Beorn

The skin-changer

Beorn lived in the Vales of Anduin a few miles below the Carrock, the great rock in the river which he had shaped with steps and named. No one knew his origin. Gandalf suggested that he might be descended from the great bears of the mountains before the Giants came, or from the first Men who lived in the region before Smaug and the Goblins arrived; the only certainty was that he was not under any enchantment but his own. In the shape of a man he was enormous, black-haired and black-bearded, with bare thick arms and legs and a voice like a bass drum; in the other shape he was a huge black bear, and it was in that form that he roamed the mountains at night. He lived at Beorn's Hall, a long wooden house behind a hedge, with fields of clover and gardens for his bees, and he kept horses, ponies, dogs and sheep that were as intelligent as people and served him at table. He ate no meat, and lived on honey and cream. He hated Goblins above all things, and the Wargs next, and his one dread and hatred among his neighbours were the Goblins of the Misty Mountains with whom he waged a private war. He had no dealings with anyone else and had never been known to welcome a stranger.

Thorin's company

In July 2941 Gandalf brought Thorin Oakenshield's company, fresh from their escape from the Goblins and the Eagles' eyrie, to Beorn's door. Knowing that the skin-changer would never admit thirteen Dwarves at once, the wizard introduced them in pairs while he told the story of their adventures, so that by the time Beorn understood how many guests he had, the tale had already caught his interest. He fed them, but he did not believe them until he had gone out himself, in bear-shape, and confirmed it: he caught a Warg and a Goblin, learned from them that the Great Goblin was dead and that the Goblins were hunting the company, and killed them. Their heads and hides were on his gate when the Dwarves left. Thereafter he was a generous host. He lent them ponies as far as the edge of Mirkwood, provisioned them for the Old Forest Road and its darker northern path, and warned them not to leave the path or to drink from the enchanted stream. He followed them at a distance to be sure his ponies came home.

The Battle of Five Armies

When the Goblins of the North marched on Erebor under Bolg to seize the dragon's hoard, Beorn came too, though no one had summoned him. He arrived alone in the last hour of the battle in the shape of a bear so vast that the Goblins broke before him. He carried the mortally wounded Thorin out of the press, then returned and crushed Bolg and his bodyguard, and the Goblin army, its leader dead, fled and was destroyed. Bilbo afterwards visited him on the way home, and Beorn kept Yule with Gandalf and the hobbit in his hall amid feasting and fires.

Chief of the Beornings

After the battle Beorn took a wife and became a great chief. Many Men gathered to him in the land between the mountains and the forest, and under him and his descendants the Goblins were driven from the Misty Mountains north of the High Pass, and a new peace came to the Vales of Anduin. The Beornings, as his people were called, kept the High Pass and the Ford of Carrock open for travellers, and it was said that some of them inherited his power to change shape. Beorn himself was dead by 3018, when Glóin reported at the Council of Elrond that his son Grimbeorn the Old was lord of the Beornings, that they were stout men, and that they charged high tolls.

Died at an unknown date before the War of the Ring; his son Grimbeorn succeeded him as lord of the Beornings.