Nan Dungortheb

The valley of dreadful death

Nan Dungortheb was a long, narrow valley running along the foot of the Ered Gorgoroth, shut in on the south by the enchanted northern eaves of Neldoreth and the Girdle of Melian. The streams that came down from the mountains were poisoned by the creatures that lived there, and whoever drank of them was seized by madness and despair. The evil of the place came from Ungoliant, who lived a while in the mountains above after fleeing Morgoth, and from the spiders she left behind, which spun their webs across the ravines and hunted whatever passed. The Elves said that the shadow of Melian's Girdle met the horror of the mountains there, and that between the two the valley was full of phantoms.

No road ran through it, though a track skirted its northern edge beneath the cliffs, the way by which travellers from the vale of Sirion reached the pass of Aglon and the lands of the sons of Fëanor. Aredhel, riding that way against advice, was separated from her escort in the shadows, and her companions searched for her and turned back to Gondolin believing her dead. Beren, coming down from the Ered Gorgoroth, crossed the valley from north to south, the only person known to have done so, and reached Doriath ragged and aged by the horror of the journey, though the memory of it did not keep him from Lúthien. The Silmarillion records that he never told anyone what he had endured there. The valley sank beneath the sea with the rest of Beleriand.