The Runes on Bilbo's Door
In The Hobbit, it’s explained that Gandalf carved a mark into Bilbo’s door so that the dwarves would know which hobbit hole their prospective burglar lived in. The book itself gives us some information, though it’s pretty vague. When Gandalf actually carves the mark, all we’re told is “After a while [Gandalf] stepped up, and with the spike of his staff scratched a queer sign on the hobbit’s beautiful green front-door.”
Then, during the party, when Bilbo exclaims that there is certainly no mark carved into his newly-painted front door, Gloin tells him
And I assure you there is a mark on the door—the usual on in the trade, or used to be. Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward, that’s how it is usually read.
Finally, in the Unfinished Tales (there’s a chapter in which we read about how Gandalf and Thorin met), Gandalf tells Thorin “I will put the thief’s mark on his door, and then you will find it.”
From these three quotes we can assume a few things, the most important being that the mark that Gandalf used was not one “invented” for this particular situation, but rather was a traditional symbol used for burglars. This becomes important later on, so just remember that.
Now, as for what the rune actually looked like, Tolkien didn’t say. But he did make a sketch of it himself, which is included in Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator. In the sketch Tolkien uses three runes: “B” for burglar, “D” for danger, and a symbol of a diamond for treasure. This reflects the explanation that Gloin gave pretty closely.
However, in the Peter Jackson adaptation we see a very different mark - Gandalf only carves the rune for “G”, supposedly to represent Gandalf. But that really doesn’t make any sense, given what we learned about the mark in the books. Gandalf wasn’t nearly influential enough in dwarvish society for his initial to be used as a traditional identifier for burglars for hire. So I definitely don’t think that this is the “correct” mark. But, it does make a fair bit of sense within the Peter Jackson ‘verse, as the “G” rune is used throughout the Lord of the Rings movies to represent Gandalf (we see them stamped on his fireworks, for example.) So it was probably chosen for that reason.
SOURCES: The Hobbit, The Unfinished Tales (“The Quest of Erebor”), Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull
((The runes on the left are the “Burglar Danger Treasure” runes that we see in Tolkien’s sketch. The rune on the right is the “Gandalf” rune used in the Peter Jackson movie.))
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