Beorn is a character created by J. R. R. Tolkien as part of his Middle-earth legendarium. He appears in The Hobbit as a "skin-changer", a man who could assume the form of a great black bear. His descendants or kinsmen, a group of Men known as the Beornings, dwell in the upper Vales of Anduin between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains; they are counted among the Free Peoples of Middle-earth who oppose Sauron's forces during the War of the Ring. Like the legendary medieval heroes Beowulf and Bödvar Bjarki (whose names both mean "bear"), Beorn exemplifies the Northern courage that Tolkien made a central virtue in The Lord of the Rings.
Appearances
thumb|upright|Beorn, by J. M. Kilpatrick, 2013
Beorn lives in a wooden house on his pasture-lands between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood, to the east of the Anduin. His household includes an animal retinue (with horses, dogs, sheep, and cows); according to Gandalf, Beorn does not eat his cattle, nor hunt wild animals. He grows large areas of clover for his bees.
In the years between the Battle of Five Armies and the War of the Ring, Beorn emerges to become a leader of the woodmen living between the Anduin river and the fringes of Mirkwood. In the events leading up to the War of the Ring, the Beornings assist Aragorn, who was taking Gollum to Mirkwood so that Gandalf could find out what Gollum knew about the One Ring, to cross the Anduin.
Analysis
Bear-like warrior
thumb|Beorn has been likened to a [[berserker, a warrior fighting in a trance-like state of fury. The name is cognate with the Scandinavian Björn or Bjørn, meaning bear; and the figure of Beorn can be related to the traditional Northern heroes Bödvar Bjarki and Beowulf, both of whose names also mean "bear". The name Beorn survives in the name of the Scottish town Borrowstounness, which is derived from the Old English Beornweardstun ("the town with Beorn as its guardian"). The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey comments that Beorn exemplifies the heroic Northern courage that Tolkien later made a central virtue in his larger novel, The Lord of the Rings, as he is ferocious, rude, and cheerful, characteristics that reflect his huge inner self-confidence.
Paul W. Lewis, writing in Mythlore, calls Beorn "essentially a berserker in battle", alluding to the Old Norse warriors who fought in a trance-like state of fury. The term means "bear-shirt"; its Old Norse form, hamrammr, was taken by Tolkien to mean "skin-changer", and he gave Beorn this capability.
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|+ Paul W. Lewis's analysis of Beorn and other bear-names for warriors known to Tolkien The medievalist Marjorie Burns notes the tension between "British" and Norse in Tolkien's handling of his materials. This is one of many instances of what Clyde S. Kilby called "contrasistency" – Tolkien's apparently intentional "doubleness" or switching between opposite viewpoints. Burns comments that Beorn's story and character embody tensions "between forest and garden, home and wayside, comradeship and solitude, risk and security" and in her view most strongly between "freedom and obligation", not to mention bear and man. Burns calls Beorn one of