Rhovanion
Also calledWilderland, The East-lands
Rhovanion, or Wilderland, is the great region east of the Misty Mountains and north of Gondor, stretching from the Grey Mountains to the Emyn Muil and from the Anduin to the borders of Rhûn. It held Mirkwood, Lothlórien, Erebor and Dale, and its Northmen were the ancestors of the Rohirrim.
Description
Wilderland
Rhovanion is the name the Dúnedain gave to everything east of the Misty Mountains that was neither Gondor nor the far East; hobbits called it Wilderland. Its western edge is the range itself and the vale of Anduin below it, where the Carrock, Beorn's hall and the Gladden Fields lie. Its heart is the vast forest of Mirkwood, and beyond the forest the open grasslands run east to the Sea of Rhûn and Dorwinion. In the north stand the Grey Mountains, Erebor with the towns of Dale and Lake-town at its feet, and the Iron Hills. Southward the land dries into the Brown Lands and breaks against the rocky hills of the Emyn Muil above Rauros, where Gondor's old northern border ran.
Lothlórien lies on the Anduin's western bank at the mouth of the Silverlode, the one Elvish realm that kept the old light of the West. The Woodland Realm of Thranduil held the north-eastern corner of Mirkwood. Everywhere else the country was thinly settled by Northmen, kin from afar of the Edain, who lived along the river and the eastern eaves of the forest.
History
In the early Third Age the Northmen prospered as friends of Gondor, and in the 1200s their chief realm under Vidugavia, self-styled King of Rhovanion, supplied a queen to Gondor and the origin of the Kin-strife. The Great Plague of 1636 emptied much of the land, and the Wainriders out of Rhûn destroyed the kingdom of the Northmen in the wars of 1851 to 1944; survivors fled to the Anduin vales and became the Éothéod, whose descendants under Eorl rode south in 2510 and were given Rohan. The Stoors and Harfoots who became the Hobbits had already left the Anduin for Eriador a millennium earlier.
From about 1050 the shadow at Dol Guldur turned Greenwood into Mirkwood and made Wilderland a dangerous country. Smaug destroyed Dale in 2770. The quest of Erebor in 2941 and the Battle of Five Armies reversed the decline: the dragon died, Dale was refounded, and the Dwarves returned. During the War of the Ring Rhovanion fought its own war, with Easterlings besieging Erebor and Dale while Dol Guldur assailed Lórien and Thranduil's realm. In the Fourth Age it became a land of allied realms under the protection of the Reunited Kingdom.
Geography
The lands east of the Misty Mountains and north of the Emyn Muil, bounded by the Grey Mountains, the Iron Hills and the approaches to the Sea of Rhûn. Its principal river is the Anduin and its principal forest Mirkwood.
Places within11
- Realm
Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, is the dwarf-kingdom in the north of Rhovanion founded by Thráin I in T.A. 1999 after the fall of Moria. Its wealth drew the dragon Smaug in 2770; Thorin Oakenshield's quest of 2941 ended in Smaug's death and the Battle of Five Armies, and under Dáin Ironfoot the restored kingdom held out against Sauron's Easterlings in the War of the Ring.
- Realm
Lothlórien is the woodland realm between the Celebrant and the Anduin, the only country east of the Sea where the golden mallorn trees grew. Ruled in the Third Age by Galadriel and Celeborn and guarded by the power of Nenya, it kept the Shadow at bay and stood unstained while the world outside changed; it sheltered the Fellowship of the Ring, threw back three assaults from Dol Guldur, and emptied within a generation of Galadriel's departure over the Sea.
- Forest
Mirkwood, once Greenwood the Great, is the immense forest east of the Anduin that fills the heart of Rhovanion. Home to Thranduil's Woodland Realm in the north-east, it was darkened for two thousand years by the Necromancer of Dol Guldur, whose spiders and orcs made it the most perilous forest in Middle-earth, until the War of the Ring cleansed it and it was renamed Eryn Lasgalen.
- River
Anduin, the Great River, is the longest river of western Middle-earth, rising in the north between the Misty and Grey Mountains and flowing south past Lórien, the Argonath and Osgiliath to the Bay of Belfalas. Isildur died in its waters, the Ring lay lost in its bed for two and a half thousand years, and the Fellowship followed it south from Lórien to Rauros.
- City
Dale is the town of Men in the valley beneath the Lonely Mountain, grown rich in the days of the Dwarves and destroyed by Smaug in T.A. 2770. Bard the Bowman, heir of its last lord, refounded it after the dragon's death, and his grandson Brand died defending it against the Easterlings in the War of the Ring.
- Town
Lake-town, or Esgaroth, is the trading town of the Lake-men, built on wooden piles out in the Long Lake south of Erebor. It sheltered Thorin's company in T.A. 2941, was burned by Smaug in the dragon's last flight, and was rebuilt after Bard slew him with the black arrow.
- Plain
The Gladden Fields are the wide marshes of reed and iris where the river Gladden meets the Anduin below the Misty Mountains. Here Isildur was killed and the One Ring lost in T.A. 2, and here, two and a half thousand years later, the Stoor Déagol found it and Sméagol murdered him for it.
- Place
The Carrock is a great island of rock standing in the Anduin north of the Old Ford, on the eastern side of the High Pass. Beorn named it and cut steps to its flat summit, and the Eagles set Thorin's company down there after rescuing them from the goblins in T.A. 2941.
- Mountain range
The Grey Mountains, Ered Mithrin, run eastward from Mount Gundabad along the northern edge of Mirkwood. Rich in ore, they were the chief home of Durin's folk for four centuries of the Third Age until the dragons of the Withered Heath drove the Dwarves out in 2589 and sent Thrór back to Erebor.
- Mountain range
The Iron Hills are the range east of Erebor where Grór, brother of Thrór, settled a branch of Durin's folk in T.A. 2590. Rich in iron and strongly held, they were the home of Dáin Ironfoot, whose army of five hundred mailed Dwarves marched to the Battle of Five Armies and afterwards followed him to the Mountain.
- Place
Beorn's Hall was the wooden house of the skin-changer Beorn in the oak-lands between the Carrock and Mirkwood. Thorin's company sheltered there in T.A. 2941, and it became the seat of the Beornings, who afterwards guarded the High Pass and the Ford of Carrock.
Peoples
Timeline
- c. T.A. 1050
The Shadow in Greenwood
Sauron settles at Dol Guldur and the forest becomes Mirkwood; the Hobbits begin to leave the Anduin vales.
- T.A. 1250s
Kingdom of the Northmen
Vidugavia rules the Northmen east of Mirkwood as an ally of Gondor.
- T.A. 1636
The Great Plague
Rhovanion is depopulated by plague spreading from the East.
- T.A. 1856
The Wainriders overrun the Northmen
The kingdom of the Northmen is destroyed; the survivors flee to the Anduin and later become the Éothéod.
- T.A. 2510
Eorl rides to Celebrant
The Éothéod leave Wilderland to save Gondor and are granted Rohan.
- T.A. 2770
Smaug descends on Erebor
The dragon destroys Dale and drives out the Dwarves.
- T.A. 2941
Battle of Five Armies
Smaug's death and the defeat of the goblins restore the northern realms of Wilderland.
- T.A. 3019, March
The War in the North
Easterlings besiege Erebor and Dale; Dol Guldur attacks Lórien and Mirkwood and is destroyed.
Sources
- The Hobbitchapters 7 to 10
- The Lord of the Rings: AppendicesAppendix A, I (iv) on the Northmen; Appendix A, II 'The House of Eorl'; Appendix B
- The Fellowship of the RingPrologue on the Hobbits' origins in the Anduin vales
- Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth'Cirion and Eorl'
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