Mittalmar

The Inlands

The Mittalmar was the central region of Númenor, the raised body of the star from which the five promontories ran out into the Sea. It stood higher than the arms of the island and had no beaches: where it met the water between the capes it ended in cliff and headland, so that the Inlands were a country turned inward, of turf and open sky rather than of harbours. Trees were fewer there than anywhere else in the realm.

At its heart rose the Meneltarma, whose lower slopes climbed so gently out of the plain that the mountain seemed to grow from the grass. At its southern foot the ground opened into the Noirinan, the Valley of the Tombs, and from a spring in that valley the river Siril ran south across the Inlands to the fenland of the south coast, where the fisherfolk of Nindamos had the largest of the shore villages.

Pasture and Kingsland

West and south-west of the mountain lay the Emerië, the green sheep-country of the island. North-east of it was Arandor, the Kingsland, the most populous district of Númenor, which held the royal city of Armenelos and the road down to the haven of Rómenna. The Inlands bred shepherds, farmers and horsemen, and the Númenóreans of the Mittalmar loved horses above all other beasts.

The settled heart of the realm

Because the Kingsland lay within it, the Mittalmar held the authority of Númenor from the days of Elros to the Downfall. Its ceremonial life belonged to the mountain: three times in the year the king climbed the winding way of the Meneltarma to speak the prayers to Eru, and in the valley below the rulers were laid in tombs cut from the rock, so that mountain and grave stood within a few miles of one another.

Where the coasts bred mariners, the Inlands kept the older and quieter manner of life. Erendis turned from the sea-loving court to the Emerië and raised her daughter Tar-Ancalimë among the flocks, and the quarrel of that marriage was in part a quarrel between the two halves of the island. In the last centuries the Mittalmar was ground of the King's Men rather than of the Faithful, and it went down entire in S.A. 3319, save, as the exiles believed, the peak of the Meneltarma. The detailed picture of the region comes only from the Description of the Island of Númenor in Unfinished Tales.

The Mittalmar occupied the centre of Númenor and was everywhere raised above the five promontories, so that it had no coastal plain and no harbour of its own. Its surface was grassland and low rolling downs, treeless by comparison with the Andustar or the Hyarrostar. The Meneltarma stood at the middle, the Noirinan opened beneath it on the south, and the Siril ran from that valley to a wide fen at the southern shore. Arandor, the Kingsland, lay to the north-east toward Rómenna; the Emerië lay to the west.