Lonely Mountain

In J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium, the Lonely Mountain is a mountain northeast of Mirkwood. It is the location of the Dwarves' Kingdom under the Mountain and the town of Dale lies in a vale on its southern slopes. In The Lord of the Rings, the mountain is called by the Sindarin name Erebor. The Lonely Mountain is the destination of the protagonists, including the titular Hobbit Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, and is the scene of the novel's climax. The mountain has been described as the goal of Bilbo's psychological quest in The Hobbit; scholars have noted that both it and The Lord of the Rings are structured as quests to a distant mountain, but that the quests have very different motivations. Further, the mountain is a symbol of adventure in The Hobbit, and of Bilbo's maturation as an individual, while to the Dwarves, it stands for the gain of beauty in return for loss of life.