Hobbit house at Hobbiton Movie Set, Matamata, New Zealand
© djr-photography/Shutterstoc
Beyond the last page. Tolkien Week
Most landmarks were built by history. This one was built for a story. Hobbiton Movie Set sits in Matamata, New Zealand, on a working sheep farm that caught the eye of filmmakers scouting locations for The Lord of the Rings in 1998. The hills already looked Shire-like; round doors, tidy gardens, and curling chimneys completed the illusion. The set was later rebuilt for The Hobbit films and became a destination for those eager to step into Middle-earth.
That feels especially fitting during Tolkien Week, the calendar week containing Hobbit Day on September 22. What began as Bilbo and Frodo Baggins' shared birthday in J.R.R. Tolkien's novels became a real-world excuse for feasts, costumes, readings, and second breakfasts. First proclaimed by the American Tolkien Society in 1978, these celebrations honor a writer who did far more than tell stories: he created languages, legends, maps, and songs so richly detailed that generations of readers have treated a fictional world as a place worth returning to.
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