Balin (Middle-earth)

'I guess that it began with their coming to Dimrill Dale nigh on thirty years ago...' Balin was born in Erebor, the son of Fundin.

[T 1] Balin was a member of Thorin Oakenshield's company of Dwarves who travelled with Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf in the Quest of Erebor, on which the plot of The Hobbit centres.

[T 2] Tolkien describes Balin as "their look-out man": he spotted Bilbo approaching the Green Dragon Inn at Bywater,[T 2] saw the trolls' fire in the Trollshaws,[T 3] and was the first to see the elves in Mirkwood.

[T 10] The Tolkien scholar John D. Rateliff writes that Balin is the only Dwarf of Thorin's company whose name does not come directly from the Old Norse poem Völuspá, part of the Poetic Edda.

[2] The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes that in the final scene of The Hobbit, Balin, Bilbo, and Gandalf discuss the connection between prophecy, individual action, and truth.

[3] When Balin leaves, disastrously, to seek his fortune in Moria, "a shadow of disquiet" came over the Dwarves, as Glóin reports to the Council of Elrond.

[T 9] Shippey writes that the metaphor of the shadow is ominous, and ambiguous: it could mean simple earthly discontent, or it could mean a spell from Mordor: "maybe Balin simultaneously fell [made his own choice] and was pushed [bewitched].

"[3] Tolkien expended enormous effort on constructing a facsimile Book of Mazarbul to resemble the burnt, torn volume abandoned at Balin's tomb, carefully staining and tearing the paper and burning in the burn-marks to make it as authentic as possible.

[1] However, his publisher Allen & Unwin chose not to include his artwork in the first edition, prompting Tolkien to remark that without it the text at the start of "The Bridge of Khazad-Dûm" was "rather absurd".