#tolkien #middleearth
Q: When Did Eriador Become Deserted?
ANSWER: The question inspiring this article wasn’t so much about when Eriador became deserted as how deserted it was (presumably at the time of the War of the Ring). I received the following question in August 2021:
Hi, I was wondering if you believe that it was possible that homesteads, farms or small villages existed in Eriador outside of Bree-Land or the Shire? Was the area too hostile with roaming wolves, orcs, barrow-wights and other creatures for these to be viable, without the protection of rangers? How about other regions, like Rhovanion or the Vales of Anduin?
Okay, so we’re asking about more than simply Eriador (which name means “The Lone-lands” in Sindarin). Tolkien, by the way, did not coin the phrase “lone-lands”. You can find examples of this phrase from the 19th century in both prose and poetry. It’s most often used of (presumably) empty wastelands or vast wilderness areas. The implication is that few if any people lived there.
So one question that comes to mind is when the name Eriador would have been bestowed upon the region between the Lhûn river and the Misty Mountains, north of the Gwathló river. After the lingering Teleri began settling there in the Elder Days, the region was almost never really devoid of people. Admittedly, we don’t know how many Elves ever lived in Eriador. On the other hand, Tolkien gives the impression that Eriador became quite populous toward the end of the First Age. There were Nandor living there (even after Denethor had gathered as many as he could find and led them to Beleriand to become the Green-elves). Avari also made their ways into Eriador (and Beleriand before it was drowned). And finally many Men settled in Eriador. The Edain were only small western groups of the much larger populations.
From these and other groups were descended the Elves and Men who lived throughout Eriador in the first half of the Second Age (up to the War of the Elves and Sauron). During the war many ancient settlements were destroyed or abandoned as the free peoples fled before Sauron’s armies. Most of them (it seems) took refuge beyond the Lhûn with Gil-galad, but many also fled to Imladris with Elrond, the army he led, and survivors of Eregion.
Presumably these survivors spread out across Eriador again after the war ended. And they may have included people of Numenorean descent, since they had begun making permanent settlements in Middle-earth from about the year 1200 onward. Hence, it was among the descendants of the Edainic peoples and the early Numenorean colonists that Elendil and some of his followers settled near the end of the Second Age. Arnor, we are told, was quite populous.
We don’t know any details about Eriador’s populations throughout its history. We’re only told when people lived there, when they throve, and when they declined. After Isildur’s death (and due to heavy losses in the War of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men), Tolkien hints that Arnor’s population declined. Elendil’s city of Annúminas was abandoned sometime after Third Age year 249 (when his grandson Valandil died). Elrond tells us:
‘In the North after the war and the slaughter of the Gladden Fields the Men of Westernesse were diminished, and their city of Annúminas beside Lake Evendim fell into ruin; and the heirs of Valandil removed and dwelt at Fornost on the high North Downs, and that now too is desolate. Men call it Deadmen’s Dike, and they fear to tread there. For the folk of Arnor dwindled, and their foes devoured them, and their lordship passed, leaving only green mounds in the grassy hills.’
The lands to the south of Lake Evendim, where the Shire of the Hobbits was later established, where the original royal demesne of Elendil and the High Kings. According to a text published in The Peoples of Middle-earth:
1601. …A host of Periannath migrates from Bree westward, and crosses the R. Baranduin (Brandywine). The land beyond, between the Baranduin and Emyn Beraid, had been a demesne of the Kings of Arnor, where they had both chases and rich farms; but they were now untended and falling into wilderness. The king Argeleb II therefore allowed the Periannath to settle there, for they were good husbandmen.(20) They became his subjects in name but were virtually independent and ruled by their own chieftains. Their numbers were swelled by Stoors that came up from southern Eriador and entered the land from the south and dwelt mostly near to the Baranduin. This land the Periannath or Halflings called ‘The Shire’. Shire-reckoning begins with the crossing of the Baranduin in this year.
This text was changed for publication, either to save space or for stylistic purposes, but the historical detail of who had lived there before doesn’t conflict with anything published in The Lord of the Rings. Gildor Inglorion also told Frodo (in the published book) that “others” had lived there before the Hobbits.
So I think it’s clear from these notes and the narratives provided in LoTR that Arnor’s decline began soon after the War of the Last Alliance. It happened gradually over time and was no doubt influenced by internal politics, such as the division of the realm into three lesser kingdoms in Third Age year 861.
The wars between the three Dunadan kingdoms diminished them further. But the rise of Angmar led to wars that also weakened the Dunadan realms. And that leads me to another important point: Angmar was populated by “evil men” (as Rhudaur was populated by “hill-men”). And there were Orcs and Trolls as well. We don’t know how extensive their populations were, or what became of them after the fall of Angmar. But we do know that there were occasional conflicts between the northern “evil folk” and the Dunadan, Elves, and Hobbits for centuries.
I cited all of that to illustrate how the populations of Eriador changed over time. There is no way to project a simple demographic onto the map because the historical (unnumbered) populations varied over time.
By the time of the War of the Ring, the towns and villages of Eriador were all confined to the Shire, the Buckland, and the Breeland. We don’t know if Aragorn’s people had any towns, but in a note for one of the texts published in The Nature of Middle-earth, Carl Hostetter includes a fragment of text that was originally written for “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”:
Trolls had lived in the north of the Misty Mountains since days before memory, especially near the Ettenmoors; but they increased in numbers and wickedness while the realm of Angmar lasted. They then retreated east of the mountains, but about 300 years before the War of the Ring they returned and began to trouble Eriador, in spite of the vigilance of the Rangers, making dens in the hills even as far from the mountains as the North Downs. In the time of Arador a band threatened the house of teh Chieftain, which was then in the woods near the Hoarwell north of the Trollshaws, though many of the Dunedain lived in the woods between Hoarwell and Loudwater.
In another variant text for this story published in The Peoples of Middle-earth Tolkien wrote:
“In the latter days of the last age [> Ere the Elder Days were ended], before the War of the Ring, there was a man named Dirhael [> Dirhoel], and his wife was Evorwen [> Ivorwen] daughter of Gilbarad, and they dwelt in a hidden fastness in the wilds of Eriador; for they were of the ancient people of the Dunedain, that of old were kings of men, but were now fallen on darkened days….”
In one other random note, Tolkien mentioned there were men living in Eryn Vorn (a small forested land southwest of the Shire, along the coast). These men may have been related to the Gwathuirim of the First and Second Ages (thus related to the Men of Bree, the Dunlendings, and other groups of the late Third Age). Given that “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony” says “in those days no other Men had settled dwellings so far west, or within a hundred leagues of the Shire”, we must assume there were no villages of Men left in Eriador outside of the Bree-land and the Angle.
So, could an isolated farmstead have still existed beyond the village lands?
Yes, I believe so. In fact, in “Narn i Chin Hurin” we learn that the Folk of Haleth (also descended from the ancestors of the Gwathuirim) lived in isolated farms throughout the woodlands of Brethil and nearby lands. Clearly, as the first text about Arador shows, Tolkien imagined that hardy men could and would live by in single family homesteads.
The Vales of Anduin and Mirkwood
We know there were villages in these regions because they are mentioned in The Hobbit and they appear on the Map of Wilderland. Tolkien wrote nothing in subsequent texts to contradict these facts established by publication.
We don’t have any town names, although many people like to speculate about the nature of Rhosgobel (where Radagast lived). The name is translated as “Brown Hay” in one source and a gobel is defined to mean “walled house or town”. According to Tolkien’s unfinished index for The Lord of the Rings, Rhosgobel was a “russet vilage” or “enclosed village”. Tolkien derived the second element of gobel from -pel (“an enclosure”), which is also found in names like Ephel Brandir (Brandir’s fenced village in Brethil where many of the Folk of Haleth lived).
So it seems likely to me – based on the maps, various texts describing fenced villages, and the etymology of Rhosgobel that many if not all of the villages of the Northmen dwelling in the Vales of Anduin and/or Mirkwood around the time of the War of the Ring were fenced villages.
Farther east (or beyond Mirkwood) the only towns we hear about are Lake-town and Dale. But Bilbo visited an Elvish village in Thranduil’s realm (he stole food from a house there). It’s likely in my opinion that Tolkien envisioned more than one Elf village in the forest, although Thranduil did rule him realm from and underground fortress.
And Caras Galadhon is said to be only one of multiple cities among the Galadhrim of Lothlorien, athough we don’t see any others in the book.
But What About “Wandering Companies”?
So Elves did like to migrate around the countryside.
We only encounter three wandering companies in The Lord of the Rings. The first one is led by Gildor Inglorion, and they are on their way back from visiting the Tower Hills to their homes (in or near Rivendell, according to The Road Goes Ever On).
The second wandering company of Elves is Arwen’s wedding party, which accompanies her to Gondor and then returns northward with Elrond, Celeborn, and Galadriel.
The last group of traveling Elves are the large band whom Frodo and Sam meet in the Shire on their way to the Grey Havens.
None of these groups are permanent nomads. They’re just traveling across the countryside. And the narrative says Bilbo and Frodo occasionally met Elves in the woods of the Shire. In fact, Gildor tells Frodo that he said good-bye to Bilbo in the same place he took Frodo.
So there are clearly groups of Elves traveling across the landscape in northwestern Middle-earth. In one part of Appendix A, Tolkien writes that Angmar was suppressed for a time by Elves coming from Rivendell.
It seems to me that if you want to imagine bands of Elves crossing back and forth across Eriador throughout the Third Age, you’ve got plenty of support for the idea. They probably had no permanently settled homes in the middle of Eriador itself, but most likely lived in Lindon and nearby lands, Rivendell and nearby lands, or the Vales of Anduin.
They must have had hidden spots or small refuges like the one Gildor took Bilbo and Frodo to – spread out across Eriador. These would not have been permanent campsites but they would have been safe places the Elves would know they could stay at.
Conclusion
I think Tolkien imagined Eriador as being mostly deserted after the great disasters such as the Long Winter (T.A. 2758-9) and the floods of 2912 which forced the abandonment of Tharbad.
To answer your question more directly, there is evidence of isolated homesteads. Tom Bombadil’s house certainly counts as one. And I think they could have been plentiful because I can’t imagine that Tolkien would imagine all these people living far away from friends and kin. They just didn’t all live together in villages.
By “plentiful” I mean Tolkien would have reasoned you’d have to find at least a few farms relatively close together, say within half a day’s walking distance of each other. But they would probably need to be close to roads and rivers, main avenues of travel and communication, and relatively far away from the most dangerous lands.
And there’s no reason to assume they would have nothing to do with the Rangers (or that the Rangers wouldn’t protect them). The Rangers, too, had their small campsites scattered across Eriador. If one needs a number for these types of places, I would put the numbers in the low dozens. But, really, you could probably justify hundreds of isolated farms and campsites.
See also
How Well Populated Was Pre-Plague Eriador?
How Deserted Was Eriador in the Late Third Age?
How Many Tribes of Northmen Were There?
# # #
Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
A follow up question to this would be; If Eriador was so deserted, how was Aragorn able to re-establish the Northern Kingdom so successfully after the end of the War of the Ring?
When it comes to demographics we rarely have hard numbers (though for example in The Nature of Middle-earth we have a statement that Numenor population was….15 million at least if not more around the time of Akallabeth and that’s not counting the population of the Numenorean colonists on the shores of Middle-earth) but it’s easy to make out, but it depends on the specific exmaples, the specific people their condition and historical events. Eriador is desolate in large part becuse in fact it is a post-apocalyptic land that got destroyed several times over!
I mean the entire history post fall of Arnor is interspersing the periods of peace with various cataclysmic events which give another serious hits to the locals. Eriador has some scattered communities of Men, “scattered hunter folk” in the woods of Minhiriath (apparently also some on the cape of Eryn Vorn), the “fairly numerous but barbarous fisher folk” on the coast of Enedwaith, the fairly sizeable populace of the Dunlendings in the eastern Enedwaith, in region of Dunland….they were always interested in expanding down south into Roham territory so there’s that, they had enough population to number in the thousands at least to form important part of Saruman’s armies, there were also mentions of “fishers and fowlers aking to Druedain of Anorien” in the land between estuary of Isen and Gwathlo. Shire and Bree-land population harder to guess, but there also should be hidden settlements of the Dunedain out there in the wilds of Eriador and other people here and there. Like Lossoth in the northern parts, along the Ice Bay of Forochel, tribal and primtiive people.
In fact only Hobbits and Bree-landers are the closest to vestiges of the civilized societies that still maintain some manner of former way of life somewhat more sophisticated but still rural and primtiive but once long ago enjoying the benefits of the Numenorean civilization and it’s comforts. I mean Hobbits got really enhanced when it comes to skills and knowledge by their contact with the Dunedain and other people of Eriador.
The war with Angmar was truly on genocidal levels of destruction, the Great Plague and other events, times of famine, disease, natural disasters, from floods to disastrous winters that caused thousands to perish, and then among it all, periods of invasions of Orcs, that were something far more than a minor raids, there were serious huge orc operations and far flung raids that ravaged the lands, the other dark creatures, Wargs, or White Wolves coming down, Trolls, and who knows what else, Valar know how many evil things and dark monsters of Morgoth from time immermorial there are in the world still. The small periods of peace allowed for some growth and increase, I mean the Shire hobbit population grew that they actually expanded into new territory, the Buckland, so they settled new land so to speak. Other communities would be far too small and scattered and devoid of the benefits of Dunedain civilized living they would not be able to support huge numbers, the cities lay in ruins, hell the great flood ultimately destroyed Tharbad, which may indicate the last remnants of it’s population either leaving or dying in this cataclysm.
Destruction of Tharbad also means a large area of land would become less hospitable, since the grand numenorean infrastructure of that area, the drainage works and so on, would be ruined and so the land would turn back to it’s natural state…huge swamp…the lands around Gwathlo were full of marshes. Swamps are not particularly good places for sustaining big population, they may be good hiding spots in time of danger for smaller sized peoples (this brings in mind Estonian wetlands).
Invasions of Orcs into Eriador are noted as significant event in the timeline:
“c. 2480
Orcs begin to make secret strongholds in the Misty Mountains so as to bar all
the passes into Eriador. Sauron begins to people Moria with his creatures.”
…
2740
Orcs renew their invasions of Eriador.
2747
Bandobras Took defeats an Orc-band in the Northfarthing.
2758
Rohan attacked from west and east and overrun. Gondor attacked by fleets of the
Corsairs. Helm of Rohan takes refuge in Helm’s Deep. Wulf seizes Edoras. 2758-9:
The Long Winter follows. Great suffering and loss of life in Eriador and Rohan.
Gandalf comes to the aid of the Shire-folk.
…
2911
The Fell Winter. The Baranduin and other rivers are frozen. White Wolves invade
Eriador from the North.
2912
Great floods devastate Enedwaith and Minhiriath. Tharbad is ruined and deserted.”
So…we have a lot of events across different periods, Rangers and their Chieftains also almost regularly died to fight dark creatures, Arador was slain by Trolls, so their raiding is not so rare, and we know that Trolls can roam fairly wide:
“The lands ahead were empty of all save birds and beasts, unfriendly places deserted by all the races of the world. Rangers passed at times beyond the hills, but they were few and did not stay. Other wanderers were rare, and of evil sort: trolls might stray down at times out of the northern valleys of the Misty Mountains. Only on the Road would travellers be found, most often dwarves, hurrying along on business of their own, and with no help and few words to spare for strangers.”
Dunedain are longlived so their population growth is smaller than among normal peoples, the Hobbits increase in numbers obviously.
There are also obviously places which are not really hospitable, swampy grounds, the area near Tharbad around river Gwathlo was a vast area of marshlands originally, and with the ruin of the numenorean infrastructure and drainage works, it would return to natural state, huge swamps are not good for large population. And even near Bree there are some areas that are not fitting:
“The land had been falling steadily, ever since they turned aside from the Road, and they now entered a wide flat expanse of country, much more difficult to manage. They were far beyond the borders of the Bree-land, out in the pathless wilderness, and drawing near to the Midge-water Marshes.
The ground now became damp, and in places boggy and here and there they came upon pools, and wide stretches of reeds and rushes filled with the warbling of little hidden birds. They had to pick their way carefully to keep both dry-footed and on their proper course. At first they made fare progress, but as they went on, their passage became slower and more dangerous. The marshes were bewildering and treacherous, and there was no permanent trail even for Rangers to find through their shifting quagmires. The flies began to torment them, and the air was full of clouds of tiny midges that crept up their sleeves and breeches and into their hair.
‘I am being eaten alive!’ cried Pippin. ‘Midgewater! There are more midges than water!’
‘What do they live on when they can’t get hobbit?’ asked Sam, scratching his neck.
They spent a miserable day in this lonely and unpleasant country. Their camping-place was damp, cold, and uncomfortable; and the biting insects would not let them sleep. There were also abominable creatures haunting the reeds and tussocks that from the sound of them were evil relatives of the cricket. There were thousands of them, and they squeaked all round, neek-breek, breek-neek, unceasingly all the night, until the hobbits were nearly frantic.
The next day, the fourth, was little better, and the night almost as comfortless. Though the Neekerbreekers (as Sam called them) had been left behind, the midges still pursued them.”
One cannot leave out the possible ecological reasons, while the Enedwaith and Minhiriath forests were logged by the Numenoreans that it destroyed the area for a long time, by the time of War of the Ring the land was still fairly wooded in places, but those great areas that were thoroughly destroyed and turned into grasslands would be more like central/eastern Enedwaith, so closer to the foothills and so Dunland and further towards Gwathlo as I said lots of marshes, whole large wetlands that would grow after the floods and with the numenorean works of engineering falling into disrepair swamps do not aid in resettling the land one also mention of the changing of conditions during time of Arnor and Angmar war, like “fled west and south, because of the wars, and the dread of Angmar, and because the land and clime of Eriador, especially in the east, worsened and became unfriendly.” So this was even long before all those other events listed above.
Vale of Anduin sees some resettling and colonization of woodmen, though it also saw the periods when peopel escaped from the northern parts of Rhovanion, Hobbit mentions dragons driving men away in the past (well who would want to have those as neighbors :)?).
There’s a lot we might infer, but little concrete information. In The Shadow of the Past, “There were, however, dwarves on the road in unusual numbers. The ancient East-West Road ran through the Shire to its end at the Gray Havens, and dwarves had always used it on their way to their mines in the Blue Mountains.”
But where to the east did they dwell? If they were trekking from Erebor the mines would have been rich indeed. Had the mines been that rich, certainly settlements would arise (even if they co-habit Snow White-style in dormitories). The solitary prospector is a common theme, but most mining requires organized teams, steady supplies of food and drink, reasonably comfortable dwellings, and the services necessary to support the miners‘ needs.
We might infer from Butterbur that the Rangers had settlements out east of Bree, “But there’s no Accounting for East and West, as we say in Bree, meaning the Rangers and the Shire-folk…” It makes sense. While roving Rangers might often sleep under the stars, if patrolling the bounds of The Shire for centuries on end, permanent shelters are bound to rise. And if Bree and The Shire require the bulk of their attention, wouldn’t they want their families relatively close at hand? Fornost is north of Bree, The Shire is west, Butterbur didn’t mention the south, and the Breelanders do not treat the Rangers as neighbors.
For the sake of the narrative Eriador needed to seem desolate, but roads do not remain passable for long without traffic and maintenance (certainly not for centuries). The Forsaken Inn is just a day’s march east of Bree, but why operate an inn at all unless there was traffic? Could Elrond’s Last Homely House really be next on the route?
I recall some bit of text or speculation that the Rangers had settlements in The Angle between the Hoarwell and Loudwater. It makes some sense. People cannot live long in isolation without losing social cohesion. The Rangers certainly had that cohesion, so it seems incredibly likely that they had settlements, even if slightly off the beaten track. Would it be odd or expected that Strider would say nothing of those possibly nearby homes as they ushered a stricken Frodo from Weathertop to Rivendell? I’d say yes, lest those refuges be revealed to The Nine.
I think we can make a guess on the Dúnedain population of the North on how few Rangers journeyed south to join Aragorn for the WOTR. From their limited numbers we can infer a very limited population.
The only question is, how limited? The existence of an apparently volunteer patrol force implies several things; especially an economy large enough to support the absence of able-bodied individuals who might otherwise be farming, hunting, raising children, tending households, smithing, or engaged in community leadership, local defense, etc. (and since they were clearly an all-male group, representing just half of the population). The 30 members of the Grey Company were described as Aragorn’s kin – members of the nobility. In fact, Théoden described them as “knights.” And they were “…all of our kindred that could be gathered in haste.”
And the Rangers were essentially a standing force, not a militia assembled at need. Until the Grey Company rode from the north they had been in constant patrol around The Shire and Bree, and roving the wider lands, such as the recent Ranger encampment Aragorn and the hobbits found
near Weathertop. I can imagine members devoting one season annually to the isolation and privations of duty before returning to home and hearth, so a minimum 120 Rangers drawn from the noble houses of a larger community. Even allowing for the possibility that the Dúnadan community was top-heavy with blue-bloods (the descendants of second offspring of second offspring going back for millennia), to me that suggests a population of many thousands at the least, in organized communities rather than isolated subsistence farmsteads.
It’s likely that the rangers were members of nobility. But that doesn’t mean they had lands and fiefdoms they were overseeing at the time of the War of the Ring. They may have inherited the titles and not much else from their ancestors, who were lords during the Kingdom of Arthedain. As for working only for a single season a year, I would point out that Aragorn himself seems to have been always patrol, so it is quite possible his comrades and underlings also operated with far less rest and downtime than we would assume from our world.
Spectacular analysis by all. Much appreciated. I would also suggest that Eriador has suffered catastrophic events for quite some time. Of course the early tribes of humans kind of gathered there before crossing in to Beleriand. I’m sure there was conflict at that time, probably on a widespread scale.
Besides migrating groups of Elves and humans heading eastward at the end of the First Age and especially into the Second Age we also have the disastrous War Of Elves And Sauron in the Second Age. I would imagine that probably devastated the region at least as much if not more than the wars of the Third Age. Very much widespread, comparable only to the weather events and plague. I think Elendil’s arrival in his ships probably was a shot in the arm for the native residents.
So it seems living in Eriador was kind of difficult. Yet they always returned and rebuilt.
Another reason for the population decline is hinted at in The Hobbit, Ch. II, where William the troll says that the other two have eaten “a village and a half” between them. He doesn’t indicate how many villages he’s eaten himself, or how many people a typical village held, but at that rate of consumption the trolls would need only a few centuries to remove a chunk of the human population and force the rest to move to safer areas. We know that the Dunedain at times encountered trolls (they killed Aragorn’s grandfather), so they were clearly a problem in Eriador, and no doubt they preyed on isolated homesteaders and small settlements. Combine that with occasional invasions by orcs, wolves and so on, plus Sauron’s machinations aimed at reducing the numbers of his enemies, and it’s no surprise that the population waxed and waned.