House of Hador

The people of Marach

The last and most numerous of the three peoples of the Edain to enter Beleriand were led by Marach, who crossed the Blue Mountains in F.A. 313 close behind the Haladin. They were a tall, warlike and orderly folk who marched in disciplined companies, and the Green-elves were alarmed enough by their numbers to complain to Finrod. Marach settled his people in Estolad, south and east of the people of Bëor, and for two generations they lived there.

Marach's son Malach went into the service of Fingolfin in Hithlum and took the Elvish name Aradan. His grandson Hathol was the father of Hador Lórindol, Goldenhead, who was fostered in Fingolfin's household and became so beloved of the High King that in F.A. 416 he was given the lordship of Dor-lómin, the southern vale of Hithlum. The people of Marach gathered there and were known thereafter as the House of Hador.

Character

The Hadorians were the tallest of the Edain and the most like the Elves in stature, fair-haired and blue-eyed, strong and quick to both anger and laughter. They loved the open field and horses, and they made the best soldiers among Men. Unlike the Bëorians they kept their own language, though their lords spoke Sindarin; that Mannish speech survived in Dor-lómin and became the foundation of Adûnaic in Númenor. Their women were formidable: Morwen held her house against the Easterlings for years, and Aerin fed the starving under the eye of her captor.

The lords of Dor-lómin

Hador ruled Dor-lómin for nearly forty years, through the last of the long peace. His sons were Galdor and Gundor, and his daughter Glóredhel married Haldir of Brethil. Galdor married Hareth of the Haladin, and their sons were Húrin and Huor, who in their youth were carried by the Eagles to Gondolin and kept its secret all their lives. Húrin married Morwen of Bëor's house; their children were Túrin, Lalaith and Nienor. Huor married Morwen's cousin Rían, and their son was Tuor.

The wars of Hithlum

When the Siege of Angband broke in F.A. 455, Hador and Gundor died defending the fortress of Eithel Sirion in the rearguard of Fingolfin. Galdor died at the same fortress seven years later, killed by an arrow during a fresh assault, and Húrin, then twenty-one, drove the Orcs off. Húrin became lord of Dor-lómin and the chief ally of Fingon, and when Maedhros formed his great union, the House of Hador marched out in its full strength.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad of F.A. 472 destroyed the house as a power. Fingon fell, and as Turgon retreated toward Gondolin, Húrin and Huor and the Men of Dor-lómin held the Fen of Serech behind him. Huor was killed by a poisoned arrow. Húrin fought on until he was buried under the bodies of the Orcs and taken alive. Morgoth gave Hithlum to the Easterlings who had served him and shut the Men of Hador in as their thralls.

Under the Easterlings

For the next thirty years the people of Hador lived as a subject folk. The Easterling chieftains such as Brodda and Lorgan seized the halls and lands, took the women as wives, and worked the men as slaves. Morwen, protected by fear of her as an Elf-witch, held out long enough to send Túrin to Doriath, and Tuor was fostered by the Grey-elves of Mithrim before falling into slavery himself. Aerin, married against her will to Brodda, kept her kin alive. When Túrin returned to Dor-lómin in 495 he killed Brodda in his own hall, but the uprising that followed cost the lives of the last free men of his house.

Túrin and Tuor

The house's two great sons took opposite roads. Túrin, under the curse Morgoth laid on Húrin's children, wandered from Doriath to outlawry, to Nargothrond and to Brethil, slew Glaurung, and died by his own sword in F.A. 499. Tuor was chosen by Ulmo and carried his warning to Gondolin, married Idril, led the survivors out of the burning city in 510, and fathered Eärendil, whose voyage brought the Valar back into the war. Through Eärendil, the House of Hador became the ancestor of every king of Númenor and of the Dúnedain.

Legacy

When the surviving Edain sailed to Númenor after the War of Wrath, the people of Hador were the largest part of them, and the speech of Númenor, Adûnaic, was their tongue. The House of Elros was reckoned as the heir of the House of Hador, and the golden-haired, tall Men of the Third Age, the Rohirrim and the Men of Dale, were held by the loremasters of Gondor to be kin of the Edain, close in blood to the people of Hador though they had never crossed into Beleriand. The blue-eyed, fair Númenóreans of the earlier ages showed Hador's inheritance most clearly.

The people of Hador were tall and strong, fair-haired and blue-eyed, and their lords in particular stood out among Men. Hador was called Goldenhead for his hair; Túrin, exceptionally, was dark-haired and grey-eyed after his mother's kin. They were reckoned the most Elf-like of Men in bearing and were formidable in open battle.

The Hadorians kept their own Mannish language alongside Sindarin, and it was from this tongue that Adûnaic and eventually the Common Speech descended. They were a people of warriors, horsemen and hall-dwellers, organised under a hereditary lord who owed service to the High King of the Noldor; the lords of Dor-lómin sat high in the councils of Hithlum and their sons were fostered among the Elves. They valued laughter, loyalty and reckless courage, and they held their women in honour. Húrin's house at Dor-lómin was a great timber hall attended by servants and retainers, with a household that included the crippled woodwright Sador and the Elven-healers who visited from Mithrim.

The people of Marach descended from those Men who had forsaken the shadow in the east and wandered westward. They came latest to the Blue Mountains, being the most numerous and slowest to move, but once in Beleriand they rose fastest, because their lord's line entered the service of Fingolfin and was rewarded with Dor-lómin.

Crushed at the Nirnaeth and enslaved under the Easterlings, the House of Hador survived through the escape of Tuor and the removal of the remnant Edain to Númenor, where it became the principal ancestry of the Númenórean people and the source of their language.