He destroyed the town of Dale the Men retreated to the Long Lake, where they built Lake-town of houses on stilts, surrounded by water to guard against the dragon. After driving the Dwarves out of their stronghold, Smaug occupied the interior of the mountain for the next 150 years, guarding a vast hoard of treasure. Smaug "arose and without warning came against King Thrór and descended on the mountain in flames". He heard rumours of the great wealth of the Dwarf-kingdom of Erebor, which had a prosperous trade with the Northmen of Dale. Smaug was "the greatest of the dragons of his day", already centuries old at the time he was first recorded. Smaug was voiced and interpreted with performance capture by Benedict Cumberbatch in Peter Jackson's film adaptations of The Hobbit.ĭragons lived in the Withered Heath beyond the Grey Mountains. Commentators have noted Smaug's devious, vain, and proud character, and his aggressively polite way of speaking, like the British upper class. A further source may be Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha, where Megissogwon, the spirit of wealth, is protected by an armoured shirt, but whose one weak spot is revealed by a talking bird. Ĭritics have identified close parallels with what they presume are sources of Tolkien's inspiration, including the dragon in Beowulf, who is provoked by the stealing of a precious cup, and the speaking dragon Fafnir, who proposes a betrayal to Sigurd. In The Hobbit, Thorin describes Smaug as "a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm". A group of thirteen dwarves mounted a quest to take the kingdom back, aided by the wizard Gandalf and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins. Powerful and fearsome, he invaded the Dwarf kingdom of Erebor 171 years prior to the events described in the novel. Tolkien's 1937 novel The Hobbit, his treasure and the mountain he lives in being the goal of the quest. Smaug ( / s m aʊ ɡ/ ) is a dragon and the main antagonist in J.
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