Welcome to the Lord of the Rings lore cast, the show that explores the background of

Tolkien's amazing world from the very beginning.

All right, welcome back to the Lord of the Rings lore cast, friends.

I have to apologize right here at the top of the episode for missing last week.

I've been pretty knocked out the last week and a half with very flu-like symptoms.

Now, this is a little inside baseball,

but I got my flu shot and I tried to do the best that I can in order, you know, not get sick.

But this definitely felt like a flu, even though there's really no reason for it to be a flu,

because I went to the doctor. They checked everything. I didn't show up positive for any of the flus or for COVID or anything like that, but it is, it has kicked me out,

kicked my butt. Let's just say that. And you probably could still hear it in my voice,

so I apologize if this isn't the best quality recording, but I wanted to make sure that I got an episode up this week. So thank you for your patience and for your kind words on the Patreon, where I notify everybody.

If you're not on there as a free member in order to make sure that you can get notifications for

what's going on with episodes, especially if I take a week off, then head over there.

Make sure you're part of our community.

So with all that said, I apologize if my voice doesn't sound super great this episode, but definitely wanted to make sure I got one out for all of you.

So let's get into it. This episode, this week, we are finally getting to meet Bjorn, which is

wonderful, because Bjorn is such an interesting character. And there are many interesting characters in The Hobbit. I mean,

that's kind of one of the really enjoyable parts of the book. But Bjorn is different. He's different

for a number of reasons. First, in my mind, is the fact that he only shows up in the Hobbit. He

doesn't show up in the Lord of the Rings. So this is our only

opportunity to get to meet him. He's also the kind of character who shows up at this point

in the book, but then we get a return visit later, which is kind of a Chekhov's gun kind of thing.

...