The Lord of the Rings Character Heights

Why Middle-earth has real height data

Most fantasy series leave heights to the artist. J.R.R. Tolkien did not. He was a philologist who cared about measurement, and over the decades after The Lord of the Rings was published he kept returning to the question of how big his peoples were. Wikipedia notes that the novel was written in stages between 1937 and 1949, began as a sequel to The Hobbit, and has sold more than 150 million copies. The heights below come from the book itself and from the late notes that followed it.

Three sources supply nearly every number on this page:

• The Prologue to The Lord of the Rings ("Concerning Hobbits"), which gives the general range for hobbits and the record held by Bandobras Took.
• Unfinished Tales, which includes a note on Númenórean units of length and a figure for Elendil.
• The Nature of Middle-earth (2021), a collection of late, mostly unpublished writings edited by Carl F. Hostetter and published by HarperCollins. Tolkien Gateway dates the texts to roughly 1959–1973. Two short pieces matter here: an essay usually cited as "Heights" and a set of "Descriptions of Characters." A Tolkien note from about 1969 is also quoted in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion.

Because Tolkien wrote in feet and inches, every metric figure on this page is a conversion. You can check any of them in the height converter.

Lord of the Rings heights at a glance

The site stores Elendil at the taller of his two figures (241.3 cm, from Unfinished Tales). The table below the next section explains why Tolkien's numbers sometimes disagree.

Tolkien also gave figures for some characters who are not in the site's list. According to Tolkien Gateway, Legolas is over 6 feet in "Heights," and Gandalf is at least 5′6″ "even bent," a figure that comes from the "Descriptions of Characters." Hobbits, by contrast, are given as a range, and there is no individual figure for Frodo, Sam, Merry or Pippin.

Aragorn and the heirs of Isildur

Aragorn is the best-documented tall man in Middle-earth. The novel describes him as lean, dark and tall, and Tolkien later fixed the number. Tolkien Gateway cites two places for "at least 6′6″": page 272 of The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, which quotes a note Tolkien wrote around 1969, and the "Heights" essay in The Nature of Middle-earth. The same late note made him beardless. That 6′6″ converts to 198.1 cm, the value the site uses.

Aragorn's ancestors were taller still. Isildur, Aragorn's distant ancestor and a King of Arnor and Gondor, is listed at 7 feet (213.4 cm) from the same 1969 note. His father Elendil, the first High King of Arnor and Gondor, was taller again, which is why one of his titles is "the Tall."

The decline across generations fits Tolkien's wider picture. Tolkien Gateway's articles on the ranga and on hobbits both note that the stature of the Númenóreans decreased in later days, so that later generations of Dúnedain were shorter than their ancestors. Tolkien Gateway's article on the Númenóreans describes the average Númenórean as taller than two rangar (about 6′4″) and gives early lifespans of 350 to 420 years. Aragorn, who lived to 210, is a late but still remarkable example of the line.

Elendil's two heights: 7 feet or 7′11″?

Elendil shows how Tolkien's notes can conflict. Tolkien Gateway summarizes two accounts:

1. In Unfinished Tales, a note on the routes from Osgiliath to Imladris (part of a discussion of Númenórean measures) says Elendil was nearly 2.5 rangar tall, which works out to 7′11″, or 2.41 m.
2. In the "Heights" essay in The Nature of Middle-earth, he is described as over 7 feet (2.13 m).

The wiki's own summary is careful: accounts differ, but he was at least seven feet tall. The site uses the Unfinished Tales figure (241.3 cm) because it is the specific one, while noting that the later essay gives a lower minimum. Both make him the tallest Man in the site's database by a wide margin. Even the lower figure puts him 15 cm above Aragorn.

The ranga: how Númenóreans measured height

Several of these heights make more sense once you know Tolkien's own unit. The ranga, or "full pace," was a Númenórean measure: a full stride by a grown man in quick march, from back heel to front toe. Tolkien Gateway gives it as 38 inches, or 96.5 cm, slightly longer than a yard.

Two details link the ranga directly to height:

• In later days, when Númenórean stature had declined, two rangar were called "man-high." That implies an average adult male Dúnadan of about 6′4″ (193 cm), which is exactly Boromir's height.
• One ranga was the average height of a hobbit. Tolkien Gateway explains that this is why the Dúnedain called hobbits halflings: they were half the height of a Dúnadan.

Note that the ranga-based hobbit height (96.5 cm) is a little lower than the 3′6″ (106.7 cm) for males given in the "Heights" essay. That is consistent with the Prologue's broad range rather than a contradiction.

Boromir, Legolas and Gandalf

Boromir's figure comes from Tolkien's "Descriptions of Characters." Tolkien Gateway quotes the reasoning: being of high Númenórean lineage, Boromir would not be much shorter than Aragorn, so "say 6 ft. 4." At 193.0 cm he is about 5 cm shorter than Aragorn, almost exactly the "man-high" value of two rangar. The wiki adds that he had long dark hair, grey eyes and a beardless face.

Legolas is "over 6 feet" (at least 183 cm) in the "Heights" essay. Tolkien Gateway also quotes Tolkien's protest against a "pretty" or "ladylike" portrayal of the elf, describing him instead as tall as a young tree and immensely strong.

Gandalf is the surprise. Tolkien described the wizard as strongly built and broad-shouldered but shorter than the average man and stooped with age, and estimated that even bent he must have been at least 5′6″ (about 168 cm). Tolkien added that this would make him a short man even in modern England. Tolkien Gateway also notes that when Gandalf was angered or roused for battle, he seemed to grow in height.

Gimli has no figure in the sources used here. Tolkien Gateway's article on Gimli leaves his height blank, though it notes that the 1978 animated film drew him almost as tall as Aragorn and Legolas.

Hobbits, from average to Bullroarer

The Prologue to The Lord of the Rings says hobbits were between two and four feet tall, and Tolkien Gateway adds that they were often under three feet in later days. The "Heights" essay narrows that down to about 3′6″ (106.7 cm) for males, and the wiki notes that females seldom exceeded 3 feet. The site uses the 106.7 cm male figure as its "average hobbit" entry.

Hobbits also came in three kinds, which differed in build. Tolkien Gateway describes the Fallohides as fair, tall and slim; the Stoors as bearded, fond of water and boots; and the Harfoots as the most numerous, whose traits became the norm. Frodo's infobox on the wiki says only that he was taller than some hobbits, citing the Bree chapter "Strider."

The tallest hobbit on record is Bandobras Took, known as the Bullroarer. The Prologue gives him as four foot five (134.6 cm) and notes that this let him ride a horse. Tolkien Gateway recounts his best-known deed: at the Battle of Greenfields he knocked the head off the goblin king Golfimbul with a wooden club, sending it a hundred yards into a rabbit hole, which is how, the story goes, golf was invented.

Even the Bullroarer would have stood 63.5 cm below Aragorn, and more than a meter below Elendil's tallest figure.

The peoples of Middle-earth, side by side

Individual figures are scattered, but Tolkien's notes also sketch a height scale for whole peoples. Pulling together the Tolkien Gateway entries used on this page gives a rough ladder:

The Dwarves entry is useful for placing hobbits. Tolkien Gateway's article on hobbits says they were a bit shorter than Dwarves and less stout, which fits a Dwarf minimum of 4 feet against an average male hobbit of 3′6″. On that scale, Bandobras Took at 4′5″ would have been as tall as a fairly tall Dwarf.

Heights in the adaptations

Screen and animated versions have not always followed Tolkien's numbers. Two differences recorded by Tolkien Gateway are worth knowing:

• Hobbit feet. Fans have noted that adaptations, including Peter Jackson's film series, give hobbits unusually large feet, probably influenced by the popular art of the Brothers Hildebrandt. Tolkien himself never described large feet as a hobbit trait; he wrote of furry feet with leathery soles.
• Gimli's size. The 1978 animated film drew Gimli almost as tall as Aragorn and Legolas, ignoring the Dwarf scale entirely.

For height questions, the books and the late notes are the canon. The films chose their own proportions, and the site's figures follow Tolkien's writing.

Comparing Middle-earth heights with people today

Tolkien wrote as an Englishman, and his own comment about Gandalf compares him with modern England. The NCD Risk Factor Collaboration's 2016 eLife study of adult height in 200 countries gives British men born in 1996 a mean of 177.5 cm and women 164.4 cm, figures the site shows on its average height in the United Kingdom page.

Aragorn and Boromir would be very tall today but within the human range. Isildur and Elendil would not: 7 feet and above is extraordinarily rare. Gandalf's estimate, meanwhile, holds up well, since 5′6″ is still below the modern British average.

To see these gaps visually, put Aragorn next to yourself in the 3D height comparison tool, or measure the distance between any two figures with the height difference calculator.