Q: How Many Realms did the Sindar Start in the Second Age?
ANSWER: In Appendix B “The Tale of Years” to The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote (in the introduction to the Second Age): “…before the building of the Barad-dûr many of the Sindar passed eastward, and some established realms in the forests far away, where their people were mostly Silvan Elves.” Readers sometimes ask how many of these realms there were and where they would have been located.
According to Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth two of the Elven realms were established among the Silvan Elves who dwelt in or near the southern end of Greenwood the Great. These Elves were descendants of the Nandor and Avari. The Nandor were members of the Teleri, the third Kindred of the Eldar, who forsook the Great Journey to Valinor in the Vales of Anduin. As their numbers increased they spread south through the Vales of Anduin into the regions that later became Calenardhon, Ithilien, Anorien, Lebennin, Belfalas, Enedwaith, and Eriador. Many of these Nandor later migrated to Beleriand, where they settled in Ossiriand under their king Denethor.
The Avari were those Elves who refused the summons of the Valar. They were akin to the Teleri and Noldor. These Elves gradually wandered westward and settled among, sometimes mingling with, the Nandor. Some Avari even reached Beleriand and settled in Ossiriand (joining Denethor’s people) or Taur-im-Duinath to the west.
The Avari and Nandor living in the northern Vales of Anduin became the Wood Elves of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. However, it is conceivable that in the first 1,000 years of the Second Age that there were Elves living in the woodlands of Ithilien and Anorien, and that they also accepted rulers from among the Sindar.
In The Hobbit, of course, we are also told that the Elves of northern Mirkwood have kin in the south, presumably in the land of Dorwinion, where they obtain their potent wines. Hence, it could be that Tolkien also meant to imply that Dorwinion was founded during the Second Age migrations of the Sindar (abandoning earlier conceptions of a “Dorwinion”).
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