by David Day
The decline of the South Kingdom of Arnor through the second millennium of the Third Age was attributed to three great curses. The first was the Kinstrife of the fifteenth century. This was a bloody civil war that resulted in thousands of deaths, the destruction of cities, the loss of most of Gondor’s navy, and the end of its control of Umbar and Harad.
The second curse was the Great Plague of 1636, which Sauron loosed upon Gondor and Arnor. From this evil the Dúnedain never really recovered, for so many died at that time that parts of their realm remained empty forever after. The third curse was the Wainrider Invasions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These invasions by a confederacy of well-armed Easterling peoples lasted for almost one hundred years. Although the Easterlings were finally driven back and defeated, they critically weakened the already diminished power of Gondor.
The Riders of Rohan allied with the Dúnedain
The Migration of the Hobbits
Nothing is known of the Halfling people, who became known as the Hobbits, before 1050 of the Third Age. These were a burrowing, hole-dwelling people said to be related to Men, yet they were smaller than Dwarves, and the span of their lives was about a hundred years. Their first histories tell us they lived in the Northern Vales of Anduin between the Misty Mountains and Greenwood the Great. In the centuries that followed, they migrated westward and lived peacefully with Elves and Men in the land of Eriador.
All Hobbits measured between two and four feet in height, were long-fingered, possessed of a well-fed countenance, and had curly hair on peculiar shoeless, oversized feet. It is said that Hobbits were of three strains: Harfoots, Fallohides and Stoors. The Harfoots were the smallest and the most numerous, with nut-brown skin and hair. The Fallohides were taller and thinner, fair-haired and the least numerous, while the Stoors were the largest, bulkiest and most Mannish of the strains, and to the amazement of their kin, some could actually grow beards and chose to wear shoes. The Hobbits of Eriador primarily lived in the Mannish lands near the town of Bree until the year 1601. This was Year 1 in the Hobbit calendar of Shire Reckoning, when the greater part of the race marched westward again to the fertile lands beyond the Brandywine River. There, after this great migration, they settled down in the Shire, the land that was recognized always thereafter as the homeland of the Hobbits.
(L-R) Stoor, Fallohide and Harfoot Hobbits
Azog the Uruk exults over the body of a fallen dwarf
The Battle of
Azanulbizar
The final battle in the War of the Dwarves and the Orcs took place in Dimrill Dale, before the eastern gates of Moria. The Dwarves triumphed, but they also took heavy losses, including the death of Fundin, the father of Balin and Dwalin, who were to be among the Company of Adventurers that later journeyed to Lonely Mountain, and Náin, the father of Dáin Ironfoot. In this battle, Thorin Oakenshield gained his reputation as a great warrior by seizing a mighty oak branch as a weapon after being disarmed by Orcs. However, it was Dáin who finally slew the Orc chieftain Azog, avenging his fallen father.
The Quest of
Lonely Mountain
Thorin and company approach Hobbiton
The Company of Adventurers
In the year 2941 of the Third Age of the Sun a Company of Adventurers entered the quiet lands of the Shire and disturbed the peace of that place. This Dwarf company of Thorin Oakenshield and Gandalf the Wizard were set on the Quest of Lonely Mountain. They had come to compel the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins to join them on their Quest. Thus the Hobbits of the Shire first became enmeshed in the affairs of greater nations in the world. For though the Shire was a peaceful land, it was like an oasis in a desert of war and strife. In the land of Mordor an evil power was growing that sought to crush all the good forces of the world.
Of the affairs of the world, the Hobbits knew very little, nor did they suspect the great part they were destined to play in the histories of Middle-earth. But all had its beginning in the coming of the Adventurers to the Shire and the desire of Thorin Oakenshield to wrest the inheritance of his people from Smaug, Dragon of Lonely Mountain.
The Shire was situated in the peaceful north-west of Middle-earth
Gollum and the Goblin Caves
Among the first great challenges in Bilbo Baggins’ quest was his descent into the Goblin caves wherein he escaped a Goblin attack, only to discover an even greater danger in the form of the cannibalistic creature known as Sméagol, or Gollum. In the deepest cavern by a dismal lake, Bilbo became entangled in a deadly riddle game, but also discovered a mysterious gold ring that had the power to make its wearer invisible. This ring eventually proved to be the long lost One Ring of Power that was once forged by Sauron the Ring Lord. It was a ring that carried with it a great curse of corruption, and as the Wizard Gandalf would learn many years later, it would be the spur to an even greater adventure and quest.
Gollum lived in a dark cave under the Misty Mountains
Mirkwood was home to many dreadful creatures
The Forest of Mirkwood
The largest forest in Middle-earth was Greenwood the Great, where Thranduil made the Woodland Realm of the Silvan Elves. In the year 1050 of the Third Age a dark power had entered Greenwood. Great Spiders, Orcs, Wolves and evil spirits had haunted the forest and, though the Silvan Elves had not been driven from their realm, they had not been able to halt the spreading darkness. Thereafter Greenwood was called Mirkwood and few dared to travel along its dark paths.
Mirkwood was among the greatest obstacles standing before the company of Thorin Oakenshield on the road to Lonely Mountain.
Smaug the Golden
When Bilbo Baggins and the Company of Dwarves finally reached Lonely Mountain of Erebor, they discovered the treasure of the King under the Mountain in the possession of the greatest dragon of the Third Age. Known as Smaug the Golden, this huge golden-red fire drake had bat-like wings and a coat of impenetrable iron scales. However, his one vulnerable part, his belly, was protected by a waistcoat of gems that had become embedded there from centuries of lying on jewelled treasure hoards. Although his beginnings are obscure, in the year 2770 of the Third Age, Smaug burned and sacked the city of Dale before entering the Dwarf Kingdom under the Mountain, where he slaughtered or drove out the Dwarves. For two centuries he lay on his hoard within Erebor. Then in 2941, his slumbers were disturbed by the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins and Thorin and Company.
Smaug lay for many years on his hoard
The Destruction of
Lake-town
The Lake Men of Esgaroth became complacent as they dwelt in peace in their town that stood above the water on stilts. It had been so long since Smaug had left Lonely Mountain that many people scoffed at the idea that he would ever return to attack them. However, Bilbo’s theft of a cup from his hoard aroused the dragon to fury. He smashed the hiding place of the Dwarves high on the flank of Lonely Mountain, then sped above the ruins of Dale, towards Lake-town. Many of the townspeople believed the dragon’s fire was the King under the Mountain forging gold. But it was not so, and their wooden town could muster little defence against the fires of an enraged dragon.
Once awakened, the Dragon of Erebor rose up in fiery wrath against the Lake Men of Esgaroth
The Battle of the Five Armies
The death of Smaug, the Dragon of Lonely Mountain, freed the treasures of the dragon’s hoard from its guardian. The Dwarves of Thorin Oakenshield were soon joined by an army of Men from Lake-town, the army of the Elf-king of Mirkwood and an army of Dwarves from the Iron Hills. Yet another army, greater in number than the other four together, spilled into the valley under Lonely Mountain. It was led by a vast number of heinous Orcs from the Misty Mountains and they, too, came to claim the dragon’s wealth. Orcs by the thousand, wolves and Wolf-riders, and clouds of bloodsucking bats fell on the gathered armies.
The Battle of the Five Armies was a bloody and chaotic affair
The Battle of the Five Armies claimed the lives of many Elves, Dwarves and Orcs
The Eagles in the Battle
The Great Eagles of the Misty Mountains joined in against the legions of Orcs in the Battle of the Five Armies. These Eagles were of such size that they were capable of carrying Men, Dwarves and Hobbits aloft in their flight. They were the noble descendants of the Eagles of Beleriand, who in the First Age fought in the War of Wrath against the winged fire dragons of Morgoth. During the Quest of Lonely Mountain, Great Eagles inhabited the eastern slopes of the Misty Mountains, near the High Pass leading from Rivendell and not far from Goblin-town. There, they harried the Goblins and their allies, and rescued the Dwarves of the Company of Adventurers from a band of Goblins and Wargs. Later they would become allies and rescuers of members of the Fellowship of the Ring at critical moments of the quest.
The Quest of
the Ring
Bag End was one of the finest holes in Hobbiton
The Shire
The green and pleasant lands of the Shire had been the homeland of the Hobbits since the seventeenth century of the Third Age of the Sun. Here lived Bilbo Baggins, who joined the Quest of Lonely Mountain and on that adventure acquired a magic Ring. This chance discovery drew Bilbo, his heir Frodo Baggins and all the Hobbits of the Shire into the greatest drama of that Age. So it was that the meekest and least of all peoples came to hold the fate of all the world in their hands.
The Barrow-downs were haunted by evil spirits known as Barrow-wights
The Barrow-downs
To the east of the Shire and the Old Forest lay the Barrow-downs, an ancient burial ground. There were no trees or water on these downlands, only grass covering dome-shaped hills that were ringed and crowned with stone monoliths. Considered by many during the Third Age to be the most ancient burial ground of Men on Middle-earth, these barrow graves of royal ancestors were revered by the Dúnedain of Arnor. By the time of the Ring Quest, these burial chambers were haunted by evil spirits known as Barrow-wights, who had their origin in the Witch-king’s realm of Angmar. Passing through this haunted land, the Ringbearer, Frodo Baggins, was drawn into a burial vault and succumbed to the hypnotic spell of these undead phantoms.
The Ford of Bruinen
The Ford of Bruinen was an enchanted river crossing guarded by Elvish powers. For in crossing the river at this ford, one entered the hidden refuge of Imladris. Also known as Rivendell, this was the domain of Elrond Half-elven, who possessed one of the Three Rings of the Elves. It was by the enchantment of Elrond’s ring that the Ford was guarded and the refuge of Rivendell remained hidden from the world. During the Quest of Lonely Mountain, after their passage though the Trollshaws, Thorin and Company were permitted to cross the Ford and enter Rivendell. While in the Quest of the Ring, it was at the Ford of Bruinen that Frodo Baggins was attacked by the Nine Black Riders, those terrible undead servants of Sauron also known as the Ringwraiths.
The river rose in wrath against the Black Riders
The Last Homely
House East of the Sea
In the wake of the War of Sauron and the Elves during the Second Age, Master Elrond Half-elven led the surviving Elven-smiths of Eriador to the refuge of Rivendell in the steep, hidden valley of Imladris at the foot of the Misty Mountains. Here was hidden the House of Elrond. Known as the ‘Last Homely House East of the Sea’, it was a house of wisdom and great learning, and served as a refuge for all Elves and Men of goodwill. It was here that Bilbo Baggins found peace after his adventures, and it was here that Frodo Baggins found refuge after the attack of the Ringwraiths at the Ford. It was also in Rivendell where the Fellowship of the Ring was formed, and the Quest of the Ring was planned. After the War of the Ring, Elrond left Rivendell for the Undying Lands, and although many of the other Elves remained for a time, the refuge was finally abandoned in the Fourth Age when the last Elven ship departed from the Grey Havens.
The Last Homely House nestled in its valley
By the Third Age, Khazad-dûm had become the dark and forbidding Mines of Moria
The Mines of Moria
Most ancient and famous of all the Dwarf kingdoms was that realm originally called Khazad-dûm, the ancestral home of Durin the Deathless, the first of the seven Fathers of the Dwarves. Through five Ages of Stars and three Ages of the Sun the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm were prosperous and strong. In the Second Age of the Sun, these were the Dwarves who had a long friendship with the Gwaith-i-Mírdain, the Elven-smiths of Eregion, who forged the Rings of Power. But in the Accursed Years of Sauron’s dominion in the Second Age, the Dwarves had closed their great doors to the world. At this time, the mansion was renamed Moria, the ‘dark chasm’.
Yet still the Dwarves quarried and worked the forges beneath the Misty Mountains until 1980 of the Third Age of the Sun. In that year the Dwarves delved too deep beneath Mount Barazinbar, and an entombed Balrog was released within the halls of Moria. So terrible was the Balrog’s strength and wrath that the Dwarves were either slain or driven from their kingdom.
When the Fellowship of the Ring entered Moria it was therefore a chasm of darkness that had long been abandoned by Dwarves. Its treasures had been stripped by Orkish hordes and through its barren corridors there still walked the Balrog and many bands of Orcs and Trolls.
Zirak-zigil, one of the cruel peaks of the Misty Mountains
Zirak-zigil and Durin’s Tower
Among the many snowy peaks in the Misty Mountains stands Zirak-zigil, one of the three great mountains that tower over the Dwarf kingdom of Moria. It was also known as Silvertine by Men, and Celebdil by the Elves. The other two peaks of Moria were named Fanuidhol and Caradhras by the Elves, and were commonly called Cloudyhead and Redhorn. Within the pinnacle of Zirak-zigil – at the top of the winding Endless Stair – was a lookout chamber called Durin’s Tower. At the end of the Third Age the Wizard Gandalf did battle with the Balrog of Moria. In this Battle of the Peak, the Endless Stair and Durin’s Tower were destroyed.
The Golden Forest of Lothlórien
The fairest Elf-kingdom remaining on Middle-earth in the Third Age was Lothlórien, where the Noldor lady Galadriel and the Sindar lord Celeborn ruled. In this wooded realm the tallest and fairest trees of Middle-earth grew, and some part of the brilliance of the Elf-kingdoms of ancient times seemed to glow.
At the very heart of Lothlórien was the hill of Cerin Amroth, where the house of the Elf-king Amroth once stood. It was said to be a fair and enchanted place where the Elf-flowers Elanor and Niphredil constantly bloomed. Here Arwen, daughter of Elrond Half-elven, and Aragorn, son of Arathorn, pledged their love; and to this hill Arwen returned in the Fourth Age to seek her final place of rest.
Into the magical realm of Lothlórien came the Fellowship of the Ring, fleeing the servants of Sauron, and there among these Elves, the Galadhrim, they found shelter and rest.
The Galadhrim were wise in the ways of the forest and they lived almost invisibly on high platforms in the trees. Lothlórien was also protected by the power of Galadriel and the Elf Ring Nenya, the Ring of Adamant.
The Mallorn trees of Lothlórien shimmered gold
The Pillars of the Kings towered over the River Anduin
Argonath,
The Gates of Gondor
The Argonath was a pair of massive sculptures cut into the towering cliffs on either side of the river gorge that fed into a lake above the great fall of Rauros on the Anduin River. Argonath means the ‘royal stones’, but they were also known as the Pillars of the Kings or the Gates of Gondor because the images in stone were of Isildur and Anárion, the first kings of Gondor. These massive figures were carved in the living rock in the year 1340 of the Third Age to mark the northern limit of the kingdom of Gondor. And it was by way of the river and through these gates that Frodo the Ringbearer and the Fellowship of the Ring passed on their quest.
The Rauros Falls
The most spectacular waterfall on Middle-earth in the Third Age was the Rauros Falls on the Great River Anduin on the northern border of Gondor. The name Rauros means ‘roaring foam’ an
d accurately described the high waterfall as it fell in a shimmering golden haze from the long lake of Nen Hithoel on the heights of Emyn Muil to the marshlands far below. The falls were unnavigable, but a portage route called the North Stair had been cut in the cliffs as a means of bypassing them. During the Quest of the Ring, the funeral boat of Boromir was sent over the Rauros Falls.
The boat bearing Boromir passed unharmed over the Falls of Rauros
The Golden Hall of the Rohirrim was a place of feasting and warmth