Eorl the Young

Lineage and youth

Eorl was born in 2485, the son of Léod, lord of the Éothéod, the horse-breeding Northmen who lived in the upper vales of the Anduin between the Misty Mountains and the Grey Mountains. They were the descendants of the Northmen of Rhovanion and kin to the Men of Dale, and they had moved north under their lord Frumgar after the fall of Angmar to escape the pressure of Dol Guldur and the Easterlings. Léod was a famous horse-tamer, and he caught a wild white foal that grew into a horse of surpassing size and speed. When he tried to mount it, the horse threw him and he was killed. Eorl was then sixteen years old. He went out after the horse, called it to him, and demanded as weregild for his father that it serve him for life. The horse submitted, and Eorl named it Felaróf, the first of the Mearas, the line of horses that would carry the kings of the Mark for the rest of the Third Age. He became lord of the Éothéod in the same year, 2501, and the epithet the Young stayed with him all his life, because his hair remained yellow and he kept the look and the vigour of youth into his old age.

The summons of Cirion

In 2510 Gondor faced ruin. A people out of the east called the Balchoth, allied with Orcs from the mountains, swarmed over the Anduin into Calenardhon, the empty province between the White Mountains and the river, and the army of the Steward Cirion was cut off on the plain north of the Limlight. Cirion had sent riders to the Éothéod months before, asking their help in the name of the old friendship between Gondor and the Northmen, and only one of them, Borondir, got through. Eorl held a council and chose to answer. He left his land with few defenders and rode south with the whole strength of his people, some seven thousand Riders and several hundred mounted archers, on a road no host had taken for centuries.

The ride took many days. Passing Lothlórien, the horsemen found themselves shrouded in a white mist that hid them from the eyes of Dol Guldur; the Rohirrim later remembered it as the protection of the Lady of the Golden Wood, and in Unfinished Tales it is Galadriel herself who sent it. On 15 April Eorl came unlooked-for out of the north onto the Field of Celebrant, fell on the rear of the Balchoth as they were driving Cirion's men into the river, and scattered them. The Riders hunted the invaders across the plains of Calenardhon until none remained.

The Oath of Eorl

Cirion rewarded the Éothéod with the land they had saved. Calenardhon had been half-empty since the Great Plague, and Gondor could no longer guard it. The Steward gave it to Eorl and his people for their own, and on the hill of Amon Anwar, the Halifirien at the eastern end of the Ered Nimrais where the tomb of Elendil then lay, the two lords swore an oath binding their peoples in perpetual friendship: each would come to the other's help in need. This was the Oath of Eorl and Cirion, and it was still remembered five hundred years later when Théoden rode to the Pelennor. Cirion's reasons and the wording of the oath are told in detail in Unfinished Tales.

King of the Mark

Eorl brought his people down from the north, women, children and herds, and settled them in the grasslands of the new realm. He called it the Riddermark, the Mark of the Riders; the men of Gondor called it Rohan and its people the Rohirrim, the Horse-lords, and both names endured. He built his house at Aldburg in the Folde, at the foot of the mountains; it was his grandson's generation that moved the king's seat to Edoras. Eorl ruled for thirty-five years as the first King of the Mark. He was killed in 2545 fighting a band of Easterlings who had broken into the Wold, and Felaróf, who had carried him at Celebrant, died with him. He was laid in the first of the mounds on the west side of Edoras, and simbelmynë grew on it thereafter.

Legacy

Eorl's son Brego succeeded him and finished the work of clearing the eastern marches. Every king of Rohan was counted from Eorl, and the Rohirrim named themselves Eorlingas, the sons of Eorl, for as long as their line lasted. The oath he swore was the political foundation of the friendship of Rohan and Gondor, and Éomer and Aragorn renewed it on the same hill at the beginning of the Fourth Age.

Slain in 2545 in battle with Easterlings in the Wold, and buried in the first of the royal mounds at Edoras.