Rhudaur

Rhudaur was the eastern third of old Arnor: the rugged country between the Weather Hills and the Misty Mountains, bounded on the north by the Ettenmoors and on the south by the Great East Road and the Hoarwell. Its heart was the wooded highland later called the Trollshaws, and the Angle of land between the Hoarwell and the Loudwater, where for a time Stoor hobbits lived beside the rivers. Rivendell lay within its nominal borders but was never subject to it.

Of the three kingdoms Rhudaur had the fewest Dúnedain and the most Men of other kinds, hill-folk related to the Dunlendings who had never been friends of the Númenóreans. Its lords built castles on the ridges of the Trollshaws, and many of the ruins that Strider's company passed in T.A. 3018 were their work. When the Witch-king established Angmar to the north, he found in Rhudaur a willing instrument.

Rhudaur was created in 861 for one of the younger sons of Eärendur. Its Dúnedain were few from the beginning and grew fewer, and by the fourteenth century an evil lord of the hill-men had seized the kingship and made a secret alliance with Angmar. When Argeleb I of Arthedain claimed all Arnor in 1349, Rhudaur refused him, and in 1356 its forces and Angmar's together killed him in the Weather Hills. The hobbits of the Angle fled about this time, some going west to the Shire and some back over the mountains to Wilderland.

In 1409 Angmar's great host crossed the Hoarwell through Rhudaur and burned Amon Sûl. The remaining Dúnedain of Rhudaur were killed or driven out, and the land was occupied outright by the evil Men of Angmar's service. It ceased to exist as a kingdom, and after the fall of Angmar in 1975 it was simply the wild, empty north-east of Eriador, home to trolls and the memory of old castles.

Eastern Arnor between the Weather Hills and the Misty Mountains, north of the Great East Road and the Hoarwell and south of the Ettenmoors; the Trollshaws and the Angle lie within it.