The Hunt for the Ring
Gandalf and Aragorn seek Gollum; the quest-lore of the Ring
Nature
The Hunt for the Ring is the essay in Unfinished Tales (Part Three, IV) that sets out the pursuit of Gollum — the secret hunting of the long-hidden creature undertaken by Gandalf and Aragorn — together with the “quest-lore”: the gathered learning by which the Wise came at last to know that Bilbo’s puzzling ring was the One Ring of Sauron.
Contents
The essay traces the lore as it was slowly recovered: the loss of the Ring at the Gladden Fields with Isildur’s death; its lying in the Anduin until Déagol found it and was slain by his kinsman Sméagol, who became the creature called Gollum; and the long secrecy in which the Ring was at once hidden and known to the Enemy’s servants. It tells how Gandalf, after Bilbo’s finding of the Ring and its strange silence, set the great hunt going; how Aragorn viewed Gollum and at last captured him, and how Gollum was questioned in the halls of Thranduil in Mirkwood — the closing of the search, from which the full course of the Ring’s history follows as told in The Lord of the Rings.
Composition
Written as a late explanation of the background of the Ring-war, it is printed in Unfinished Tales with Christopher Tolkien’s notes on its relation to the Tale of Years and to the narrative in “The Council of Elrond”, which gives the shorter account of the same events.