Stoors

[TFP]

Are go...

https://ew.com/rings-of-power-the-s...rs, who,the stoors' community leader Gundabel

 

[Otaku-sempai]

How well do the Halflings of The Rings of Power match up with Tolkien's description of the three breeds of hobbits from the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings?

Before the crossing of the mountains the Hobbits had already become divided into three somewhat different breeds: Harfoots, Stoors, and Fallohides. The Harfoots were browner of skin, smaller, and shorter, and they were beardless and bootless; their hands and feet were neat and nimble; and they preferred highlands and hillsides. The Stoors were broader, heavier in build; their feet and hands were larger, and they preferred flat lands and riversides. The Fallohides were fairer of skin and also of hair, and they were taller and slimmer than the others; they were lovers of trees and of woodlands.

The Harfoots had much to do with Dwarves in ancient times, and long lived in the foothills of the mountains. They moved westward early, and roamed over Eriador as far as Weathertop while the others were still in the Wilderland. They were the most normal and representative variety of Hobbit, and far the most numerous. They were the most inclined to settle in one place, and longest preserved their ancestral habit of living in tunnels and holes.
The Stoors lingered long by the banks of the Great River Anduin, and were less shy of Men. They came west after the Harfoots and followed the course of the Loudwater southwards; and there many of them long dwelt between Tharbad and the borders of Dunland before they moved north again.

The Fallohides, the least numerous, were a northerly branch. They were more friendly with Elves than the other Hobbits were, and had more skill in language and song than in handicrafts; and of old they preferred hunting to tilling. They crossed the mountains north of Rivendell and came down the River Hoarwell. In Eriador they soon mingled with the other kinds that had preceded them, but being somewhat bolder and more adventurous, they were often found as leaders or chieftains among clans of Harfoots or Stoors. Even in Bilbo's time the strong Fallohidish strain could still be noted among the greater families, such as the Tooks and the Masters of Buckland.

From the Entertainment Weekly article we get:

But as season 2 (which premieres Aug. 29 on Prime Video) begins, the show’s primary harfoot characters Nori Brandyfoot (Markella Kavenagh) and Poppy Proudfellow (Megan Richards) are exploring the desert region of Rhûn, in the east of Middle-earth. There, they’ll meet some distant cousins. These are the stoors, who predate the hobbit-adjacent riverfolk. Unlike the harfoots, the stoors are not nomadic.

“The stoors’ ancestry at some point was nomadic,” says Tanya Moodie, who plays the stoors’ community leader Gundabel. “But over the years, we as a group have settled and that has become our culture, to look after one another.”

We are, of course, looking at the prehistory of the hobbit-folk presumably from before they come to inhabit the vales of the Anduin. But, from Tolkien's Prologue, I would have to say that it was the Fallohides who were the most nomadic of the three hobbit kinds and the Harfoots who where the most inclined to settle in one place. That said, we have yet to encounter any Fallohides in The Rings of Power.

 

[fantasywind]

Frankly none of that makes any sense in the context of Tolkien lore...and of course now we have African desert hobbits...even though they are in the east ...except the Harfoots also had african looking folk hahah.

All of that is just a newly invented trash that will never be correlated to the book lore...it also makes no sense once again that they make these primitive hobbit societies...already literate, having books, libraries and whatnot...it makes no sense...especially since Tolkien is very clear that before crossing into Eriador and settling in the Dunedain lands hobbits had no yet learned to read or write.

None of this makes any sense...because Harfoots were supposed to be HOLE DIGGERS, not nomads...and indeed only the Fallohides fit into that description being bolder, more adventurous, taller northern branch of hobbits (and now you have answer why we won't see them....heheh they are scandinavian hobbits...but I guess with the amount of lore butchery even that would not stop them from race swapping haha).

It's worse than this concept of 'headcanons' as this show will be for newcomers some sort of idea for the early hobbit lore.....it just f....g makes no sense either from worldbuilidng perspective or the world of Tolkien!

Eastern hobbits that live in the desert hah....ughhh Stoors by the way are supposed to be most closely associated with WATER....river folk...flat lands and riversides....yep in the show...desert canyon and caves riiiiiiight.

What else to say...it doesn't and will never fit with Tolkien vision.

 

[TFP]

Yeah, I suppose I don't really see specifically the Harfoots being nomadic [or not] and specifically the Fallowhides being whatever as being really core to the mythology.

What really matters to me in terms of the mythology is that in *some* of these halfling forefathers [I don't see that it desperately matters which] we see *some* glimmers/foreshadowing of some of the traits we see in Third Age halflings, notably:

a) Smeagol's corruptibility [possibly also physical strength & affinity with water - on the latter point I'll admit to this desert detail grating a little, though perhaps there's a reason for this - e.g. perhaps these Stoors will have a, in the second age unsatisfied, Fremen-style reverence for water which will later be satisfied?]; and
b) Bilbo's duality in terms of being both a homebody and adventurous.

I don't definitely see that what they're doing stops this being achieved.

The racial thing admittedly grates a little, I could easily handle the stoors *all* being played by [say] actors of recent sub-Saharan African, or indeed any other, ancestry, but having very different looking people living side by side to me grates and implies the kind of very recent [like max a couple of generations ago] mass intercontinental immigration that firmly isn't part of the mythology. I know that others will disagree and that's fine, this point isn't a big deal to me.

 

[fantasywind]

In grander scheme of things....the entire hobbit plotline is pointless...Second Age events have NOHING in common with hobbit actions....that's the problem...if they had some role in the original stories and now they would only heavily shifting it.....sure then maybe just maybe some thematic importance would be there....but they have none...there are no wizards and hobbits involved in the forging of the Rings and rise of the darkness in Second Age so as invented fanfic it will have no meaning upon the larger story...because it cannot have and no matter the changes it won't have huge impact.

Stoors being desert and then turning to fishers of riverlands hah...Fremen hahah ahh yeah it feels as if the showmakers are more inspired by everything else BUT Tolkien and his vision....after all as they said admitted themselves...the masked guys of the desert in Rhun plotline ARE inspired by Mad Max.....I had from the start thoughts this looks more like post apocalyptic Mad Max fury road bikers gang than anything else haha.

Listen if someone wants the african hobbits do it properly...Far Harad is there...Haradrim are all there too...all the black people they would have wanted for their diversity quotas...but they don't meaning they don't care for worldbuilding.

 

[Otaku-sempai]

Yeah, it's pretty obvious that they are, indeed, making things up as they go along. At the same time, it's a reasonable assumption that the Halflings originally came from further East, from the lands of Rhûn. On the other hand, I don't imagine that the region of Rhûn nearest to Rhovonion would look much different from the grassy plains east of the Greenwood. I would expect to have to travel further East to find desert.

Eastern hobbits that live in the desert hah....ughhh Stoors by the way are supposed to be most closely associated with WATER....river folk...flat lands and riversides....yep in the show...desert canyon and caves riiiiiiight.

To be fair, that is addressed in the article, if not very well. And all of the Halflings, for all practical purposes, would have had to have been nomadic at some point, regardless of their natural proclivities.

 

[Otaku-sempai]

In grander scheme of things....the entire hobbit plotline is pointless...Second Age events have NOHING in common with hobbit actions....that's the problem...if they had some role in the original stories and now they would only heavily shifting it.....sure then maybe just maybe some thematic importance would be there....but they have none...there are no wizards and hobbits involved in the forging of the Rings and rise of the darkness in Second Age so as invented fanfic it will have no meaning upon the larger story...because it cannot have and no matter the changes it won't have huge impact.

Stoors being desert and then turning to fishers of riverlands hah...Fremen hahah ahh yeah it feels as if the showmakers are more inspired by everything else BUT Tolkien and his vision....after all as they said admitted themselves...the masked guys of the desert in Rhun plotline ARE inspired by Mad Max.....I had from the start thoughts this looks more like post apocalyptic Mad Max fury road bikers gang than anything else haha.

Listen if someone wants the african hobbits do it properly...Far Harad is there...Haradrim are all there too...all the black people they would have wanted for their diversity quotas...but they don't meaning they don't care for worldbuilding.

We could speculate that there were more than the three "breeds" of Hobbit that are described in the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings, unknown to their kin in the Wast, just as Elf-kind includes the Avari, and among the Dwarves are the four Dwarf-houses that originated in the Orocarni. If the Rings of Power showrunners really wanted to do something different and original then they could have introduced those new Halflings in the distant East or the far South (contingent on the story actually going to those regions).

 

[fantasywind]

Before that they would be even single people . So no matter what way we will look at it, from what perspective..the show's depiction is just weird. But again they don't even make sense in the context of 'realism' of how societies develop, how the cultures change.....again the primitive society would be well...primitive...but they always give them skills like literary books and whatnot.

This brings in mind that Tolkien actually wonders further about the ancient past of the hobbit kind in his other writings and it still makes way more sense than anything we've got of the show.

"Hobbits on the other hand were in nearly all respects normal Men, but of very short stature. (..)
They were not as numerous or variable as ordinary Men, but evidently more numerous and adaptable to different modes of life and habitat than the Drûgs, and when they are first encountered in the histories already showed divergences in colouring, stature, and build, and in their ways of life and preferences for different types of country to dwell in (...) In their unrecorded past they must have been a primitive, indeed 'savage' people, but when we meet them they had (in varying degrees) acquired many arts and customs by contact with Men, and to a less extent with Dwarves and Elves. With Men of normal stature they recognized their close kinship, whereas Dwarves or Elves, whether friendly or hostile, were aliens, with whom their relations were uneasy and clouded by fear. Bilbo's statement (...) that the cohabitation of Big Folk and Little Folk in one settlement at Bree was peculiar and nowhere else to be found was probably true in his time (the end of the Third Age); but it would seem that actually Hobbits had liked to live with or near to Big Folk of friendly kind, who with their greater strength protected them from many dangers and enemies and other hostile Men, and received in exchange many services. For it is remarkable that the western Hobbits preserved no trace or memory of any language of their own. The language they spoke when they entered Eriador was evidently adopted from the Men of the Vales of Anduin (related to the Atani, / in particular to those of the House of Bëor [> of the Houses of Hador and of Bëor]); and after their adoption of the Common Speech they retained many words of that origin. This indicates a close association with Big Folk; though the rapid adoption of the Common Speech in Eriador shows Hobbits to have been specially adaptable in this respect. As does also the divergence of the Stoors, who had associated with Men of different sort before they came to the Shire.

The vague tradition preserved by the Hobbits of the Shire was that they had dwelt once in lands by a Great River, but long ago had left them, and found their way through or round high mountains, when they no longer felt at ease in their homes because of the multiplication of the Big Folk and of a shadow of fear that had fallen on the Forest.
...
58. Indeed it is probable that only at Bree and in the Shire did any communities of Hobbits survive at that time west of the Misty Mountains. Nothing is known of the situation in lands further east, from which the Hobbits must have migrated in unrecorded ages."

If they wanted ot invent new types or new breeds they should have invented new names for them....apparently they are not creative enough. Again...Far Harad is there.

 

[Otaku-sempai]

Interestingly enough, the first edition of The One Ring Roleplaying Game (Cubicle 7)--which was centered around the regions of Wilderland and Mirkwood--included Wild Hobbits (presumably Stoors) who never left the vales of Anduin. From the expansion The Heart of the Wild (2013):

Wild Hobbits of the Anduin Vales

Many people believe wild Hobbits to be nothing more than children's stories, but the truth is that a few halflings still live in the region about the Gladden Fields. They don't live in comfortable Hobbit-holes, but hide under the Eaves of Mirkwood or dig a refuge along the river-bank for a night and move on. They have little contact with the humans of the region; the dangers of Wilderland have turned them into a secretive, shy folk, quite unlike that sedentary, settled cousins of Eriador. They play little part in the affairs of the region, and consider most humans to be as dangerous and oversized as Orcs. Only a few trustworthy people, mostly River-folk, know where these Halflings make their home.

The above is, of course, non-canonical but it does add additional flavor to the game. And it might even suggest some insights on how the hobbits might have lived before they migrated to Eriador.

 

[Noria]

In one of the recent trailers or featurettes in which Nori is speaking, you can see a short figure behind her,. I had wondered if this person was somehow a Harfoot, but they must be a Stoor.

So the Harfoots are presumably being replaced [:/] by the Stoors in the story. Except for Nori and Poppy [].