The Iron Hills

The hills of iron

The Iron Hills run east and west across the north-eastern corner of Rhovanion, a few days' march east of the Lonely Mountain and north of the road that came up from the Sea of Rhûn. The River Carnen, the Redwater, rises among them and flows south to join the River Running, and the Dwarf-road that began in the Blue Mountains and crossed Mirkwood on the Old Forest Road had its eastern end here. The hills were named for their ore, and iron was the wealth of the Dwarves who settled them, as gold and gems had been the wealth of Erebor. Their smiths made the long-hooked mattocks, the iron-shod boots and the knee-length mail that the men of Dale saw glinting on Dáin's army.

The Iron Hills stood outside the reach of Smaug and the orcs of the mountains, and for that reason they were the one realm of Durin's folk that never fell. They were the reserve from which the Mountain was re-peopled.

When the Dwarves fled the dragons of the Grey Mountains in 2590, Thrór went to Erebor and his younger brother Grór led his own following east to the Iron Hills, where they mined and prospered. Grór's son Náin marched with the host of the seven houses in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs and was killed by Azog at the Battle of Azanulbizar in 2799; his son Dáin, then a stripling, cut off Azog's head before the East-gate of Moria and won the name Ironfoot. Dáin ruled the hills for the next hundred and forty years.

In November 2941 Thorin's ravens carried his call for help, and Dáin marched to Erebor with five hundred grim, heavily armed Dwarves. They arrived as the Elves and Men stood ready to fight Thorin over the treasure, and the quarrel was swallowed by the goblin attack that became the Battle of Five Armies. After Thorin's death Dáin became King under the Mountain, and much of the Iron Hills' people went with him. The hills remained part of his realm, and their iron and their soldiers were what made Erebor strong enough to hold against the Easterlings in the siege of March 3019.

A range of hills east of Erebor in north-eastern Rhovanion, source of the River Carnen, south of the eastern arm of the Grey Mountains and north of the plains that lead to the Sea of Rhûn.