men of middle-earth ❅ northmen ❅ headcanon disclaimer
Beorn was a Skin-changer, a Man who could assume the form of a bear. His people once dwelt in the Misty Mountains, and their legends tell of great spirits who would sometimes dwell alongside them and even take one of them as a mate from time to time. Thus a strain of Maiarin Song came to be among certain branches of these mortal Men, granting those families so blessed longer lives and certain magical abilities. But when orcs came to the Mountains, they were not numerous enough to fight the monsters off. The orcs slaughtered these Men until only a small number of them remained, enslaved or driven away. Beorn’s ancestors were among the survivors, who fled to the eaves of Mirkwood and scraped out a living for generations. They dwindled further, mingling with other groups of Northmen and Woodmen, until only Beorn’s mother remained of the old people, carrying with her the memories and legends of the Mountains. When his mother died at the hands of orcs, Beorn discovered he possessed the magical abilities of which she had sung to him as a child: he transformed into a great bear, destroying the goblins, and remained in his bestial form for a full year before he could return to his Mannish body. Grieving and overwhelmed, Beorn retreated ever further from the Woodmen, establishing his own Hall and cultivating his abilities. He treated outsiders with great suspicion, and killed any orcs he came across, and only accepted one visitor to his Halls: Radagast the Brown, an eccentric wizard who claimed to have known the ancestor-spirit who had given him his powers and helped him learn to control them. Often his mind was turned to the Mountains of his people’s origin, and he swore to himself that one day the orcs would be destroyed and he would return to the homeland he had never known. From Radagast, the wizard Gandalf learned of Beorn, and in a time of need he gambled on Beorn’s hospitality. Fleeing the Great Goblin’s soldiers, Gandalf led the Company of Thorin Oakenshield to Beorn’s Hall, relying on Beorn’s hatred of orcs outweighing his dislike of dwarves. Beorn was not pleased to welcome so many raucous houseguests into his home, but he was deeply troubled by news of the orcs gathering for war, and agreed to aid the Quest for Erebor. After the Company departed into Mirkwood, Beorn left his Halls in bear-form and scouted out the goblin armies. Angered by their might, he rushed to Erebor as fast as he could and arrived just in time to fight in the Battle of the Five Armies, rescuing Thorin Oakenshield’s injured body and killing the orc-general Bolg. The Battle was won, and the goblins decimated, and seeing at last the value of cooperation Beorn allied himself with the Free-peoples of the North. Beorn accompanied Gandalf, Bilbo, and the Elvenking Thranduil on their journey back to the west, and he hosted them in his Hall for Yule, along with some Woodmen, his distant kindred, to whom he opened his doors for the first time. This began a lasting friendship between the Skin-changer and the Woodmen, and in the years to come Beorn became a great chief among the Woodmen, taking one of their people as his spouse. This was Medwed, a mighty warrior and hunter whom he taught the language of beasts. Once they also could communicate with animals, Medwed forsook the eating with meat and adopted their husband’s diet of honey and cream, tending to his beasts and cultivating his hives of giant bees. Medwed bore Beorn one child, Grimbeorn. When Medwed passed away, Beorn bid farewell to his people and his son, leaving Grimbeorn to succeed him as chief, and at last heeded the call of his heart, returning to the Misty Mountains to seek out the song-spirits who had granted him his magic. It is said by his descendants the Beornings that he still dwells in the Mountains, walking in the shape of a bear and singing with the spirits of old.
