Q: Where and What Is Rhosgobel?
ANSWER: Fans have been asking about Rhosgobel ever since The Fellowship of the Ring was first published. It is mentioned in only a handful of texts, most of which are either annotations or editorial remarks provided by Christopher Tolkien. The reader is introduced to Rhosgobel in the chapter “the Council of Elrond”:
‘At the end of June I was in the Shire, but a cloud of anxiety was on my mind, and I rode to the southern borders of the little land; for I had a foreboding of some danger, still hidden from me but drawing near. There messages reached me telling me of war and defeat in Gondor, and when I heard of the Black Shadow a chill smote my heart. But I found nothing save a few fugitives from the South; yet it seemed to me that on them sat a fear of which they would not speak. I turned then east and north and journeyed along the Greenway; and not far from Bree I came upon a traveller sitting on a bank beside the road with his grazing horse beside him. It was Radagast the Brown, who at one time dwelt at Rhosgobel, near the borders of Mirkwood. He is one of my order, but I had not seen him for many a year.
One might reasonably infer from this passage that Rhosgobel is on the eastern side of Anduin. However, its placement is thrown into doubt only a little later in the chapter “The Ring Goes South”:
The hobbits had been nearly two months in the House of Elrond, and November had gone by with the last shreds of autumn, and December was passing, when the scouts began to return. Some had gone north beyond the springs of the Hoarwell into the Ettenmoors; and others had gone west, and with the help of Aragorn and the Rangers had searched the lands far down the Greyflood, as far as Tharbad, where the old North Road crossed the river by a ruined town. Many had gone east and south; and some of these had crossed the Mountains and entered Mirkwood, while others had climbed the pass at the source of the Gladden River, and had come down into Wilderland and over the Gladden Fields and so at length had reached the old home of Radagast at Rhosgobel. Radagast was not there; and they had returned over the high pass that was called the Dimrill Stair. The sons of Elrond, Elladan and Elrohir, were the last to return; they had made a great journey, passing down the Silverlode into a strange country, but of their errand they would not speak to any save to Elrond.
It is not clear from this text on which side of the river Rhosgobel is supposed to be placed. The Gladden Fields were technically on the western bank (the Gladden river ran down to Anduin from the Misty Mountains). Still, there is one other text (“Queer Lodgings” in The Hobbit) where Radagast’s home is mentioned:
“That is Mr. Baggins, a hobbit of good family and unimpeachable reputation,” said Gandalf. Bilbo bowed. He had no hat to take off, and was painfully conscious of his many missing buttons. “I am a wizard,” continued Gandalf. “I have heard of you, if you have not heard of me; but perhaps you have heard of my good cousin Radagast who lives near the Southern borders of Mirkwood?”
“Yes; not a bad fellow as wizards go, I believe. I used to see him now and again,” said Beorn. “Well, now I know who you are, or who you say you are. What do you want?”
It seems reasonable to argue that Rhosgobel was more than likely situated on the east bank of the Anduin but there is no definitive statement saying so. Some people might want to argue that Radagast could have lived in a Rhosgobel placed on the east bank AND across the river near southern Mirkwood. And yet, when people puzzle over the location of Rhosgobel, they point to a reference in Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth where Christopher Tolkien writes:
4 In a very late note on the names of the Istari Radagast is said to be a name deriving from the Men of the Vales of Anduin, “not now clearly interpretable.” Rhosgobel, called “the old home of Radagast” in The Fellowship of the Ring II 3, is said to have been “in the forest between the Carrock and the Old Forest Road.”
On the basis of this note, people (including Karen Wynn Fonstad) have concluded that Tolkien may have at one time (probably after the publication of The Lord of the Rings) placed Rhosgobel north of the Old Forest Road near the land of the Beornings. However, to do so would have violated one of Tolkien’s principal rules: don’t be inconsistent with what has appeared in print. For that reason alone, according to Christopher Tolkien in The Peoples of Middle-earth, his father abandoned an essay that attempted to explain the element -ros in the name of Elros, terminating the draft with “all of this fails”.
We don’t need to assume that J.R.R. Tolkien had necessarily abandoned any particular post-LoTR thoughts concerning Rhosgobel, however. For in The Treason of Isengard Christopher wrote a very interesting note:
2. The word Carrock is very indistinct; it occurs again in outline (c), but is there equally so. Yet I think that this is what it must certainly be, especially since it seems very suitable: for Tolondren was the origin of Tol Brandir, and thus the ‘Great Carrock’ would answer to Beorn’s ‘Little Carrock’ or ‘Lesser Carrock’, itself also rising amid the waters of Anduin but far to the North; ondren being no doubt a derivative of the stem GOND ‘stone’ (Etymologies, V.359).
So we know that at one time J.R.R. Tolkien had envisioned two places with the name of “carrock” — and although that is a post-1937 idea The Hobbit associates the word with a somewhat broad meaning in this exchange between Bilbo and Gandalf:
“And why is it called the Carrock?” asked Bilbo as he went along at the wizard’s side.
“He called it the Carrock, because carrock is his word for it. He calls things like that carrocks, and this one is the Carrock because it is the only one near his home and he knows it well.”
Beorn can hardly be calling “things like that carrocks” if there were not more than one. Tolkien may not have explicitly provided more than one carrock in the story but he was allowing for the possibility that others might exist just over the horizon on the not-fully-imagined landscape of Bilbo’s world. Sources disagree on where the word carrock comes from. Some etymological dictionaries say it derives from an Old English word, carr, used for “rock”. Other sources trace “Carr” or “Carre” to a Viking word ciarr. In fact, there is an Irish etymology as well, for modern English crag is descended from Old Irish crec (“rock”) or carrac (“cliff”) or Welsh craig (“rock, stone”). It could be that Tolkien took the name from the village of Castle Carrock in Cumberland, England. In any event, there is plenty of etymological evidence to show that a carrock is a big rock which is worthy of its own word, and that there were plenty of them dotting the landscape in the British Isles.
All of which is to say that Tol Brandir, the great rocky island south of Lorien and Mirkwood on the Anduin could indeed be the Carrock referred to in the unpublished note that Christopher cites in Unfinished Tales — in which case, it is entirely consistent with what both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings say about where Radagast lived: near the southern border of Mirkwood.
So having satisfied our curiosity about where Rhosgobel was, we still haven’t determined what Rhosgobel was. In The Fellowship of the Ring there is still a place called “Rhosgobel” where Elrond’s visitors seek Radagast’s old house, but Radagast himself is not there. In a margin note, according to The Treason of Isengard, JRRT translated Rhosgobel as “Brown Hay”. The rhos element is derived from pre-Sindarin word rhusc meaning “brown”. Gobel is associated with “walled house or village, town”, as in Amon Obel, the hill on which was built the stockade Ephel Brandir of the Folk of Haleth. Ephel Brandir (later named Obel Halad) was surrounded by a hedge (according to “The Wanderings of Hurin” in The War of the Jewels).
A hay, in Tolkien’s use, refers to a hedge that is used as a barrier. The High Hay of the Buckland separated the Bucklanders from the Old Forest. Beorn’s house, according to The Hobbit, was surrouned by a thorn-hedge “through which you could neither see nor scramble”. Such homesteads are also mentioned in “Narn i Chin Hurin” (“The Children of Hurin”), being the typical dwellings of the Folk of Haleth in Brethil.
So we know three things about Rhosgobel: first, that its name was Elvish (apparently Sindarin); second, that it was defended by a hedge; third, it stood somewhere near southern Mirkwood. That the place-name is Elvish does not mean the place must be the abode of Elves. Esgaroth is an Elvish word and yet it names the lake where a town of Men was built (and the town is sometimes called Esgaroth upon the Long Lake). Hence, there is a precedent for using Elvish names for towns of Northmen.
I favor the point of view that Rhosgobel was a town, not a house surrounded by a hedge; and that the town was probably a town of Men rather than Elves, since it lies outside of Lothlorien and Tolkien does not refer to any other Elvish communities near the Anduin. I think that while some people argue Rhosgobel would have been too close to Dol Guldur if it stood across from the Gladden Fields it probably would have been safe enough. The East Bight, the great indentation cut into Mirkwood from the east by the Northmen, was inhabited from Circa. Third Age year 1200 to 1850. Dol Guldur existed during this timeframe.
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