Carn Dûm

Carn Dûm stood at the far northern end of the Misty Mountains, on the western side where the range curves round toward Mount Gundabad, commanding the highlands of Angmar and looking south-west over the moors toward the North Downs and Fornost. The published texts say little about its form. It was a fortress-city rather than a mere castle, the only real city the Witch-king built, and it was strong enough that after the Battle of Fornost the victors were concerned to prevent his escape into it. Its name, the Red Hill, may describe the mountain on which it was raised.

It was from Carn Dûm that the armies of Angmar marched against Rhudaur, Cardolan and Arthedain, and to Carn Dûm that the sorcery of the Witch-king was traced. The Barrow-wight that took the hobbits in 3018 chanted of the dark lord who had sent it, and Merry, waking from its spell, remembered as if it were his own the death of a man of Cardolan pierced by the spears of Carn Dûm.

The Witch-king founded Carn Dûm about T.A. 1300 as the seat of the realm he had been sent north to build. For 675 years it was the source of every attack on the Dúnedain of Eriador: the campaign that killed Argeleb I in 1356, the great invasion of 1409, the haunting of the Barrow-downs, and the final capture of Fornost in 1974. In 1975 the army of Gondor under Eärnur and the Elves of Círdan broke Angmar's host on the plain north of Fornost, and the cavalry of Gondor cut off the Witch-king's flight north toward Carn Dûm. With his army gone and Glorfindel coming against him from Rivendell, the Witch-king abandoned the North altogether. Carn Dûm was left empty, and though orcs remained in the mountains around Gundabad, the city was never occupied by any power again.

A fortress at the northern end of the Misty Mountains on their western side, capital of Angmar; Mount Gundabad lies to the east across the range and the Ettenmoors to the south.