Ravens of Erebor

Friends of Durin's folk

The ravens of Erebor were a breed apart from the crows and carrion-birds of the wider world. In the days of Thrór, before Smaug came, they were the friends of the Dwarves of the Mountain: they brought news, they carried messages, and in return they were fed and given the odd bright trinket. They were long-lived and wise, and they could speak the Common Tongue, though not, as Balin explained to Bilbo, in the way that the thrushes spoke, which needed a Man of Dale to interpret. The hill on the south-western spur of the Mountain, where the Dwarves had built a guard-post, was called Ravenhill after the old pair of ravens, Carc and his mate, who nested above the guard-chamber.

When Thorin's company came to Ravenhill in T.A. 2941 the old birds had died, but their son Roäc, a hundred and fifty-three years old, decrepit and half-blind, was chieftain of the great ravens of the Mountain, and the old thrush fetched him. Roäc spoke slowly and plainly to Thorin. He told him that Smaug was dead, shot by Bard over Esgaroth, and that the news was flying through the whole North; that the Men of the Lake and the Elves of Mirkwood were already on the march to the Mountain; and, since the Dwarves had been the ravens' friends, he gave his counsel too, which was not to trust the Master of Lake-town but to make peace with Bard, and to remember that treasure was no comfort to the dead. Thorin thanked him for the news and ignored the advice. He asked instead for ravens to be sent to Dáin in the Iron Hills and to all his kin, and Roäc, though he did not approve, sent his birds out over the North. When Bilbo slipped away with the Arkenstone, it was the ravens who had told the Dwarves each morning of the movements of the besieging host.

Nature

The ravens are the one ordinary-seeming bird of the legendarium that is given intelligible speech. The texts treat this as an inherited gift of the breed rather than a magical one: the ravens of Erebor were simply a wiser and longer-lived kind, as the Dwarves themselves were a hardier kind of people. Their loyalty was to the Dwarves of the Mountain in particular, not to Dwarves generally, and it survived the dragon's occupation by a hundred and seventy years.

They should not be confused with the crebain, the black crows of Dunland and Fangorn that spied for Saruman, with which they share only their colour.

Fate

Nothing more is said of the ravens after the Battle of Five Armies. With the Kingdom under the Mountain restored under Dáin and later Thorin Stonehelm, their old friendship with the Dwarves presumably resumed.

Large black ravens, unremarkable in body but long-lived; Roäc at 153 was bald-headed, feeble on the wing and nearly blind, but still chieftain.

A chieftaincy passed from Carc to Roäc. The ravens keep the memory of favours and speak the language of their friends. They act as messengers and watchers, and expect payment in food and small bright things.

Not told; an old breed of the Lonely Mountain that befriended the Dwarves in the days of Thrór or earlier.

Not recorded after T.A. 2941.