Q: Why Did Sauron Build Fortresses Above the Ground?
ANSWER: Only J.R.R. Tolkien could have provided an authoritative or definitive or correct answer to this question but I’ll share some guesswork with you. I think Sauron built above-ground fortresses to be ostentatious — to visually dominate the creatures he served by rising above them in such a way that they could see his seat of power from afar and be awed and daunted by the display.
Historically powerful rulers and empires have built great fortresses for such purposes as a way of maintaining control over local populations and/or discouraging border incursions or invasions. Of course, rebellions and wars inevitably happened anyway. Perhaps the most massive and daunting fortification ever built was the Maginot Line of heavily bunkered fortresses that France built between the First and Second World Wars. When Nazi Germany decided to invade France a strategic decision was made to sweep around the northern end of the Maginot Line and avoid all the messy fighting that assaulting those bunkers would have entailed.
Of course, Sauron was also lesser in strength and nature than Melkor had been when Melkor built his huge underground fortresses (of which the only two ever named were Utumno and Angband). Melkor may have been able to “keep watch” over his slaves from afar better than Sauron was able to. After all, Sauron created the One Ring in part to enhance his own abilities but even with the Ring he was not able to observe events in Middle-earth the way Melkor seems to have been able to.
The Elves had the capacity to see things from afar. We know this because of the Palantiri and the “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”, in which it is said that she watched over Aragorn during his errantries (a canonical point Peter Jackson included in “The Two Towers”). Hence, we have to conclude that Sauron had some ability to focus on events far away — and the passage where Frodo sits on the High Seat of Amon Hen and attracts Sauron’s attention (while Frodo is wearing the Ring) may bear this out, although that passage has elicited much debate and interpretation.
So it seems to me that Sauron built his fortresses on high hills in part so that he could “see” Middle-earth as others might see it, and observe his slaves and enhance the fear with which he ruled them. Even when he was still very weak, after having first taken shape again around the year 1000 of the Third Age, Sauron was able to dominate other creatures and bend them to his will. But he was unable to return to Mordor so he chose Amon Lanc, which had once been an Elvish habitation, perhaps even a stronghold in the Second Age.
Amon Lanc was strategically positioned between as many as three Elvish lands: Lothlorien on the west, Thranduil’s realm in the north, and Dorwinion (this is speculative) in the east. Perhaps Tolkien felt that a Sauronic fortress positioned between these three realms and amidst the lands of the Northmen, and also near the border of Gondor, made such a statement of power and arrogance that Sauron was justifiably perceived as more menacing. After all, he could have settled in the distant east where peoples would have been more friendly to his causes — but Sauron wanted to be “near the action”, as it were.
Hence, I think the rising towers of Dol Guldur and Barad-dur probably suited Sauron’s desire to be seen as a force in Middle-earth to be reckoned with.
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Have you read our other Tolkien and Middle-earth Questions and Answers articles?
I just did a little research and discovered that the proximate source of the Barad-Dur may have been… the University Library at Cambridge! Apparently around 1939 C.S.Lewis read to the Inklings a draft of an unpublished story entitled “The Dark Tower”, in which the then-new building featured in the title role. There is a somewhat weird controversy surrounding this; a discussion and links are here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dark_Tower_(Lewis_novel)
Regardless, as an undergraduate at Cambridge I decided independently that the Library really is hideous. What is worse, it is the largest structure in the town, visible for miles across the surrounding plain. (In the manner of undergraduates I only actually visited it once, out of curiosity as I recall.)
Note for trainspotters: Tolkien appears to have been travelling fairly frequently between Oxford and Cambridge at this period, possibly musing on the lack of beauty in modern life, as witness the unfriendly reference to Bletchley Station in ‘On Fairy Stories’; it was on the now defunct rail route linking the two towns.
Getting back to the topic, Lewis’ title is taken (undisputedly) from Robert Browning’s 1855 poem “Childe Rolande to the Dark Tower Came”, whose title in turn comes from a line in “King Lear”. Now Browning’s poem contains a remarkable amount of imagery and incident reminiscent of the approach to the Morannon, and the later journey through Mordor. E.g. the corpses in the Dead Marshes:
XXI.
…how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man’s cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
Or the airborne Nazgul:
XXVII.
A great black bird, Apollyon’s bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned*
*”penned”, feathered, as in the large outspread feathers at the tip of a bird’s wing
I see that John Rateliff has written on the subject of Lewis’ story, so I expect the Browning connection is well known. However, it seems worth mentioning as an inspiration which was clearly compelling for Tolkien, in whatever way it may have come to him. There just has to be a Dark Tower; what purpose it serves for Sauron can be worked out later!