Andustar

The Westlands

The Andustar was the western promontory of Númenor and, after the Kingsland, the region most loved by the Númenóreans. Its northern parts were rocky and cold like the Forostar, with fir-woods on the heights that came down close to the shore; but southward the land grew rich, with birch and beech on the higher ground and oak and elm in the valleys between.

The three bays

Three bays bit westward into the coast. The northernmost was the Bay of Andúnië, on whose sheltered shore stood Andúnië itself, the chief haven of the west, where the greater part of the region's people lived. The middle bay was smaller and its country steeper. The southernmost and largest was the Bay of Eldanna, so called because it faced toward Eressëa; the land about it was warm and rainy, and there stood Eldalondë the Green among the fragrant woods of the Nísimaldar. The river Nunduinë ran west through that country to the sea at Eldalondë, passing on its way through the little lake of Nísinen, which took its name from the sweet-smelling shrubs and trees along its banks.

The Elf-friends of the West

The Andustar looked toward the Undying Lands, and its people stood closest of all Númenóreans to the Eldar. The white ships of Tol Eressëa came to its two great bays, bringing gifts, trees and birds and carrying away songs, and Sindarin was the daily speech of the western coast. The Lords of Andúnië, kin to the kings through Silmariën, held the region, and when the realm turned against the Valar they became the leaders of the Faithful.

That made the Westlands suspect. The Elven ships ceased to come; Ar-Gimilzôr forbade the Elvish tongues and drove the Elf-friends out of the Andustar east to Rómenna, and the region passed into the keeping of the King's Men. Tar-Palantir undid part of the harm but could not heal the division of the people. The Andustar sank with the island in S.A. 3319, and nothing of it survived except in the ships of Elendil, which carried its heirlooms and its lineage east. The account of its three bays, its woods and its rivers is preserved only in the Description of the Island of Númenor in Unfinished Tales.

The Andustar formed the western arm of the star-shaped island, between the Forostar to the north-east and the Hyarnustar to the south. Its northern end was rocky highland with fir-woods; its southern end, about the Bay of Eldanna, was the warmest and rainiest part of Númenor. The three western bays gave the region the best anchorages on the island after Rómenna, and the Nunduinë was its principal river, flowing through the lake of Nísinen to the sea at Eldalondë.