Q: What is the Capital of Rhudaur?
ANSWER: According to the “Tale of Years” in The Lord of the Rings, Rhudaur existed as a separate and independent kingdom from Third Age year 861 until sometime in the 14th century. Rhudaur was the first land where Hobbits settled when they crossed the Misty Mountains into Eriador around the year 1050. By the time Argeleb I took the throne in Arthedain, the descendants of Isildur had perished in both Rhudaur and Cardolan. The last documented independent or semi-independent action of Rhudaur was noted in the entry for 1356, when Argeleb I was slain battle with Rhudaur. For all intents and purposes, Rhudaur ceased to function as an independent state after this time. According to the narrative in “Appendix A”, Rhudaur was occupied by Men from Angmar in 1409.
This is all that we know about the history of Rhudaur. If ever there were any cities in Tolkien’s notes or thoughts, no references to such places have been published. We know from a note that David Salo found in the archives at Marquette University that Aragorn’s people lived in “woodlands between the Mitheithel and Bruinen”. Here, it is said in the original version of “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” that Aragorn’s maternal grand-parents lived in a “hidden fastness in the wilderness”. Readers have speculated on the location of this hidden fastness (which did not have to be in the Angle between the rivers Mitheithel and Bruinen, for the Dunedain could have retreated to that region after Bilbo’s adventure in 2941).
In “Rhudaur and the Little Folk” I proposed the name of a city, Caras Bennas (“(fortified) City of the Angle”), as the capital of Rhudaur. However, this city and the name are both inventions of my own. The words are true Tolkien Elvish, taken from the real Tolkien Sindarin lexicon. But whether Tolkien would ever have named a city like that is anyone’s guess. I suspect he might have conceded its usefulness without necessarily agreeing with the style or choice.
Although J.R.R. Tolkien enjoyed writing little notes and essays that explained every little detail in his stories, he simply could not get to everything. He prepared the appendices for The Lord of the Rings from about 1950 to 1954. This work was done in haste at some points, and he was forced to revise some sections of the appendices when he realized that George Allen & Unwin, his publishers, had changed The Hobbit according to some illustrative examples he had sent them in 1947 (I suspect they did this without Tolkien’s knowledge or permission because by 1950 he had had a falling out with them — perhaps the 1950 Hobbit edition was intended in part to be a gentle nudge to Tolkien).
Hence, the historical notes Tolkien provided for Arthedain, Cardolan, and Rhudaur were only sufficient to provide a stable background for the larger narrative. In fact, he had to excise some of his material because the appendices were proving to be too long. There was thus little incentive for Tolkien to expand upon the few details he had provided for Rhudaur and Cardolan. But one detail that has emerged, and which has yet to receive much attention among readers, is that he actually translated the name “Rhudaur” — it means “evil stop (march, borderland)”. The linguistic note for this translation was published in a table of Sindarin words in a linguistic newsletter a few years ago. Unfortunately, the entry provides no historical context for when the name was bestowed or why.
Rhudaur is mentioned in “Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age”, which was published in The Silmarillion according to JRRT’s intention; but this narrative is composed from the point of view of someone writing in the Fourth Age of Middle-earth, after all the great events have been resolved. While it answers many questions about the history leading up to the War of the Ring, it does not answer any of the questions concerning the minutiae that were not relevant to the procession of great things in Middle-earth. Hence, the narrative says that Elendil’s people settled in Rhudaur but it does not say whether they called the land by that name.
What is ironic is that a kingdom of the Dunedain would take the name “Evil stop (march, borderland)” at all. It could be argued, though not persuasively, that the name is intended to preserve an insult flung at rivals from Arthedain and Cardolan; perhaps the original name of Rhudaur, such an argument might suggest, was discarded in the historical documents that survived the time after Rhudaur fell under the sway of Angmar. I think, however, that the name is meant to be historical and that Tolkien envisioned a context for it that would have been sensible to him (at the time he contrived it) — and which he might later have attempted to explain had he found time and desire to do so.
UPDATE (December 2014): I believe I have solved the mystery of Rhudaur’s name and will share my finding in a new book I am preparing.
In the final analysis all we can say is that the Kings of Rhudaur had to live somewhere and that they had to govern their people from a location that was accessible. Whether it was a city or a freestanding fortress is, for now (unless or until some obscure Tolkien note or essay is published), up to the reader to determine for himself.
# # #
Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
