Rohirrim

Origins in the North

The Rohirrim descended from the Northmen of Rhovanion, a people akin to the Edain who had lived east of Mirkwood in the middle Third Age and served Gondor as allies and horsemen. After the Wainriders destroyed the kingdom of Rhovanion in 1856, part of this people withdrew west into the vales of the Anduin, between the Carrock and the Gladden Fields, and became known as the Éothéod, the horse-people. Around 1977, when Angmar had fallen and the Orcs of the Misty Mountains had been weakened, their lord Frumgar led them north to the empty lands where the Anduin rose, between the Grey Mountains and the northern spurs of the Misty Mountains. There they built a stronghold near the meeting of the Greylin and Langwell, drove out what was left of Angmar's servants, and grew into a numerous people. Frumgar's son Fram killed the great cold-drake Scatha, and from the dragon's hoard came the treasure that the kings of the Mark later carried south.

The ride of Eorl

In 2510 Gondor faced destruction. The Balchoth, a horde of Easterlings, crossed the Anduin into Calenardhon in overwhelming numbers, and the northern army of Gondor under the Steward Cirion was cut off and pinned between the invaders and the river. Cirion had sent riders north six months earlier to beg the Éothéod for help, though the two peoples had had no dealings for centuries; only one messenger, Borondir, reached them. Eorl the Young, sixteen years lord of his people and twenty-five years old, took counsel and decided to go. He led seven thousand riders and several hundred horsed archers five hundred miles down the Anduin, passing unmolested along the eaves of Lothlórien under a mist that some said Galadriel had sent, and reached the Field of Celebrant on the day of battle. The charge of the Éothéod, falling on the Balchoth from the north, broke them utterly and the Orcs who fought with them were driven into the river.

Cirion's reward was without precedent. Three months later, on the hill of Halifirien where the tomb of Elendil then lay, he gave Eorl and his people the whole of Calenardhon in perpetuity, to hold as a free kingdom under its own kings, in return for an alliance in arms. Eorl swore the Oath of Eorl upon the tomb, and Cirion swore a like oath for Gondor. The land was named Rohan by the Gondorians, the land of the horse-lords, and the Mark by the Rohirrim themselves.

The line of kings

Eorl ruled from 2510 to 2545 and died in battle against Easterlings in the Wold; he was buried in the first of the barrows at Edoras, the hill-town his son completed. Brego built the golden hall of Meduseld there and died a year after its completion, grieving for his son Baldor, who had vowed at the feast to tread the Paths of the Dead and never came back. Aldor the Old, Brego's second son, reigned for seventy-five years, drove the last of the Dunlendings from the land east of the Isen, and settled the valleys of the White Mountains. Fréa, Fréawine, Goldwine, Déor and Gram followed, and in their days the Dunlendings crept back into the Westfold and even into the ring of Isengard.

The ninth king, Helm Hammerhand, was the last of the first line. His reign ended in catastrophe. In 2758, invaded from the west by Wulf, son of the Dunlendish lord Freca whom Helm had killed with a blow of his fist, and from the east by Easterlings, and with Gondor itself beset by Corsairs and unable to help, Helm was beaten at the Crossings of the Isen and driven into the fortress of the Hornburg in the Deeping-coomb. Then the Long Winter came. For five months snow lay over the Mark; Edoras was held by Wulf; Helm's sons Haleth and Háma died, the first at the doors of Meduseld and the second in a sortie from the Hornburg; the king himself went out alone in the snow, killing Dunlendings with his hands, and was found frozen dead on the Dike in the spring. His sister's son Fréaláf Hildeson came out of Dunharrow when the snows melted, surprised Wulf in Meduseld and killed him, and drove the Dunlendings from the Mark with the help of the recovering Gondor. The Hornburg was renamed Helm's Deep.

Fréaláf began the second line. Brytta, Walda, Folca and Folcwine cleared the Mark of Orcs after the war of Dwarves and Orcs in 2799, retook the Westfold from the Dunlendings, and sent riders to Gondor's aid in 2885, where Folcwine's twin sons Folcred and Fastred fell together in Ithilien. Fengel was a grasping king, and his son Thengel left for Gondor, married Morwen of Lossarnach, and returned only reluctantly to reign in 2953. His son Théoden was thus born in Gondor, and the speech of the court in Thengel's day was Sindarin as well as Rohirric.

Horse-culture and Meduseld

The life of the Mark was built around the horse. The Rohirrim bred horses on the green plains between the Entwash and the Isen, and they were the finest in Middle-earth save only the Mearas, the lordly horses said to be descended from Eorl's own Felaróf, which only the king and his sons might ride. Shadowfax, lent to Gandalf, was chief of them at the end of the Third Age. Every man of the Mark who could bear arms rode, and their fighting unit was the éored, a company of some hundred and twenty riders under a captain. The Mark was divided into the East-mark and West-mark under two Marshals, with the king's own muster around Edoras; the Riders fought with spear and sword, their shields painted green and white, and their war-cry was the sound of horns.

Edoras stood on a green hill in the mouth of the valley of Harrowdale, ringed by a dike and palisade, and above it stood Meduseld, the golden hall of the kings, thatched with gold and hung inside with tapestries of the deeds of Eorl. The kings were laid in barrows outside the walls, nine on the west side for the first line and, at the time of the War of the Ring, seven on the east for the second, the mounds white with the flowers called simbelmynë. Behind Edoras in the mountains was the refuge of Dunharrow, an ancient stronghold of the earlier peoples where the Rohirrim mustered in time of war.

The War of the Ring

Under Théoden the Mark fell under the influence of Saruman through his agent Gríma, and the king sat old and enfeebled while Orcs raided the Wold and Dunlendings gathered on the Isen. Théodred, the king's son, fell at the Fords of Isen on 25 February 3019, and Éomer, the king's nephew, was imprisoned for disobeying Gríma's orders. Gandalf came to Edoras on 2 March and roused Théoden, who rode west at once, met Saruman's army at Helm's Deep on the night of 3 March, and with the coming of Gandalf, Erkenbrand and the Huorns destroyed it.

Gondor's summons then reached the Mark. Théoden mustered six thousand spears at Dunharrow and rode for Minas Tirith, guided through the Drúadan Forest by Ghân-buri-Ghân, and at dawn on 15 March the Rohirrim charged onto the Pelennor Fields and broke the siege. Théoden was killed by the Witch-king; Éowyn, who had ridden in secret, and the hobbit Merry destroyed the Witch-king together; Éomer took up the kingship on the field. The Riders marched with Aragorn to the Black Gate, and after the fall of Sauron Éomer renewed the Oath of Eorl with King Elessar.

The Rohirrim were tall and fair-skinned, with yellow hair worn long and braided, and grey or blue eyes; the Orcs called them Whiteskins and the Dunlendings called them Strawheads. The women were as tall and fair as the men, and the royal house was noted for its height. They were hardy, long in the leg from a life in the saddle, and keen-sighted across open country. Warriors wore mail hauberks, tall helms with horsetail crests, and green cloaks; the king's guard carried gilded shields. Their horses were grey, bay and white, strong and long-lived, bred for war as much as for the plough.

The Rohirrim spoke Rohirric, a Northern tongue of Men close to the ancient language of the hobbits of the Anduin vale, and most of them also knew Westron; they kept no written histories but a great store of songs and alliterative verse recited by their minstrels and remembered by heart. They were a proud, generous and warlike folk, slow to trust strangers, loyal beyond death to their lords, and quick to mourn and to sing. Their kings ruled with the counsel of the Marshals and the great lords of the Mark, and the king's word was law; a woman of the royal house could hold the Mark in the king's absence, as Éowyn did. They honoured their dead with barrows and the white evermind that grew on them, and remembered their kings in a long roll of alliterative names.

They did not build in stone but in timber, carved and gilded, and they were not much given to trade or to the crafts of the Elves and Dwarves, though they treasured heirlooms such as the horn of the Dwarves' hoard given to Merry. Their ties to Gondor were formal and their attitude to Elves wary; the Golden Wood was a place of dread to them until the War of the Ring. Above all they loved their horses, and to harm a horse or to steal one was a crime beyond forgiveness.

The Rohirrim began as the Éothéod, the horse-people of the upper Anduin, a branch of the Northmen who had once served the kings of Gondor from Rhovanion. Their forebears were closely related to the House of Hador among the Edain, which was why the Gondorians called them Middle Men and counted them as kin rather than as men of darkness. Their kingdom was born on the Field of Celebrant in T.A. 2510 when Eorl's riders saved Gondor's northern army, and confirmed at Halifirien by the gift of Calenardhon and the twofold Oath of Eorl and Cirion.

Rohan came through the War of the Ring diminished by the losses of Helm's Deep and the Pelennor but undefeated. Éomer Éadig reigned for sixty-five years of the Fourth Age, married Lothíriel of Dol Amroth, and often rode with King Elessar in the wars beyond the Anduin and the Sea of Rhûn. Éowyn married Faramir and lived in Ithilien. The Oath of Eorl was renewed, the Dunlendings were sent home in peace and Isengard given to the Ents, and the alliance of the Mark and Gondor was the foundation of the West's peace under the Reunited Kingdom.