Dorwinion ‘Land of Maidens’ (Sind.) – A country to the north-west of the Inland Sea of Rhûn. The highly praised wines of this region were much desired by the Wood-elves of Mirkwood, and part of the harvest was regularly shipped up the Carnen Celduin to Esgaroth and beyond.
Downs – Smooth, treeless uplands, often of chalk or limestone overlaid with turf.
Dragon-helm (of Dor-lómin) – The chief heirloom of the House of Hador in the First Age, called also the Helm of Hador. It was made by Telchar the Smith of Nogrod for Azaghâl King of Belegost soon after the first appearance of the dragon Glaurung; afterwards it was given to Fingon the High King, and by him to Hador. It was of grey steel, ornamented with gold, and a gold dragon-crest; and in front was a terrifying visor which, when lowered, concealed the wearer’s face and presented another. Surprisingly, it was not captured by the agents of Morgoth in the years which followed the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and the fall of Dor-lómin, for its whereabouts was kept hidden by Morwen wife of Húrin the Steadfast. Later she sent the Helm to Doriath, for at this time it belonged by rights to Túrin Húrin’s son, as the Heir of Hador; and he was now dwelling in Doriath with Thingol.
Now Túrin, in the event, fled from Doriath without the heirlooms of his house, but it was afterwards brought to him in his self-imposed exile (on Amon Rûdh) by Beleg Cúthalion, the strongbow of Doriath – and Túrin’s comrade. Then Túrin put on the Helm of his fathers for the first time and went to war.
So successful were he and Beleg in their prosecution of this offensive that the country in which they fought was named the ‘Land of Bow and Helm’, and Túrin in pride adopted the second of his many noms-de-guerre, calling himself Gorthol, the Dread Helm. Yet when all was said and done he was unwise thus to advertise his presence – and his existence – to Morgoth. For after a time Orcs came against him, and they were betrayed; in the ensuing fight Túrin was captured, and Beleg was left for dead, and the treasures and weapons of the outlaws were taken or despoiled by the Orcs. No further mention of the Helm of Hador is made in the annals of the Age.
Dragons – Of all the many evil creatures ever to appear in Middle-earth, among the most ancient, as well as the most awesome, were the Great Worms. Although there were once many Dragons in the world, few of their names have been recorded. GLAURUNG was the most feared Worm of the Elder Days, and ANCALAGON THE BLACK was the first of the kindred of flying dragons; but there were many other lesser worms whose titles and names were never learned.
The Great Worms were divided into three distinct breeds: the Uruloki, fire-breathing beasts who however were unable to fly (Glaurung was one of these); their evolved kindred who could both fly and breathe fire (Ancalagon and SMAUG THE GOLDEN were of this type); and many lesser ‘cold-drakes’ whose power lay in speed and size alone (the beast that dwelt in the lake of Moria and attacked the Ring-bearer may have been one of these). Most wielded great powers of enchantment; and all were immensely strong, quick-witted, intellectual, greedy – and callous beyond belief. It is possible that the race of Dragon-kind was not originally evil but lured into evil ways by Morgoth the Enemy far back in the Elder Days had passed, though other theories say they were in fact demonic powers of the same order as the Balrogs, MAIAR in the service of the self-styled Lord of Middle-earth. In either case the Dragons’ natural vices would soon have brought them into conflict with that other race of Middle-earth whose traits most closely resembled their own; for the Dwarves of those far-off days were even less renowned for philanthropy than their later descendants. And their wealth was very great (even as Dwarves reckoned such things). Both races fought for possession of the same hoards. Usually, the Dragons won. Yet Dragons had other foes, especially during the First Age. The High-elven city of Gondolin was overcome in the end by a terrible host of Dragons aided by Balrogs and Orcs.
With the passing of Morgoth and the end of the First Age, most of his Dragons were slain, and only the strongest and most cunning survived. At least two royal Dragons still lived during the Third Age: Scatha of the Grey Mountains and Smaug the Golden, who attacked the Lonely Mountain in the year 2770, driving away the Dwarves of that realm and taking their amassed wealth for himself. Smaug and Scatha were both slain by Men, and in each case there was further dispute between the parties involved as to the disposition of the hoard.
Dramborleg ‘Thudder-sharp’ (Sind.) – The war-axe of TUOR, kept as a trophy of the heroic past in Númenor but lost with the Downfall.
Draugluin ‘Blue-wolf’ (Sind.) – The chief of the werewolves (or ‘wargs’) of Angband, the forefather of Carcharoth. He was slain by the Hound of Valinor, Huan, on the drawbridge of Tol-in-Gaurhoth (Tol Sirion).
Drogo Baggins – The father of Frodo Baggins. Drogo and his wife Primula (Brandybuck) were tragically drowned while boating on the Baranduin. Frodo, their only child, was later adopted by his cousin Bilbo.
Druadan Forest – A large, brooding forest which huddled against the north wall of the White Mountains in the land of Anórien. Though it lay within ten leagues of Minas Tirith, this eerie place was shunned by Men of Gondor; for in its depths dwelt a strange, forgotten race of men, if Men they were. These were the WOSES, the ‘Púkel-men’ whose ancestors had in the dim past inhabited the seaward lands south of the Isen. It is not known when the Púkel-folk first came to Druadan, but even at the end of the Third Age a few still lingered there, wary and fearful. In the early days of Gondor, the Dúnedain took little notice of these ‘Wild Men’ of Druadan. Indeed, they made a great road directly through the Forest for their wagons which brought quarried stone from Min-Rimmon to Minas Anor. This road was later abandoned and forgotten.
Drûg – See WOSES.
Druwaith Iaur ‘Old Púkel-land’ (Sind.) – The coastal lands south of the river Isen; the ancient home of the WOSES, who later migrated inland to Druadan Forest.
Dry River – The entrance to the vale of Tumladen through the wall of the Encircling Mountains; in archaic times it had been formed by a river which had drained the (former) lake of Tumladen.
Duilin and Derufin – The sons of Duinhir, Lord of Morthond Vale. The Men of that land (in western Gondor) were fine bowmen; accordingly, Duinhir and his two sons led five hundred of their best archers to help defend the city of Minas Tirith during the War of the Ring. Both brothers were slain as they courageously attacked the war-oliphaunts of Harad at a crucial stage during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields (March, 3019 Third Age).
Duilwen – A river of Ossiriand; one of the tributaries of Gelion.
Duinhir – See DUILIN AND DERUFIN.
Dumbledors – A piece of comic invention in the Hobbit style. The Dumbledors were insects, vanquished by the hero in Bilbo’s poem ‘Errantry’.2
Dúnadan (pl. Dúnedain) ‘Man-of-the-West’ (Sind.) – The Dúnedain, or Men of Westernesse, were the Númenoreans and their descendants, the ‘Kings-of-Men’: survivors of the disaster which overtook rebellious Númenor at the end of the Second Age.
In return for their endeavours in the cause against Morgoth the Enemy during the First Age, the Edain of Middle-earth had been rewarded with the great gift of the Island of Elenna in the middle of the Western Seas. Accordingly, at the beginning of the Second Age, most of them sailed away from Middle-earth to their new land. They named this realm Númenor, ‘Heart-of-the-West’ (Q.), and thenceforth they were known to the Elves as Dúnedain, ‘Men-of-the-West’. For three thousand years they grew ever more powerful, gifted and lordly, but in the end most of them were corrupted by pride, by fear of death – and by design of Sauron; and Númenor fell at last.
Yet the Dúnedain did not all perish in the Downfall. Those BLACK NÚMENOREANS who had already settled the coastlands of Middle-earth during the years of Sauron’s dominion lived on; while the FAITHFUL of Númenor, who alone endured the Deluge and survived it, then returned to Middle-earth where they founded the Realms in Exile: Arnor and Gondor. During the Third Age, the Black Númenoreans died out, or were dispersed in wars and invasion. But the loyal Dún
edain, descendants of Elendil the Tall and the Lords of the Faithful, somehow contrived to keep a foothold in Middle-earth – though grievously reduced in number by long years of war, pestilence and increasing assault by forces of Sauron. Of the Realms in Exile, only the South-kingdom survived the Third Age and into the Fourth. Yet the Dúnedain of the South habitually married late, or not at all; and as the years passed, the race slowly dwindled and the lifespan of the ‘Kings-of-Men’, originally three times that of other Men, grew less.
The ancestors of the Dúnedain, the Edain, had been accounted by Elves as the noblest of all races of Men; and the royal Houses of the Edain had been enriched by Elven-blood through two notable unions of Elves and Men during the Elder Days. Even at the end of the Third Age the kinship between the two races could still be seen in the dark hair, grey eyes and noble bearing of the Men of Wester-nesse and in their gifts of wisdom and foresight. And though some of the race may have become corrupted, the true descendants of the Dúnedain never forgot the ancient kinship with Elves, and esteemed Elven-lore above all other learning. Of all Men of Middle-earth, only they knew and used an Elven-tongue as their daily speech. Many spoke the Grey-elven (Sindarin) language, and their sages studied the yet more ancient Quenya tongue of the High-Elves.
The Dúnedain were also great scholars, and from them were derived the various systems of reckoning and writing which later became widespread in Middle-earth. But they themselves had learned this lore from the Elves long before. From the Elves the Men of Westernesse also derived the lineage of their Kings – the first Ruler of Númenor had been himself Half-elven: Elros Tar-Minyatur, brother of Elrond of Rivendell and son of Eärendil the Mariner. Yet by the time of the War of the Ring, the last direct descendant of that ancient Line, Aragorn son of Arathorn, could only claim the title of Chieftain of the Dúnedain of Arnor.
Dungortheb ‘Dreadful Death’ (Sind.) – See NAN DUNGORTHEB.
Dunharg – An archaic form of the name Dunharrow. See following entry.
Dunharrow ‘Dark-burial-place’ – The most mysterious of the ancient sites which the Rohirrim found when they explored the new land ceded to them by Gondor in the late Third Age. Unlike all other fortifications in Rohan, Dunharrow, in the vale of Harrowdale, had not been built by Gondor. Long before the Númenoreans came back to Middle-earth, before Sauron established his dominion in the Accursed Years, a prehistoric race of Men had laboured long in shaping this unassailable fortress, temple and tomb complex.
Harrowdale was a steep valley through which the river Snowbourn ran down from the White Mountains to water the Eastfold. On the eastern side rose three mountains: the Irensaga, the Dwimorberg, and the Starkhorn to the south. An ancient winding road climbed from the ford of the Snowbourn to a mountain-meadow high above the valley, on the knees of the Dwimorberg. Across this plateau marched a double line of menhirs, running like an avenue towards the mountain-wall, through the Dimholt and into the haunted glen beyond. In the time of the Rohirrim, the plateau was valued for its defensive merits, but men did not serve there gladly.
Dúnhere – The lord of Harrowdale in Rohan. He fell at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields (March, 3019 Third Age) and, like all Rohan’s dead in that fight – save the King – he was buried with the fallen of Gondor. He was the nephew of Erkenbrand of Westfold.
Dunland – A fair green country of hills and glens in the region known as Enedhwaith, south of the river Swanfleet (Glanduin) and west of the Misty Mountains. It was inhabited by scattered settlements of hillmen, wary, secretive and hostile to strangers. Though Hobbits and Dwarves had once also dwelt there, only these hill-folk, the DUNLENDINGS, remained at the time of the War of the Ring.
Dunlendings – The hill-folk of Dunland. Though a dispirited, backward race at the time of the War of the Ring, the Dunlendings were remotely descended, according to one authority, from the Haladin (People of Haleth) of the First Age and thus were of Adûnaic stock3. In the Second Age a remnant, much diminished in culture, dwelled in the woods of Minhiriath, but were hunted and persecuted by the later returning Númenoreans; whence came this people’s abiding hatred of the Dúnedain. Many of them left the woods and emigrated north into Eriador. Others remained, dwindling slowly in the White Mountains until first Gondor, then Rohan, drove them from their ancient valleys. By the time of the late Third Age, the largest surviving remnant of this race dwelt in the hills of Dunland, north of the Isen and west of the Misty Mountains.
Wild and uncouth, the Dunlendings were nonetheless fierce fighters when roused: and their chief enemies were the Men of Rohan, whom they called Forgoil (‘Strawheads’). In the great Dunlending invasion of 2758, these peoples, led by the renegade Wulf (son of Freca), overran the Mark. Many of the Rohirrim died in that invasion – which coincided with the Long Winter and a great assault of the Corsairs upon Rohan’s ally Gondor, so that help from that quarter was delayed. But in the end Wulf was slain and, with the spring thaw, the Dunlendings were finally driven out again, even from the Ring of Isengard which they had occupied some fifty years earlier.
Durin (I) the Deathless – According to legend, the eldest of the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves. Far back in the Elder Days he awoke from the sleep laid on him by Ilúvatar and came to Azanulbizar, the great vale on the east of the Misty Mountains. There he looked into the lake of Kheled-zâram (the Mirrormere) and saw, even though it was daytime, a crown of seven stars reflected around his head. In the caves above Kheled-zâram he then made his dwelling: which afterwards became the great realm of Khazâd-dûm (Moria). Durin lived so long that he became widely known as ‘the Deathless’, and, even after his eventual passing, ‘five times an heir was born in his House so like to his Forefather that he received the name of Durin’,4 for the Dwarves believed that it was indeed the Deathless who had been reincarnated.
Durin III – During the sixteenth century of the Second Age the Ruler of Khazâd-dûm and the Dwarf-king most renowned for friendship with the Elves. He was given the chief of the Seven Rings.
Durin VI – From 1731–1980 Third Age, King of Moria. He ruled at the time of the final great exploratory delving under Barazinbar (Caradhras) for the mother mithril-lode. In these excavations, miners accidentally released the BALROG which slew Durin – and, the following year, his son Náin I. The Dwarves of Durin’s Line then fled from Moria into exile.
Durin’s Bane – The BALROG of Moria.
Durin’s Bridge – Between the First and Second Halls of Old Moria lay a great abyss, so deep that none of Durin’s Folk was ever able to sound its depths. Spanning it was a slender bridge of stone which could only be crossed in single file, built during the First Age as a defence against any enemy that might penetrate far enough into Moria to capture the Great Gates and First Hall. It was broken by Gandalf in his single combat with the Balrog.
Durin’s Crown – The name given by the Dwarves to the halo of seven stars seen by Durin the Deathless as he gazed for the first time into the Mirrormere.
Durin’s Day – The Dwarves’ New Year’s Day; the first day of the last new crescent of autumn, when Moon and Sun appeared in the sky simultaneously.
Durin’s Folk – The most ancient and (at one time) most numerous and powerful of the Seven Houses of the Dwarves was that founded by Durin the Deathless. Dwarves of this House were known to the Elves as the Longbeards, for their beards – always symbolic of age and wisdom among Dwarves – were longer than any competing growths, invariably forked, and worn thrust into the belt.
Though their vast ancestral halls of Khazâd-dûm (Moria) held out for an Age or more against would-be dispossessors, in the end this greatest of all Dwarf-strongholds was taken from Durin’s Folk, in 1981 Third Age, and they became a wandering people. From Moria they came to the North, to Erebor (where Thráin I founded a new Dwarf-kingdom ‘under the Mountain’); to the Ered Mithrin (Grey Mountains), from whence they were later driven by attacks from depredatory Dragons; and to the Iron Hills, where a cadet branch of the Line established itself in comparative secu
rity. Yet Erebor was also taken from them, when the great Dragon Smaug drove the Dwarves out in the year 2770; and for a time many of the Heirs of Durin wandered in Eriador in exile and (relative) poverty. Although they later recovered much of what had been lost to the Dragon, their race was much depleted, and the Dwarves of Durin’s Line were never to regain their old glories. And the lost realm of Moria remained forbidden to them while the Third Age lasted.
Durin’s Stone – An ancient, weathered pillar on the greensward near Lake Kheled-zâram (the Mirrormere) in the vale of Azanulbizar. It marked the place where Durin the Deathless first looked into the lake and saw, reflected around his head in the cool waters, a crown of seven stars shining as a symbol of royalty.
Durin’s Tower – A chamber and ledge on the pinnacle of the Silvertine, where the Endless Stair reached the upper airs after a climb of many thousand unbroken steps.
Durthang ‘Dark-oppression’ (Sind.) – At the beginning of the Third Age, after the first overthrow of Sauron, the victorious people of Gondor resolved that no evil creature should re-enter the neighbouring land of Mordor. They therefore built several strong fortresses inside the Black Land to control any movement in or out of that country. One of the most important of these was the castle of Durthang, high upon the rock-wall overlooking the Isenmouthe and the pass from Gorgoroth to Udûn behind the Black Gate. As Gondor’s power waned, around the middle of the Third Age, the castle – like all other Mordor-keeps – was taken by the Nazgûl, and became an orc-hold.
Dwalin – One of the twelve Dwarves who accompanied Thorin Oakenshield on the Quest of the Lonely Mountain. After the recovery of Thorin’s inheritance, he remained in Erebor, content to live in peace – unlike his brother BALIN, who led a misguided expedition to recover the ancient Dwarf-realm of Moria.
The Complete Tolkien Companion Page 17