Q: What Is The History of Tharbad?
ANSWER: Few places in Middle-earth are more misunderstood than Tharbad. It could be that only Umbar has suffered greater harm from fannish conviction and convolution than Tharbad. Gamers turned Tharbad and Umbar into adventure milieus filled with thieving guilds, plotting wizards, cagey beasts, and magical talismans the like of which Tolkien himself could not have imagined. In a certain context, all of that is fine. Go have fun in Middle-earth and make of it what you will.
The problem is that people who have attempted to “document” Middle-earth for others have made an absolute mess of things where cities like Tharbad and Umbar are concerned. To say you cannot trust what has been published in the various wikis, fan fiction archives, and other online resources is an understatement. Those who have lavished those resources with their inadequate research will quickly rise to their defense and say, “Well, Martinez never bothered to help us — and he’s not always right anyway.” Both of which statements are quite true, but nonetheless don’t excuse the sloppiness and in some cases outright propaganda that has permuted Tharbad and Umbar into unrecognizable caricatures of what Tolkien tried to write about these cities.
But let’s just look at Tharbad. Its story as written by Tolkien himself could be pieced together in less than 2 paragraphs of text. The entry in Robert Foster’s Complete Guide to Middle-earth probably sums up all the canonical facts about Tharbad that can be found among the various Tolkien books. Everything else you find is either based upon contextual analysis or absolute nonsense, and the sad truth is that it’s very nearly impossible to tell the difference between them.
The history of Tharbad, such as it is, begins with a reference in the notes for the story “Aldarion and Erendis” where Christopher Tolkien writes:
It is also stated that “no records are now left of the later voyages that Aldarion made,” but that “it is known that he went much on land as well as sea, and went up the River Gwathló as far as Tharbad, and there met Galadriel.” There is no mention elsewhere of this meeting; but at that time Galadriel and Celeborn were dwelling in Eregion, at no great distance from Tharbad (see p. 246).
From the essay “Concerning Galadriel and Celeborn” we can extract a little more information. In describing the events of the War of the Elves and Sauron (Second Age years 1697-1701) Tolkien wrote:
Now for long years the Númenóreans had brought in their ships to the Grey Havens, and there they were welcome. As soon as Gil-galad began to fear that Sauron would come with open war into Eriador he sent messages to Númenor; and on the shores of Lindon the Númenóreans began to build up a force and supplies for war. In 1695, when Sauron invaded Eriador, Gil-galad called on Númenor for aid. Then Tar-Minastir the King sent out a great navy; but it was delayed, and did not reach the coasts of Middle-earth until the year 1700. By that time Sauron had mastered all Eriador, save only besieged Imladris, and had reached the line of the River Lhûn. He had summoned more forces which were approaching from the south-east, and were indeed in Enedwaith at the Crossing of Tharbad, which was only lightly held. Gil-galad and the Númenóreans were holding the Lhûn in desperate defence the Grey Havens, when in the very nick of time the great armament of Tar-Minastir came in; and Sauron’s host was heavily defeated and driven back. The Númenórean admiral Ciryatur sent part of his ships to make a landing further to the south.
Subsequently Christopher introduces a brief philological note concerning the name of the river “Gwathlo”, in which his father wrote:
The river Gwathló is translated “Greyflood.” But gwath is a Sindarin word for “shadow,” in the sense of dim light, owing to cloud or mist, or in deep valleys. This does not seem to fit the geography. The wide lands divided by the Gwathló into the regions called by the Númenóreans Minhiriath (“Between the Rivers,” Baranduin and Gwathló) and Enedwaith (“Middle-folk”) were mainly plains, open and mountainless. At the point of the confluence of Glanduin and Mitheithel [Hoarwell] the land was almost flat, and the waters become sluggish and tended to spread into fenland. But some hundred miles below Tharbad the slope increased. The Gwathló, however, never became swift, and ships of smaller draught could without difficulty sail or be rowed as far as Tharbad.
At this point we know three things about Tharbad: That Aldarion visited the place (meeting Galadriel there), that it had been fortified around the time of the War of the Elves and Sauron, and that small ships could be sailed or rowed as far upstream as Tharbad. The essay just cited above continues on with:
When Sauron was at last defeated and driven east out of Eriador most of the old forests had been destroyed. The Gwathló flowed through a land that was far and wide on either bank a desert, tree¬less but untilled. That was not so when it first received its name from the hardy explorers of Tar-Aldarion’s ship who ventured to pass up the river in small boats. As soon as the seaward region of salt airs and great winds was passed the forest drew down to the river-banks, and wide though the waters were the huge trees cast great shadows on the river, under which the boats of the adventurers crept silently up into the unknown land. So the first name they gave to it was “River of Shadow,” Gwath-hîr, Gwathir. But later they penetrated northward as far as the beginning of the great fenlands; though it was still long before they had the need or sufficient men to under¬take the great works of drainage and dyke-building that made a great port on the site where Tharbad stood in the days of the Two Kingdoms. The Sindarin word that they used for the fenland was lô, earlier loga [from a stem log- meaning “wet, soaked, swampy”], and they thought at first that it was the source of the forest-river, not yet knowing the Mitheithel that came down out of the mountains in the north, and gathering the waters of the Bruinen [Loudwater] and Glanduin poured flood-waters into the plain. The name Gwathir was thus changed to Gwathló, the shadowy river from the fens.
Aldarion and his Venturers did not undertake any great works at Tharbad — the essay seems to imply that such work took place later in the Second Age. Hence, if there was a settlement at Tharbad when Aldarion visited Middle-earth it was not a Numenorean settlement. In Note 6 for “The Disaster of the Gladden Fields” Tolkien wrote:
6 Three hundred leagues and more [i.e., by the route which Isildur intended to take], and for the most part without made roads; in those days the only Númenórean roads were the great road linking Gondor and Arnor, through Calenardhon, then north over the Gwathló at Tharbad, and so at last to Fornost; and the East-West Road from the Grey Havens to Imladris. These roads crossed at a point [Bree] west of Amon Sûl (Weathertop), by Númenórean road-measurements three hundred and ninety-two leagues from Osgiliath, and then east to Imladris one hundred and sixteen: five hundred and eight leagues in all. [Author’s note.] – See the Appendix on Númenórean Linear Measures, pp. 297-8.
Thus, we know that by the beginning of the Third Age the exiled Numenoreans had constructed a great road leading from Osgiliath to Fornost. The two kingdoms also maintained separate garrisons on either side of the river from that time until the Great Plague of 1636, when at least the Gondorian but perhaps also the Arnorian garrison was removed. That event is described in a lengthy note attached to the essay on the Muster of Rohan:
In ancient days the southern and eastern bounds of the North Kingdom had been the Greyflood; the western bounds of the South Kingdom was the Isen. To the land between (the Enedwaith or “middle region”) few Númenóreans had ever come, and none had settled there. In the days of the Kings it was part of the realm of Gondor, * but it was of little concern to them, except for the patrol¬ling and upkeep of the great Royal Road. This went all the way from Osgiliath and Minas Tirith to Fornost in the far North, crossed the Fords of Isen and passed through Enedwaith, keeping to the higher land in the centre and north-east until it had to descend to the west lands about the lower Greyflood, which it crossed on a raised causeway leading to a great bridge at Tharbad. In those days the region was little peopled. In the marshlands of the mouths of Greyflood and Isen lived a few tribes of “Wild Men,” fishers and fowlers, but akin in race and speech to the Drúedain of the woods of Anórien. † In the foothills of the western side of the Misty Mountains lived the remnants of the people that the Rohirrim later called the Dunlendings: a sullen folk, akin to the ancient inhabitants of the While Mountain valleys whom Isildur cursed. ‡ They had little love of Gondor, but though hardy and bold enough were too few and too much in awe of the might of the Kings to trouble them, or to turn their eyes away from the East, whence all their chief perils came. The Dunlendings suffered, like all the peoples of Arnor and Gondor, in the Great Plague of the years 1636-7 of the Third Age, but less than most, since they dwelt apart and had few dealings with other men. When the days of the Kings ended (1975-2050) and the waning of Gondor began, they ceased in fact to be subjects of Gondor; the Royal Road was unkept in Enedwaith, and the Bridge of Tharbad becoming ruinous was replaced only by a dangerous ford. The bounds of Gondor were the Isen, and the Gap of Calenardhon (as it was then called). The Gap was watched by the fortresses of Aglarond (the Hornburg) and Angrenost (Isengard), and the Fords of Isen, the only easy entrance to Gondor, were ever guarded against any incursion from the “Wild Lands.”
The Silmarillion translates “Tharbad” as “crossway” (from Sindarin thara + pata, “athwart, across” + “way”).
Virtually all of this material was written after The Lord of the Rings was first published. These essays and notes most likely date to the early or middle 1960s. They were never fully integrated into the Middle-earth canon, although Tolkien at one time expressed hope of creating a companion volume to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which (presumably) would have included finished versions of many of the stories and essays that Christopher published in Unfinished Tales.
Christopher obliquely points out that Tharbad stood on the edge of Eregion. In fact, if you have never wondered how the Elves passed into and out of Eregion, Tharbad seems like a pretty logical crossing place on the river. There was no Imladris (Rivendell) at the time Eregion was founded. Elrond still lived with Gil-galad in Lindon, where most of the Eldar of Middle-earth lived. Tharbad thus would have been on the road from Ost-en-Edhil (and Khazad-dum) to Mithlond and Lindon.
But does that mean that the Elves should have built a settlement at Tharbad? No. On the other hand, why would Galadriel be hanging around a swamp when she met Aldarion? Perhaps as he ventured up the river word went out to the Elves of Eregion that Numenoreans were in town and she came down to the muddy ford to meet his ship. Or it could be there was a town or village of non-Numenorean Men there. Or we could speculate that Nandorin Elves had settled there.
We can probably rule out any Dwarves having founded Tharbad. All we can be sure of is that the place was given a name because it was significant to those who crossed the river there, which at the very least would have been the Elves of Lindon and Eregion and perhaps might also have included Dwarves, Men, and other Elves.
Tharbad was the most westerly “land route” into northern Eriador and therefore was strategically significant to Sauron and Elrond. The Numenoreans who fortified the Gwathlo would also have had to fortify Tharbad. But Sauron’s forces pushed their way across the river, destroying all the settlements of Men and Elves across the region. After the war Eregion was abandoned and the west-gate of Khazad-dum was shut. If Tharbad had indeed been a town of any importance before then, it would have needed a new reason to exist afterwards.
So did Elendil have to re-establish Tharbad, or could it have become important again after the War of the Elves and Sauron? Tolkien doesn’t say. You’ll have to decide that for yourself. But the town was an important trading point for Arnor. In another note Tolkien points out that the fastest way to reach Arnor from Gondor was to take ship from Pelargir, sail up the Gwathlo, and disembark at Tharbad, following the northern road to Fornost.
After the Great Plague Gondor and Arnor would have had less economic need for maintaining their highways but they certainly could have maintained contact through shipping. Hence, Tharbad may have received Gondorian ships up until it was deserted after being flooded in Third Age year 2912. But by then the town would have been far less important than in the past for nearly nine hundred years, for Arnor had finally been destroyed in the year 1974.
See also:
- Who Lived in Tharbad?
- Was Tharbad Ever An Independent City-state?
- Do You Have a Map of Tharbad?
- What Was the Capital of Cardolan?
- Who Ruled Cardolan, Land of Red Hills?
- Razing Arnor: How Real Were the Dunadan Conspiracies?
- Charting the Shire Lines
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