Smaug

From the One Wiki to Rule Them All, the Lord of the Rings Encyclopedia.

Smaug in his lair under the Lonely Mountain.

"My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail is a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!"

—Smaug

Smaug the Golden was a powerful, though greedy, reddish-gold dragon of Middle-earth, considered the mightiest Dragon of his time. He is also the main antagonist in The Hobbit

[edit] Life

"Revenge! Revenge! The King under the Mountain is dead and where are his kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lord of Dale is dead, and where are his sons' sons that dare approach me? I kill where I wish and none dare resist."

—Smaug

In the twenty-eighth century of the Third Age, the chronologies of the Westlands tell of how the mightiest Dragon of the Age came from the north to the great kingdom of Dwarves in Erebor, the Lonely Mountain. This Fire-drake called Smaug the Golden was vast and Bat-winged and a fearsome bane to Dwarves and Men. With consuming Dragon-flame, Smaug ruined the city of the Men of Dale and broke the door and wall of the Erebor. The Dwarves fled or were slain and Smaug took the riches of the place; gold and gemstones, mithril and silver, elf gems and pearls, the many faceted crystals of emerald, sapphire and diamond, as well as the Arkenstone.

Smaug releases his wrath.

For two centuries, Smaug ruled Erebor uncontested, yet in the year TA 2941, a company of adventurers came to the mountain; twelve dwarves led by the rightful king of Erebor, Thorin Oakenshield, and a Hobbit 'mercenary' named Bilbo Baggins. They approached the Fire-drake by stealth and were amazed, for Smaug was huge beyond all they had imagined and glowed fiery red with serpent rage. He was armored as all of his race with scales of impenetrable iron, but in wariness, he protected his soft underbelly from assault: as he lay sprawled upon the wealth of his hoard he allowed diamonds and hard gemstones to imbed in his belly, armoring his only weakness.

Yet, by cunning, Baggins discovered one point upon the broad breast of the great beast that was not sheathed in diamond or other gemstones, where sharp steel could cut.

When Smaug was aroused by the adventurers, he came out in fiery wrath and loosed his fire upon the land. In vengeance, he came to Esgaroth; the town built on the Long Lake and devastated it. Yet there lived a Northman, valiant and strong, named Bard the Bowman. Bard, guided by the secret of the weakness, shot a black arrow into the beast's one vital place. Screaming in fury and pain, Smaug fell wreathed in flames from the sky and drowned in the long lake.

So died Smaug the Golden, mightiest dragon of the Third Age.

[edit] After Death

After Smaug's death, Thorin and Company claimed the treasure as theirs by birthright. This created a conflict with Bard and the Elvish king Thranduil of Mirkwood, who each wanted a portion of the gold as reimbursement for all the damage Smaug had caused their kingdoms over the years. Thorin refused to share the treasure and declared war on both of them.

According to Gandalf, it was fortunate that Smaug had been slain, since had he lived he would almost certainly have come under Sauron's control and destroyed Mirkwood.

[edit] Behind the Scenes

In the books, the name Smaug is presented as a translation of the "original Dalish" Trâgu, and is related to Sméagol/Trahald. According to Tolkien, the name Smaug is "the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb Smugan, to squeeze through a hole" (Letter No. 31); others have noted that it has echoes of "smoke" and "smog", though this connection is illusory at best, since in Tolkien's phonology, the "au" phoneme is pronounced like the "ou" phoneme in sound or house. Therefore names such as Sauron or Smaug are pronounced like Sow-ron or sm-ow-g.

In the 1977 animated version of The Hobbit, Smaug was voiced by Richard Boone, and his head looked much like that of a cat.

In the 2003 video game release, Smaug was voiced by James Horan.