How long has Aragorn been visiting Bree?

[Rauþúlfr]

Rushing to catch up with the lectures, I've made it up to # 57, and amid the discussions of Strider a couple things strike me. In that discussion, (or another while in the P Pony, it's mentioned that Gandalf doesn't reveal Aragorn's identity. Of course not, it's not his secret to disclose! That however, got me wondering. Just how long has Aragorn been frequenting the Inn? He's 80 or so years old, and could have been a visitor for most if not all of Butterbur's years! Certainly, Butterbur gives no hint that he's been acquainted with Strider for that long. There's nothing in Butterbur's description that would add seemingly otherwordly longevity to them!

Did Aragorn travel in a different guise in his younger days, or did he simply frequent other lands then? It may well be that in Aragorn the blood of Numenor runs most true, but even so one would expect the average Ranger to be active far past the days when lesser mortals would succumb to old age. Given that they are secretive by nature, one would presume that they would treat the secret of their unusually long lives carefully. Yes, Aragorn discloses his age to Eomir, but one must count that as unusual. It does give one cause to think!

 

[Anthony Lawther]

I'm also catching up, being about 30 minutes into episode 90 (at least in the same year now, but still 5 episodes 'til the start of Book 2).
Appendix B is your friend here:
Aragorn met Gandalf in TA 2956 who turned him onto the Shire and he spent some of that year travelling around the Breeland area, gaining the name Strider.
He then spent from TA 2957 - TA 2980 operating around Rohan and Gondor, going by the name of Thorongil.
TA 2980 is when he returned to Eriador via Lothlorien and his betrothal to Arwen began (28 years to propose and then a 41 year engagement!).

So, while we don't know Barliman Butterbur's age, he'd need to be seventy or older to have some chance of recognising Strider from his first visits, which seems unlikely given the description of Barliman in the text. There's no mention of a wife and children, nor of parents, so we only really have the physical description to go on, which supports an age estimate (by me) of somewhere between mid thirties and early fifties; any younger and his father would probably still be running the inn, and any older and the Butterbur legacy would be at serious risk of ending if he has no wife and children.

From Barliman's perspective that gives 39 years at the outside for this Strider fellow to have been around; possibly his whole life, but at most since his early teens.
A young Barliman seeing Strider for the first time would not be a good judge of Strider's age.
If Strider turned up around the age of 50, but carrying himself like someone in their mid-twenties, then at 87 he might carry himself like a man in his late forties to early fifties and that would not indicate otherworldy longevity, just some good preservation. A life in the wild could cause some weather damage to his skin that could impact a townie's perception of his age too.

 

[Rauþúlfr]

Thank you! That clarifies much. That does leave the larger issue of the care which Rangers, collectively, must have taken to not draw attention to their longevity. It may well be that they deliberately split their time between multiple places so that they don't linger too long in any one location. That would seem the best strategy. Certainly, once the War of the Ring is over, things will be different for them making life easier for all.