How Old Is Gandalf From Lord Of The Rings?

Everyone knows Gandalf (Ian McKellen) is old, but what's his age? In Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," the wizard says, "300 lives of Men I've walked this earth, and now I have no time." While this gives the impression of longevity, measuring by lifespans is vague and inconsistent; many of Aragorn's Númenórean ancestors lived for multiple average lifespans. The other issue is that Gandalf's line in the movie doesn't come from the book. You must dig deeper to determine his age in J.R.R. Tolkien's original text. It is there, though — kind of.

In the "Return of the King" appendices, Tolkien summarizes the entire Third Age in five paragraphs. He provides some background on the Wizards, stating, "When maybe a thousand years had passed, and the first shadow had fallen on Greenwood the Great, the Istari or Wizards appeared in Middle-earth." "Lord of the Rings" is set primarily in 3019 of the Third Age.

Subtracting the first 1,000 years would mean Gandalf is around 2,000 years old during that story and roughly 80 years younger during Bilbo's adventures in "The Hobbit." What does he do for those two millennia? The appendices add, "Mithrandir was closest in friendship with the Eldar, and wandered mostly in the West, and never made for himself any lasting abode."

So, while it's nowhere near 300 lives of Men, Gandalf does spend over 2,000 years in Middle-earth hobnobbing with Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits and waiting for the final showdown with Sauron to begin.

But wait. There's more...

Gandalf may have been in Middle-earth for 2,000 years by the time of "The Lord of the Rings," but how does he get there? He isn't born; he and the other Wizards arrive full-grown by boat on Middle-earth's Western border.

The book "Unfinished Tales" says, "For they came from over the Sea out of the Uttermost West," adding shortly afterward that the Elven leader Círdan the Shipwright (who is rumored to appear early in "The Rings of Power" Season 2) saw them arriving. While this is the first time Gandalf shows up as Gandalf, J.R.R. Tolkien explains that the Wizards are incarnate spirits, adding, "They came therefore in the shape of Men, though they were never young and aged only slowly."

Before this point, Gandalf was one of the Ainur. "The Silmarillion" opens with: "There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought." At the risk of oversimplifying Tolkien's mythic creation story, Ilúvatar and the Ainur sing a song that is a musical vision of history before the One creates the world based on that song. From there, the book explains, "Then those of the Ainur who desired it arose and entered into the World at the beginning of Time." Their leaders are called the Valar, and the rest are called the Maiar. One of those Maiar is named Olórin — the future Gandalf. In other words, Gandalf's spirit is older than the nearly 55,000 solar years of Middle-earth history and even pre-dates time itself.

Differentiating incarnate and spiritual Gandalf helps with the age question. It's also worth mentioning that Olórin visited Middle-earth as a spirit long before he appears as a wrinkled old man with a supercharged walking stick. The "Return of the King" appendices explain that, in the unique case of the Third Age Wizards, they "were messengers sent to contest the power of Sauron, and to unite all those who had the will to resist him."

This crew likely visited Middle-earth as the "Guardians" over 10,000 years earlier. Before his death, J.R.R. Tolkien had an underdeveloped idea, which may have featured the Five Wizards coming to the area long before the Third Age. The book "The Nature of Middle-Earth" assembles his notes. One of these unfinished concepts talks about the earliest days of the Elves, when they awoke thousands of years before the First Age. In an attempt to protect them from the original Dark Lord, Morgoth (Sauron's master), the text reads, "The Valar send five Guardians (great spirits of the Maiar) — with Melian (the only woman, but their chief) these make six. The others were Tarindor (later Saruman), Olórin (Gandalf), Hrávandil (Radagast), Palacendo, and Haimenar."

The idea is only half-baked; it isn't even clear if the same five Wizards help in the Third Age. If that's true, Gandalf could have multiple points of Middle-earth contact. Either way, there's no doubt that the 2,000-year-old body we see in "The Lord of the Rings" is just a temporary housing for an immortal soul that pre-dates the formation of the World itself.

Check out the untold truth of "Lord of the Rings" to read more about the fantasy epic.