he's Wise. So I agree with him!!:)

[HLGStrider]

Gandalf pointed out a few similarities between Bilbo and Gollum, such as their riddles and the stories they invented regarding the ring...
Not believing in Evolution and assuming Tolkien (as a religious man) didn't either, I don't think it would have any part in his book... or were you using the homo-erectus things as a joke, Harad? Sometimes it's hard to tell.
I don't think Gollum thought of himself as a Hobbit, however.

[Cian]

Gollum comes from the folk of the remigrant Stoors, who had gone back to a wilder and more primitive life of small and dwindling communities ~ that ultimately appear to have died out altogether (except for Sméagol, this according to JRRT in a letter anyway), or to have fled from the shadow of Dol Guldur.

[Bucky]

There does not seem to be any 'evolution' in ME.....

I just always thought that Gandalf's statement in 'The Shadow of the Past' settled it pretty conclusively that Gollum was indeed a Hobbit.

I think when Gandalf says 'the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors', he isn't stating that the present Hobbits evolved in the ape to man sense, but that this was just the remenant of what became know as The Stoors but hadn't gone over the Mountains, and that this was just the first known habitation of Hobbits.

Kind of like my long sundered relatives in Poland & Ireland; we're all 'Buckys' but don't know each other & our respective histories or connected roots, yet we're all still 'Buckys' anyway.

[Cian]

Referring to A.C. Nunn's commentary on Sméagol's people as "Hobbit-kind" suggested by Gandalf, Tolkien remarked:

"With regard to (1) Gandalf certainly says at first 'I guess' p. 62; but that is in accordance with his character and wisdom. In more modern language he would have said 'I deduce', referring to matters that had not come under his direct observations, but on which he had formed a conclusion based on study." (my edit for brevity) ... But he did not in fact doubt his conclusion 'It is true all the same, etc.' pg.63" JRR Tolkien

Further:

"With the remigration of the Stoors back to Wilderland in TA 1356, all contact between this retrograde group andd the ancestors of the Shirefolk was broken. More than 1100 years elapsed before the Déagol-Sméagol incident (c.2463)." JRRT

This again, info found in "Letters". And as above, Tolkien included Sméagol within the dwindling communities of remigrant Stoors.

[Mad Adski]

If Gollum isn't a hobbit, in the blue hell is he? A grobbit? A dobbit? A quobbit? Or any other of the ten million not quite hobbit words, Because, he wasn't an Elf, Man, Dwarf, Ent, Orc or Maia, he must have been a kind of hobbit. Gandelf seemed to make that very clear.

[Bucky]

Maybe Gollum was a 'Burrahobbit'......

[Lantarion]

I was JUST going to say that! :D
Well, as Cian so eloquently put it, Gollum was a kind of Hobbit. Even if the 'remigrants of the Stoors' weren't considered to be the exact same kind of Hobbits as the modern-day ones (at the time of the WR), it doesn't mean they weren't Hobbits at all. It's like saying that Homo Neandartals aren't humans, because they are different from the type of humans that are around today.
So: Gollum was a Hobbit, and he did not 'change race' or mutate into any different race simply because his physical and mental state was greatly altered (that would be a bit egocentric, to name an entire new race because of one individual!). He was corrupted, but that doesn't mean he changed into an animal. It's the same with the Nazgûl: they were Men, but they were corrupted by their Rings. But are they a different species now? No. They are wafting on the borderline of life and death and the netherworld, but they are still Men under their destroyed bodies and phyches.

[DreamingDragon]

Well.....nothaving read through all of the replies to this, I'm not sure what the general concensus has become. BUT..as far as Gollum being a Hobbit? From having read the books several times now, I would have to say that in a way, he was. Maybe not a hobbit as far as (in the book's timeline) hobbits are presently known, but a ancestor thereof.

[YayGollum]

I don't have a book with me right now, but I remember something about three different kinds of hobbits being described. Some were taller, some had darker skin, some weren't afraid of the water, stuff like that. Gollum was a Stoor, but I can't remember what their characteristics were. He was definitely the greatest of all hobbits though, which is why all others should be referred to as nasssty hobbits. just my opinion. I know you care. Yay Gollum! :D

[Beleg Strongbow]

Originally posted by daisy
On the Gollum-Good or Evil thread, I just mentioned this point about ten minutes ago, not that I have an answer. Oh wait....

" ...a clever-handed and quietfooted little people. I guess they were of hobbit-kind:akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors..."

daisy the non-hobbit narcissus


That is exaclty right daisy. Gollum was part of the little sure footed people that lived in the stoors on the river Anduin. They have seemed to died out and they seemed to be akin to the fathers of the hobbits.

[Taylor Hewitt]

Gollum isn't a hobbit!
Gandalf said just that they were "like" hobbits.

[Smèagol_Gollum]

Smèagol is one of the ancient hobbits that lived on the other side of the Misty Mountains before the hobbits crossed into Eriador when Men were too plentful for their liking. Gandalf states this in his discription about Gollum when he talks to Frodo. Also, when Bilbo had the riddle game with the creature in his cave, Gollum knew the answers to riddles that involved things he should have no recollection of in those long years he spent beneath the Mountains. This surely shows they had some kinship, for Smèagol wouldn't have gotten a riddle about eggs if they didn't. So there, Gollum is a Stoor, a hobbit. Gandalf was an Istari, so lets give him a little credit and take his advice. If we can steer this elsewhere, does anyone know where the Balrogs originated, because when Gandalf tries to stop the Balrog of Moria in Khazad-Dum he calls it "Flame of Udun". There is a place in Mordor on the map called the same, Udun. Does this mean they were bred in Udun, and not in the Pits of Utumno?

[Goro Shimura]

2463 About this time Deagol the Stoor finds the One Ring, and is murdered by Smeagol. (RotK App. B)
So Deagol was a Stoor... but Smeagol was only "akin to the fathers of the fathers of the Stoors."

Hmmm...

[YayGollum]

Okay, it's not that hard! He was some kind of hobbit and he was the greatest character of all time because he saved the day! Okay?