Helm Hammerhand

Lineage

Helm was born in 2691, the son of Gram, eighth King of the Mark, and he succeeded his father in 2741. He was a man of great size and strength and a grim temper, and he was the last king of the first line of Eorl. He had two sons, Haleth and Háma, a daughter whose name is not recorded, and a sister, Hild, whose son Fréaláf would in the end inherit his kingdom.

Freca

Among the lords of Rohan in Helm's day was Freca, who held wide lands on both banks of the river Adorn on the western border, where the Mark ran up against Dunland. Freca claimed descent from King Fréawine, but he had much Dunlendish blood and was dark-haired, and he was rich and powerful enough to disregard the king's summons when it suited him. In 2754 he came to Edoras with a large following and demanded, before the whole council, that Helm give his daughter in marriage to Freca's son Wulf. Helm mocked him for his girth and put him off until the council had finished its business. Then he walked Freca out of the hall, told him the fight between them was a private matter, and struck him once with his fist. Freca fell dead. Helm declared Freca's kin the enemies of the king, and Wulf and his followers fled west over the Adorn.

The invasion of Wulf

Four years later Rohan's enemies struck together. In 2758 a great force of Dunlendings, joined by the men of the Adorn and by enemies of Gondor who had landed at the mouths of the Isen and the Lefnui, invaded from the west under Wulf, while Easterlings came over the Anduin into the Eastemnet at the same moment. Gondor itself was beset by the Corsairs and could send no help. Helm met the western invasion at the Crossings of the Isen and was beaten with heavy loss, and he fell back with the remnant of his army to the ancient fortress at the head of the Deeping-coomb, then called the Hornburg and the Súthburg, which had been built by Gondor in the days of its power. Wulf marched on Edoras and took it. Haleth, Helm's elder son, died at the doors of Meduseld, the last to defend them, and Wulf sat in the Golden Hall and called himself king.

The Long Winter

Then came the Long Winter, which began in November 2758 and lasted nearly five months. Snow lay deep over the whole Mark, and the Dunlendings holding the Deeping-coomb and the Rohirrim shut up in the Hornburg both starved. Helm's younger son Háma led a sortie out of the fortress against his father's advice and was lost in the snow with all his men. Grief and hunger made the king terrible. He took to going out alone at night, clad in white, walking among the enemy camps and killing men with his bare hands, for he believed that no weapon could harm him if he carried none himself. Before he went out he blew a great horn from the Hornburg, and the Dunlendings came to fear the sound of it more than they feared the king, and would flee down the valley rather than face him.

One night early in 2759 Helm went out and did not come back. When the thaw came he was found on the Dike, still standing, frozen in the snow like a stone. The Dunlendings dared not approach the body.

Fréaláf and the end of the war

As the winter broke, Helm's sister-son Fréaláf came down out of Dunharrow, where many of the Rohirrim had taken refuge, with a small company of desperate men. He entered Meduseld by surprise and killed Wulf there, and then retook Edoras. Gondor, freed at last from its own war, sent help, and the Dunlendings were driven out of the Mark across the Isen before the year ended. Fréaláf was crowned as tenth King and the first of the second line, and it was at his crowning that Saruman appeared and asked the Steward Beren for the keys of Orthanc.

Helm was laid in the ninth mound at Edoras, the last of the first line, and simbelmynë grew so thickly on his grave that the mound looked as if it were covered in snow. The Hornburg and the whole coomb were renamed Helm's Deep in his memory, and the horn in the tower there sounded again in the War of the Ring, when Théoden rode out at dawn against the host of Saruman. The Rohirrim said that Helm's ghost still walked the Deep in times of danger.

Died standing on the Dike of the Hornburg in the Long Winter of 2759, frozen in the snow; buried in the ninth mound at Edoras, the last of the first line of kings.