Balin (Middle-earth)

• 1. The Tomb in Moria

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  "Balin, son of Fundin, Lord of Moria" is the inscription on a stone tomb in the Chamber of Mazarbul, deep in the Dwarven realm of Moria. When the Fellowship of the Ring passes through those halls, they find the tomb and, beside it, the Book of Mazarbul. The book is burnt and torn. Standing among the Fellowship is Gimli, Balin's own cousin. Reading from the damaged pages, Gimli learns what became of a kinsman he will never meet. The book tells of a Dwarven colony Balin founded in Moria and of its destruction. What it cannot explain is what drew him there after years of exile and recovery, or what shaped the Dwarf behind the inscription. That story begins in Erebor, with a child on the day a dragon came.

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• 2. Dragon and Exile

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  Fundin's son Balin was born in Erebor, the mountain stronghold of the Dwarves. When Balin was seven, Smaug descended on that mountain and drove the Dwarves into exile. Dwalin, Balin's younger brother, was born during those years of displacement. Their father Fundin was killed in the Battle of Azanulbizar. Balin and Dwalin settled eventually in the Blue Mountains with their surviving family. Later, Balin joined an expedition Thorin's father Thráin II led in a renewed attempt to return to Erebor. They lost Thráin under the eaves of Mirkwood, searched for many days without finding him, and came home empty-handed. At the time of the sacking, Balin had been seven years old; Thorin had been twenty-four on that same day. That age gap made Balin the second-eldest Dwarf in the company Thorin would eventually assemble. When Thorin formed that company and set out for the Shire, Balin and Dwalin arrived at Bilbo Baggins's door ahead of all the others.

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• 3. Eyes of the Company

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  Tolkien names Balin "their look-out man" in The Hobbit, and the designation is earned across every stage of the Quest. He spotted Bilbo approaching the Green Dragon Inn at Bywater, caught the trolls' fire burning in the Trollshaws, and was the first to detect the elves when the company entered Mirkwood. He also brought a viol to Bilbo's house when the Quest began.

  After the company escaped the goblins in the Misty Mountains, Balin's watch at the rear failed him. He did not notice Bilbo slipping past, invisible beneath the magic ring. That failure left Balin with genuine respect for Bilbo's abilities as a burglar.

  When the Elvenking imprisoned the Dwarves in his halls, Balin served as their de facto spokesman. The company had not yet realized that Thorin was also among the captives. Of all thirteen Dwarves, Balin formed the closest friendship with Bilbo during the Quest. He was the only one who offered to follow Bilbo down the secret passage into Erebor.

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• 4. Prophecy and Gold

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  Some years after the Quest of Erebor ended, Balin and Gandalf visited Bilbo at Bag End. Balin brought word of the mountain's glory restored in the years since the Battle of the Five Armies. The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey examines the final scene of The Hobbit, where Balin, Bilbo, and Gandalf discuss prophecy, individual action, and truth. Balin reports that the new master of Dale is wise and popular. The people, he says, "are making songs which say that in his day the rivers run with gold." The three agree that "after a fashion," even that metaphor can be true. Shippey reads the exchange as demonstrating that "romance and reality are differences of presentation not of fact." Not long afterward, Balin departed from Erebor. Glóin later brought uncertain word of him to the Council of Elrond.

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• 5. Lord of Moria

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  Balin's destination was Moria. He brought with him a company that included Óin and Ori, both companions from the original Quest of Erebor, alongside Flói, Frár, Lóni, and Náli. Inside those ancient halls, Balin discovered Durin's Axe and established a small colony. He named himself Lord of Moria. Orcs overran the settlement before five years had passed. Balin was killed by an orc archer in Dimrill Dale, the same ground where his father Fundin had fallen in the Battle of Azanulbizar. Father and son died at the same site, decades apart. His tomb bore the Dwarven inscription "Balin Fundinul Uzbad Khazad-Dûmu," with smaller runes beneath giving the English translation.

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• 6. Name, Shadow, and the Book

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  John D. Rateliff points out that Balin's name stands apart from all of Thorin's other Dwarves. Every other member of the company takes their name from the Völuspá, an Old Norse poem of the Poetic Edda. Balin does not. His name appears instead in Le Morte d'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory's Middle English prose tale. In Rateliff's judgment, Malory's Sir Balin is not nearly as likeable a character.

  Tom Shippey turns to the report Glóin gave at the Council of Elrond. Glóin described "a shadow of disquiet" falling over the Dwarves when Balin departed. Shippey reads the shadow as deliberately ambiguous: it might be ordinary earthly discontent, or it might signal a spell cast from Mordor. His analysis suggests that "maybe Balin simultaneously fell made his own choice and was pushed bewitched."

  Tolkien expended enormous effort constructing a facsimile of the Book of Mazarbul. He stained and tore the paper and burned the burn-marks in, working to make it resemble the damaged original. His publisher Allen & Unwin chose not to include this artwork in the first edition. Tolkien remarked that without it, the text opening "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm" was "rather absurd."

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• 7. On Screen and in Games

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  Don Messick voiced Balin in the 1977 Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit. In Peter Jackson's live-action film series of The Hobbit, which ran from 2012 to 2014, Ken Stott took the role. Jackson's Balin is reluctant to pursue lost gold, doubtful whether any ancestral claim justifies the quest. That uncertainty makes him sympathetic to Bilbo, who appears equally unsuitable for the task he has been given. In the 2003 video game adaptation of The Hobbit, Victor Raider-Wexler provides the voice. From Rankin/Bass in 1977 to Peter Jackson's trilogy in 2014, Balin appeared in every major adaptation of The Hobbit.

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