How tall is Aragorn?

How tall is Aragorn? Tolkien's own figure

Aragorn, son of Arathorn, the Ranger called Strider who becomes King Elessar, stood at least 6 feet 6 inches, or about 198 cm. This site uses 198.1 cm, the exact conversion. The figure doesn't appear in The Lord of the Rings itself. It comes from a late note by J.R.R. Tolkien, written around 1969, which Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull cite in The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion (page 272) and which was published in The Nature of Middle-earth (2021), edited by Carl F. Hostetter, in the section on the heights of the peoples of Middle-earth (Part Two, chapter vi, page 194). Tolkien Gateway cites both.

In the novel, Tolkien describes Aragorn at his first appearance, in the Prancing Pony at Bree, as "lean, dark, and tall," and later compares him to the tall sea-kings of old. Readers knew he was tall for 50 years before they had a number. The late note made it specific, and its wording, "at least," suggests Tolkien saw 6′6″ as a minimum rather than an exact measurement.

Why Aragorn is so tall: the blood of Númenor

Aragorn is one of the Dúnedain, descendants of the Men of Númenor, the island kingdom that drowned at the end of the Second Age. In Tolkien's legendarium, the Númenóreans were granted greater stature and longer lives than other Men, and their heirs in Middle-earth kept some of both. Aragorn lives to 210 and reigns as king for 122 of those years, according to the Appendices.

His height is part of the same inheritance. Tolkien's notes on stature show the line of kings shrinking over time, from the giant founders at the end of the Second Age to Aragorn, 39 generations later, in the Third. The Dúnedain are still taller than ordinary Men, but less so than their ancestors.

Elendil, who led the Faithful out of Númenor, was "the Tall" because he was the tallest of the Men who escaped the Downfall. Tolkien Gateway notes that accounts of his height differ but agree he was at least 7 feet. Aragorn, his distant heir, is more than 40 cm shorter than Elendil's tallest figure and about 15 cm shorter than Isildur.

Boromir of Gondor, whose family also descends from Númenóreans, comes closest. Tolkien's "Descriptions of Characters," published in The Nature of Middle-earth, put him at about 6′4″, so the two Men of the Fellowship stand within 5 cm of each other.

Aragorn and the hobbits: a giant among the Fellowship

The most dramatic size gap in The Lord of the Rings is between the Men and the hobbits. The Prologue says hobbits stood between 2 and 4 feet. Tolkien's "Heights" essay, also in The Nature of Middle-earth (page 195), gives about 3′6″ for a typical male hobbit, and the site stores that as 106.7 cm. Female hobbits seldom exceeded 3 feet.

A typical hobbit reaches about Aragorn's waist or hip, and he is close to twice their height. Even Bandobras Took, the famously large hobbit from the Prologue who could ride a horse, would come up only to Aragorn's chest. When the four hobbits meet Strider in Bree, a cloaked stranger nearly twice their height is understandably alarming.

Gimli and Legolas aren't in this site's data with canonical figures, so we haven't included them. You can see the full set of Middle-earth heights the site does have on the Lord of the Rings character hub.

Measuring like a Númenórean: Aragorn in rangar

Tolkien didn't only think in feet and inches. In Unfinished Tales he described a Númenórean unit of length, the ranga or "full pace," the stride of a grown Númenórean man marching quickly. Tolkien Gateway, summarizing the note, gives it as 38 inches (96.5 cm), slightly longer than a yard. Five thousand rangar made up a lár, a longer unit of distance.

The same note links the unit to height. In later days, as the Númenóreans' descendants grew shorter, two rangar was called "man-high," suggesting a typical Dúnadan man of about 6′4″. One ranga was the average height of a hobbit, and the note connects that to the Dúnedain name "halfling," literally half a man-high. The table converts the main figures:

Seen this way, Boromir is the textbook "man-high" Dúnadan, and Aragorn is just over it, taller than the standard of his day but nowhere near the two and a half rangar of Elendil. The ranga note's typical hobbit, at 3′2″, is a little shorter than the 3′6″ in the "Heights" essay, a reminder that Tolkien's figures varied between his notes. This site uses 3′6″ for hobbits.

The math behind the headline figure is simple. Six feet six inches is 78 inches, and 78 × 2.54 = 198.12 cm, which the site stores as 198.1 cm.

From hobbit to king: how Aragorn grew in Tolkien's drafts

Aragorn didn't start out tall, or even human. According to Wikipedia's summary of Tolkien's drafts, the character's earliest form was a hobbit named Trotter, whom Bingo, the early version of Frodo, meets at the Prancing Pony. Trotter wore wooden shoes and was described as one of the wild folk, a ranger. As the story grew darker and larger in scale, Tolkien turned Trotter into a Man, then into Aragorn, the hidden heir of Isildur.

That change also changed his height, from hobbit-sized to a Man taller than nearly anyone else in the story. The late 6′6″ note fits the final version of the character: the returning king whose stature marks him as one of the old blood.

Book versus film: Aragorn on screen

Peter Jackson's film trilogy (2001–2003) cast Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn. According to Wikipedia, Stuart Townsend was cast first but was judged too young, and Jackson recast the role after shooting had begun. Neither casting was based on Tolkien's late height notes, most of which weren't published until 2021. What mattered on screen was the difference between Men and hobbits, which the films created through filmmaking techniques rather than by casting giants. That's why the actor's own height has no bearing on the canonical figure.

The 1978 animated film by Ralph Bakshi, in which John Hurt voiced Aragorn, also played the scale for drama rather than precision. If you want the canonical height, use Tolkien's notes, not the actor's.

There's one visible difference that does come from the books. In The Nature of Middle-earth, Tolkien's notes on beards describe Aragorn as beardless. The bearded Aragorn of the films is an adaptation choice.

What 6′6″ means in the real world

At 198 cm, Aragorn would be very tall today, and extraordinarily tall in Tolkien's England. In the CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for 2021–2023, the 95th percentile for American men aged 20 and over is 187.2 cm. Aragorn is more than 10 cm beyond that. The height percentile calculator shows just how rare that is.

The historical comparison is even more striking. Tolkien was born in 1892. The NCD-RisC estimates on this site put the average British man born in 1896 at just 166.9 cm (see average height in the United Kingdom). To Tolkien's own generation, a man of 6′6″ would have stood more than 31 cm above the average. That's about the same gap as between that average Englishman and Bandobras Took, the tallest hobbit on record. British men born in 1996 average 177.5 cm, so even today Aragorn would stand about 21 cm above the national mean.

Among real people in the site's data, basketball legends Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant are both listed at 198 cm. Aragorn is essentially Jordan's height (see Michael Jordan's height page). In other words, the Ranger of the North was as tall as an NBA shooting guard.

Aragorn among tall heroes of fiction

This site's character data puts Aragorn in company with some of fiction's biggest heroes:

Aragorn and Marvel's Thor share exactly the same figure in the site's data, 6′6″. Both are royal heirs who spend much of their stories in exile before claiming a throne. Superman and Batman, at 190.5 cm and 188 cm, would both look up at him. You can load any of these characters next to Aragorn in the height comparison tool.

Common questions about the 6′6″ figure

• Isn't this just fan speculation? No. The figure comes from Tolkien's own late writing, reported by Hammond and Scull, two of the most respected Tolkien scholars, and published in full in The Nature of Middle-earth, edited from Tolkien's papers.
• Why "at least"? Tolkien's note treats 6′6″ as a floor. Aragorn could have been a little taller, but the note gives no upper figure, so this site uses 6′6″ (198.1 cm).
• Does it conflict with the books? No. The Lord of the Rings never gives a number, only describes him as tall, and his height is consistent with Tolkien's figures for Boromir, Isildur and Elendil.

Spoiler note: this page mentions Aragorn's coronation and long reign, which are covered in the novel's final volume and Appendices.