Q: How Large Was Cerin Amroth?
ANSWER: Cerin Amroth was the ancient home of Amroth, the King of Lothlorien who perished in a storm at sea after he left his people. Many readers and artists have tried to depict Cerin Amroth but J.R.R. Tolkien does not provide much information about it. Nonetheless, we can infer a few things about it from the narrative in the text.
When his eyes were in turn uncovered, Frodo looked up and caught his breath. They were standing in an open space. To the left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Spring-time in the Elder Days. Upon it, as a double crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the inner were mallorn-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold. High amid the branches of a towering tree that stood in the centre of all there gleamed a white flet. At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass. Over all the sky was blue, and the sun of afternoon glowed upon the hill and cast long green shadows beneath the trees.
‘Behold! You are come to Cerin Amroth,’ said Haldir. `For this is the heart of the ancient realm as it was long ago, and here is the mound of Amroth, where in happier days his high house was built. Here ever bloom the winter flowers in the unfading grass: the yellow elanor, and the pale niphredil. Here we will stay awhile, and come to the city of the Galadhrim at dusk.’
The inner circle of trees are said to be “mallorn-trees of great height”. These are mature trees, perhaps 2-300 feet tall. They would have required a large amount of space to stand in a circle, particularly since an even taller mallorn stood in the center of their circle. We can deduce that the smaller white trees must have been far more numerous than the mallorns, but we cannot ascertain any particular number of mallorns.
However, if we make some assumptions about the breadth of a mature mallorn tree’s branches, we can calculate possible sizes of the circles and numbers of trees. For example, suppose the branches of a typical mature mallorn (and these probably would have been more than 1,000 years old) covers a circular area with a diameter of about 50 feet. A larger mallorn might take up a circle with a diameter of 75-100 feet. That is, each of these mallorns could have covered a space of 50-100 feet across, with a larger mallorn in their midst.
You might be able to surround such a large tree with 8-12 somewhat smaller trees. The inner circle may therefore have extended from 200-400 feet across. The outer circle might have added another 25-50 feet all the way around, thus adding 50-100 feet in total breadth of the foliage on the mound/hill top. That is, the outer circle of trees might have been anywhere from 250 to 500 feet across.
That’s a pretty large area, roughly equivalent in size to a small village or large estate — which seems about right for a kingly home. Tolkien unfortunately allows time to pass quickly and vaguely as Haldir leads Frodo and Sam through Cerin Amroth, so it is easy to lose track of how much distance they MIGHT be covering:
Haldir looked at them, and he seemed indeed to take the meaning of both thought and
word. He smiled. `You feel the power of the Lady of the Galadhrim,’ he said. `Would it please you to climb with me up Cerin Amroth?’They followed him as he stepped lightly up the grass-clad slopes. Though he walked and breathed, and about him living leaves and flowers were stirred by the same cool wind as fanned his face, Frodo felt that he was in a timeless land that did not fade or change or fall into forgetfulness. When he had gone and passed again into the outer world, still Frodo the wanderer from the Shire would walk there, upon the grass among elanor and niphredil in fair Lothlórien.
They entered the circle of white trees. As they did so the South Wind blew upon Cerin Amroth and sighed among the branches. Frodo stood still, hearing far off great seas upon beaches that had long ago been washed away, and sea-birds crying whose race had perished from the earth.
Haldir had gone on and was now climbing to the high flet. As Frodo prepared to follow him, he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree’s skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.
As he stepped out at last upon the lofty platform, Haldir took his hand and turned him toward the South. `Look this way first! ‘ he said.
How long does it take Frodo and Sam to climb up the slope to the circle of white trees? How long does it take them to pass through to the inner circle of mallorns? How long does it take them to reach the central mallorn? How long does it take them to climb that tree to the high flet from which they look out upon Lothlorien, Anduin, and southern Mirkwood? Tolkien doesn’t say — and, of course, it’s only later that the reader learns there was a great power slowing the effect of Time in Lothlorien. Haldir calls it the power of the Lady (of the Golden Wood) and its “secret”, but we know he is speaking of the Ring Nenya, of which Galadriel is the Keeper. The lack of accountability for distance and time shares Frodo’s perspective with the reader — we really don’t know how long the group stayed at Cerin Amroth, which was like a great tourist stop or museum for the Elves.
In the end, if you are designing a game campaign or writing fan fiction you will have to decide for yourself how large the mound was, how many trees it held, and how long it would take a pair of hobbits to walk up to the center of the trees. But I think the more magnificent you imagine the place to be (not as large as Caras Galadhon, of course), the better. In its heyday Cerin Amroth may have been the center of a larger stand of woods, perhaps of a city much like Caras Galadhon.
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