Hildórien

The awakening of Men

When the Sun first rose in the West at the beginning of the First Age, the second of the Children of Ilúvatar awoke in the east of Middle-earth. Men were the Followers, the Hildor, and the land of their waking was Hildórien, far to the east beyond the mountains and lands the Elves had crossed on their journey to the sea. Unlike the Elves at Cuiviénen, Men woke to sunlight rather than stars, and unlike them they were not sought out by the Valar. The Powers were in grief for the Trees and busy with the Hiding of Valinor, and none of them came to Hildórien; only Ulmo thought of Men, and his messages through the waters reached them little. The Eldar say that Men never had the joy of first learning from the Valar, and that this is why their knowledge of Aman was dim and their reverence for the Powers came to them through the Elves.

The shadow on Men

Someone did come to Hildórien. Morgoth, when he learned of the awakening of Men, left Angband for a time and went east into the new lands under the Sun, the only time after his return that he left his fortress, and worked there among the first Men to draw them to his worship and turn them from Ilúvatar. What happened is not told in the Elvish histories, because the Edain would not speak of it even to their closest Elven friends; but the shadow it left on Men was plain to the Eldar, and the wise among the Edain, such as Andreth, knew that something had gone wrong at the beginning. Bëor told Finrod only that a darkness lay behind his people and that they had turned their backs on it and come west seeking light. Those who resisted Morgoth or who fled him, the ancestors of the houses of Bëor, Haleth and Marach, crossed the mountains and the wide lands over centuries until they came to Beleriand. Those who stayed became the Men of the East, from whom in later ages came the Easterlings.

Hildórien lay in the far east of Middle-earth, beyond the mountains and rivers the Elves had crossed on the Great Journey, in lands the Eldar of Beleriand knew only by report. Its exact position is not given, and the Edain themselves lost the way back in their wanderings.