One does not simply walk into Mordor

One does not simply walk into Mordor: A literature survey and statistical analysis of how far Frodo and Sam travelled from Hobbiton to Mount Doom

So, how far is it to walk from The Shire to Mordor? The Lord of the Rings books don’t say exactly, but that never stopped fantasy geeks from trying to figure it out! In fact, several have tried and come up with the answer.

Or rather, several answers.

Each one that I found, using methods that they claim to be more or less accurate, ends up wth a different figure for the total number of miles that Frodo walked.

Rather than make my own estimate by rereading the books and poring over maps of Middle-earth, I’ve taken the scientific approach of averaging a bunch of independent estimates and taking the standard error of the mean, and arrived at the figure of 1636±76 miles.

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