Minor places in Middle-earth

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Middle-earth contains thousands of places. Some of the interesting minor places in the Middle-earth legendarium are described below.

• Almaren (meaning blessed place) was an island in the Great Lake, the home of the Valar in the middle of Arda. It was at the place where the light of the Two Lamps mingled. Almaren was attacked and damaged by Melkor, and the Valar moved far to the West, to Valinor.

  According to some traditions, the island of Almaren survived the attack, and was the same island as Tol Eressëa.

• Bamfurlong is the farmland of Farmer Maggot located in the Marish of the eastern part of the Shire. The boggy nature of the land makes for above ground habitation rather than the traditional hobbit-hole.

  Tolkien himself suggested the name Bamfurlong comes from Old English meaning roughly bean-field.

• Carrock is a stony eyot in the upper reaches of the River Anduin, to the north of the Old Ford. In Chapter 7 of The Hobbit, Gandalf states that the steps from the base of the rock to the flat top were made by Beorn and that "Carrock" is Beorn's name for it. This is somewhat of a linguistical joke on Tolkien's part, since car in Anglo-Saxon means "rock," and the Irish for "rock" is "carraig."

• Cerin Amroth is the mound of Amroth, where elanor grows, that stood in the heart of Lórien and held the house of that king before he was lost. It was here that Aragorn and Arwen plighted their troth centuries later, and it was here where Arwen, after Aragorn's death, went to die.

• Deeping Coomb is the deep, well-defended valley in the northern White Mountains that held Helm's Deep and the castle of the Hornburg. The site of an important battle, the Battle of the Hornburg, during the War of the Ring. The word coomb is a rare Brythonic survival word; meaning a small deep dry valley, easily defended. It gives its name to many places in the British Isles.

• Dimrill Dale is a name in the tongue of Men of the North for a valley lying east of Khazad-dûm. The valley is also called Nanduhirion in Sindarin and Azanulbizar in Khuzdul. A battle was fought there in 2799 T.A. between Dwarves and the Orcs of Moria, in which the latter were defeated and their leader Azog killed. The Fellowship of the Ring encamped there having escaped from Moria, after the loss of Gandalf.

  A feature of the vale was the Mirrormere, a crystal clear lake in which Durin first saw the stars. The river Celebrant|Silverlode ran through the vale to Lórien.

• The Door of Night is a guarded portal in the distant West of the World, through which Morgoth was cast after his defeat in the War of Wrath. Its origins are unclear: according to some accounts, it was made by the Valar as a passage for the Sun, which would return into the World through the Gates of Morning in the east. According to others, though, it was made expressly as a gateway through which to expel Morgoth. The Door of Night was guarded by Eärendil, bearing his Silmaril aloft in his shining ship Vingilot which he used to journey through the "oceans of heaven (...) into the starless voids".

• Durin's Tower is the tower that stood on the peak of Celebdil above Khazad-dûm, where Gandalf defeated Durin's Bane. It could be reached only by a long stairwell, the Endless Stair, which began in the deep far below the mines.

• Durthang was an old castle in northern Mordor. It stood in the northern Ephel Dúath, on the slopes above the Isenmouthe.

• The Walls of Night are the extraordinary walls that surrounded Arda in ancient times, beyond Ekkaia, the Encircling Sea. In the west and east of the World, Ekkaia was wide, and the Walls were a great distance from land. In the north and south, however, the Encircling Sea was much narrower. This was how Melkor returned into the World during the Years of the Lamps of the Valar, coming secretly over the Walls of Night into the north of Arda, and building there his fortress of Utumno beyond the knowledge of the Valar.