Esgaroth

Esgaroth, or Lake-town, is a fictional community of Men upon the Long Lake that appears in the 1937 novel The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. Constructed entirely of wood and standing upon wooden pillars sunk into the lake-bed, the town is south of the Lonely Mountain and east of Mirkwood. The town's prosperity is apparently built upon trade between the Men who inhabit it, and the Elves and the Dwarves of northern Middle-earth. The chief mode of transport of the people of Esgaroth is stated to be their boats. At the time in which The Hobbit is set, Esgaroth appears to be a city-state, and a republic with no king (the only real republic shown in Middle-earth). The Master of Lake-town was said in-universe to be elected from among the "old and wise"; scholars have noted that all the same, he was trapped by his greed. Tolkien modelled the town closely on the real neolithic pile dwellings that were discovered near the Alps in the 19th century. Esgaroth was located in north-eastern Wilderland, a large inland region of Middle-earth. It was situated on the western shores of the Long Lake, close to the inflow of the Forest River. The Forest River provided an upstream route to Mirkwood. The Lonely Mountain, which could be seen from the town and could be reached by travelling up the Long Lake and then up its northern inflow, the River Running (also called the Celduin). The River Running flowed out of the south of the lake, providing a travel route from Esgaroth all the way downstream to the land of Dorwinion on the Sea of Rhûn. It had been preceded by a larger town, also built over the lake on piles that could still be seen during droughts, but Tolkien never wrote any further account of this. The inhabitants of Esgaroth knew the language spoken by most of Tolkien's Middle-earth, Westron. Amongst themselves they spoke an ancient form of it, which was loosely related to but distinct from the also-ancient language of the Rohirrim. Tolkien "translated" Westron into English in his text, so to represent the ancient relative of it that the Rohirrim spoke, he substituted Old English.