Dunland

Dunland lies along the western flanks of the Misty Mountains south of the ruins of Eregion, in the eastern part of Enedwaith, north of the Gap of Rohan and the river Isen. It is a country of brown hills, heath and scattered woodland, poor by comparison with the plains to the south, and its people, the Dunlendings, were a dark-haired, sturdy folk of the same ancient stock as the Men of Bree and the hill-men of Rhudaur. They remembered old wrongs: the Númenóreans who felled their forests, and above all the Rohirrim, who had been given the green lands of Calenardhon that the Dunlendings had begun to settle. They called the Riders the Forgoil, the Strawheads, and for five centuries there was no peace between them.

Dunland was also, for a time, a home of hobbits. The Stoors who came west over the mountains about T.A. 1150 settled first in the Angle and in Dunland, and some of their kin stayed on among the hill-men. The Hobbits of Bree and the Shire preserved a few Dunlendish words in their family names.

The Dunlendings were never subjects of any kingdom. After the Rohirrim received Calenardhon in T.A. 2510, Dunlendings who had drifted into the empty province were driven out, and the grievance festered. In 2754 Helm Hammerhand of Rohan killed Freca, a lord of Dunlendish blood, and in 2758 Freca's son Wulf led a great host out of Dunland, took Edoras, and besieged Helm in the Hornburg through the Long Winter until the Dunlendings were driven out by Fréaláf in the following spring.

Saruman, holding Isengard from 2759, cultivated the old hatred. He stirred up the Dunlendings, told them that Rohan had stolen their land, and drew them into his armies. At the Battle of the Hornburg on March 3, 3019, thousands of Dunlendish hill-men fought beside the Uruk-hai and were the only enemies to survive it; Théoden and Erkenbrand spared them, made them swear not to cross the Isen in arms again, and sent them home astonished at the mercy of the Strawheads. In the Fourth Age Dunland was quiet, and the Rohirrim and Dunlendings kept an uneasy peace.

The hill-country at the western feet of the southern Misty Mountains, north of the Gap of Rohan and the Isen and south of the ruins of Eregion; the Fellowship's road south from Rivendell ran along its eastern edge.