Q: Did the Kingdom of Dale Conquer Other Cities?
ANSWER: In The Lord of the Rings Gloin tells Frodo that King Brand of Dale rules a mighty kingdom that stretches between the Celduin and Carnen rivers. Many readers infer that Lake-town is part of Brand’s kingdom. But readers sometimes ask if there were other cities. After all, if the kingdom extended as far east as the Red River (Carnen), then there must have been people living along the river who acknowledged Brand’s authority. Did these people live in cities?
While it is certainly conceivable that there were small cities situated along the Celduin and Carnen rivers, it is more plausible to guess that most of the communities consisted of small villages. Historically, every large city is surrounded by a network of smaller towns and villages, ultimately extending out to a thin line of farms and estates.
Ancient Europe’s tribes and civilizations dwelt amid large tracts of unbroken land. Although there were cities built along the coasts and rivers from the Black Sea to the western shores of Iberia, there were fewer people living in Europe 2-3,000 years ago than there are today.
J.R.R. Tolkien undoubtedly viewed Middle-earth having relatively few cities but many small villages and farms scattered across the landscape, separated by distance and empty land. The Northmen of Dale and Lake-town trade with nearby communities, to be sure. In The Hobbit the reader is told that the men of Lake-town trade with other men living south along the Running River (Celduin). At the end of the book Bilbo hears from Gandalf and Balin that:
…Bard had rebuilt the town in Dale and men had gathered to him from the Lake and from South and West, and all the valley had become tilled again and rich, and the desolation was now filled with birds and blossoms in spring and fruit and feasting in autumn. And Lake-town was refounded and was more prosperous than ever, and much wealth went up and down the Running River; and there was friendship in those parts between elves and dwarves and men.
Hence, there were men living in or near northern Mirkwood as well as south along the river. These woodmen of northern Mirkwood are mentioned again in an essay concerning the princes of the Silvan Elves which Christopher Tolkien published in Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth:
…Men also were increasing in numbers and in power. The dominion of the Númenórean kings of Gondor was reaching out northwards towards the borders of Lórien and the Greenwood. The Free Men of the North (so called by the Elves because they were not under the rule of Dúnedain, and had not for the most part been subjected by Sauron or his servants) were spreading southwards: mostly east of the Greenwood, though some were establishing themselves in the eaves of the forest and the grass¬lands of the Vales of Anduin….
In the essay on the Northmen (published in the section “Cirion and Eorl”), we are told that the Northmen of Rhovanion (located between Greenwood the Great and the Celduin) “lived mostly in the open and had no great cities…” in “low wooden houses and stables”. Some of these Northmen of Rhovanion fled across the Celduin when their kingdom was invaded by the Wainriders “and were merged with the folk of Dale under Erebor (with whom they were akin)”. A few Northmen, it seems, remained in the former region of Rhovanion for several more centuries until the early 26th century of the Third Age, when Cirion the Steward learned that the Balchoth were “slaying or driving north up the River Running and into the Forest the remnant of the Northmen, friends of Gondor that still dwelt east of Mirkwood.”
Bard I, his son Bain, and Bain’s son Brand probably recruited their followers from among many small clans and villages of Northmen. Beorn seems to have recruited his own followers from similar small communities in the Vales of Anduin. There is, in fact, a reference to unnamed villages of men living in the foot-hills of the Misty Mountains east of Anduin in The Hobbit. Hence, if you want to imagine Brand’s kingdom in a manner consistent with Tolkien’s declared facts, then assume there were no other cities besides Dale and Lake-town, but that there were probably many scattered farms and villages between the Celduin and Carnen rivers.
There would have been roads leading across the region toward Dale and the Iron Hills. And most likely any riverside villages or farms would have used boats or would have been able to accomdodate boats.
See also:
- Were Bard and His Descendants Also Kings Over Lake-town?
- How Large was the Kingdom of Dale’s Army?
- How Many Tribes of Northmen Were There?
- How Was the Kingdom of Dale Governed?
- When Was the Kingdom of Dale Founded?
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