One does not simply walk into Mordor: A literature survey and statistical analysis of how far Frodo and Sam travelled from Hobbiton to Mount Doom
So, how far is it to walk from The Shire to Mordor? The Lord of the Rings books don’t say exactly, but that never stopped fantasy geeks from trying to figure it out! In fact, several have tried and come up with the answer.
Or rather, several answers.
Each one that I found, using methods that they claim to be more or less accurate, ends up wth a different figure for the total number of miles that Frodo walked.
- 1350 miles. Our first estimate, by mattsawizard using fancy looking maps and lines.
- 1400 miles. The total of all the distances for the various legs quoted by Dan Stepanov in his paper “Walking to Mordor: A Guide for Hobbits”. (The recommended 500 mile river journey in Step 14 is skipped by Sam and Frodo, who take the alternative “undesirable” route through the Mines of Moria.)
- 1560 miles. From Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth, as quoted by Straight Dope forum member Qadgop the Mercotan.
- 1721.9 miles. As calculated by the administrator of the “Shire to Mordor – Frodo’s Journey” club on strava.com. Also using Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth, by the way.
- 1779 miles. As accounted by Jax from Eowynchallenge.net (adding up the legs Hobbiton to Rivendell to Lothlorien to Rauros Falls to Mount Doom, as also summed on nerdfitness.com).
- 1800 miles. As compiled by the Lord of the Rings Project (which also uses the aforementioned Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Atlas of Middle-earth as a source – so maybe it’s not as authoritative and clear as one might believe).
- 1841 miles. As plotted and summed by Andrew Arensburger on ooblick.com.
Rather than make my own estimate by rereading the books and poring over maps of Middle-earth, I’ve taken the scientific approach of averaging a bunch of independent estimates and taking the standard error of the mean, and arrived at the figure of 1636±76 miles.
Tags: lord of the rings