Smaug
Smaug is the greedy, cunning fire-breathing dragon of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1937), who seizes the dwarves' treasure under the Lonely Mountain and is killed by Bard the Bowman.
| Also known as | Smaug the Golden, Smaug the Magnificent, Smaug the Terrible, Smaug the Mighty, Smaug the Tremendous |
|---|---|
| Type | dragon |
| Tradition | J.R.R. Tolkien (Middle-earth) |
| Category | Literature |
| Earliest source | The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1937 |
| Wings | Yes |
| Breathes fire | Yes |
| Guards treasure | Yes |
| Nature | Hostile |
The Story
Smaug is the dragon at the center of The Hobbit. Many years before the book opens, he came down from the north, burned the town of Dale, and drove the dwarves of Durin's line out of their kingdom under the Lonely Mountain (Erebor). He then piled their gold and gems into a bed and slept on it for generations.
The dwarf Thorin Oakenshield sets out with twelve companions and the wizard Gandalf to reclaim the treasure, and they hire Bilbo Baggins as their burglar. Bilbo sneaks into the dragon's hall twice. On the second visit he talks with Smaug while wearing his magic ring, flattering the dragon with grand titles and answering his questions in riddles. During that talk he notices a bare patch among the gems that have stuck to Smaug's belly.
Angered by the theft of a single cup, Smaug flies out to punish the people of Lake-town, whom he suspects of helping the dwarves. A thrush that overheard Bilbo carries the news of the weak spot to Bard, who shoots the dragon with his last black arrow. Smaug falls into the lake and dies. The question of who owns his hoard then leads to the Battle of Five Armies.
Appearance and Powers
Smaug is red-gold, enormous, and armored by scales and by the jewels pressed into his underside. He breathes fire, has a sharp sense of smell, and seems to know his hoard down to the last piece. Tolkien's own drawings of him, including the picture of Bilbo speaking with the sleeping dragon, show a winged, four-legged beast. Just as important are his mind and voice. Smaug is proud, vain, and clever, and his words work on Bilbo almost like a spell, planting doubts about the dwarves.
Origins and Sources
Tolkien was a scholar of Old English and Old Norse, and Smaug borrows from the dragons he studied. Like the dragon in Beowulf, he wakes in fury when a single cup is stolen from his hoard. Like Fáfnir in the Völsunga saga, he trades words with the hero and has a vulnerable underside. Tolkien's 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" shows how seriously he took these old dragons as literature. He later said that the name Smaug came from the past tense of a Germanic verb meaning to squeeze through a hole, which he called a low philological jest.
Legacy
Smaug became the model for the intelligent, talking, treasure-loving dragon of modern fantasy, from Dungeons & Dragons to countless novels. Benedict Cumberbatch voiced him and provided motion capture in Peter Jackson's films The Desolation of Smaug (2013) and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). The films gave him a wyvern-like body, with wings that double as front legs, rather than the four legs of Tolkien's drawings. Artists such as John Howe have painted him many times.
Related
- Glaurung: Glaurung is the first of the fire-drakes in J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium, a wingless, fire-breathing dragon of Morgoth whose cruel spells and lies destroy the hero Túrin Turambar and his sister Nienor.
- Ancalagon the Black: Ancalagon the Black is the greatest of the winged dragons in J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium, unleashed by Morgoth at the end of the First Age and slain by the mariner Eärendil in a battle in the sky.
- Fáfnir: Fáfnir is a dwarf turned dragon in Norse legend who guards a cursed hoard of gold until the hero Sigurd kills him by stabbing him from a pit dug in his path.
- Beowulf's dragon: Beowulf's dragon is the fire-breathing, treasure-guarding dragon of the Old English epic Beowulf, which ravages the land of the Geats after a cup is stolen from its hoard and dies fighting the aged hero.
- Chrysophylax: Chrysophylax Dives is the rich, crafty, and cowardly dragon of J.R.R. Tolkien's comic tale Farmer Giles of Ham (1949), who is outwitted by a reluctant farmer and ends up as his ally.
- Famous Dragons
- Beowulf
- Dragon Books
Sources and Further Reading
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (George Allen & Unwin, 1937)
- Douglas A. Anderson, The Annotated Hobbit, revised edition (Houghton Mifflin, 2002)
- Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator (HarperCollins, 1995)
- Tom Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth, revised edition (Houghton Mifflin, 2003)
Cite this entry: “Smaug,” Draconika Encyclopedia of Dragons, https://www.draconika.com/dragons/smaug.