Middle-earth seen by the barbarians: The complete collection including a previously unpublished essay

by Codex Regius

  The next ethnic group to arrive was the Southern Atani, to be precise: the pre-Haladin. We may have to imagine them like remote ancestors of the Bree-folk, ‘brown-haired, broad, and rather short, cheerful and independent.’ (FR) They settled as well in the valleys of the White Mountains and stayed on rather friendly terms with the Drú-folk. Therefore, when the main part of these pre-Haladin was forced by outer circumstances to wander on, ‘an emigrant branch of the Drúedain accompanied [them] at the end of the First Age … but most had remained in the White Mountains, in spite of their persecution by later-arrived Men, who had relapsed into the service of the Dark.’ (TD)[1]

  [1] The maps in Fig. 2 et seq. are derived from those in HoMe; Beleriand has been attached according to the relative positions of the islands of Himling (= Himring) and Tol Fuin (= Taur-nu-Fuin). Note that in the First Age, Arda was a flat world which should have significantly distorted the topographical features of Middle-earth east of the Ered Luin.

  MIGRATIONS IN THE FIRST AGE Drúedain, Southern Atani and Bórrim

  Migration patterns of the Southern Atani (dark dotted lines) and the Drúedain (full red lines)

  Together they carried on northwards, passing through the Gap of Rohan. Again, many preferred to leave that trail, finding that ‘the Minhiriath and the western half of Enedwaith between the Greyflood and the Isen were still covered with dense forest’ (DM) which provided good living grounds. This reconstruction of prehistory is supported by the notion that many people from the forests ‘of the shore-lands south of the Ered Luin, especially in Minhiriath, were as later historians recognized the kin of the Folk of Haleth.’ (DM) They became herd-tenders, presumably of sheep and goats, since horses would have been of little use in the forests. Also, some Drúedain chose this territory to become ‘a fairly numerous but barbarous fisher-folk [that] dwelt between the mouths of the Gwathló and the Angren [Isen]’ (GC) but chiefly ‘in the marshlands around the mouths of Greyflood and Isen’. (FI) They did not live well, though, and in the Second Age, they had been reduced to ‘a few tribes of ‘“Wild Men”, fishers and fowlers, but akin in race and speech to the Drúedain of the woods of Anórien.’ (FI).

  Such pre-Haladin and Drúedain as remained on the trail advanced into Eriador. There they met other wanderers: the rhúnedainic Bórrim, or people of Bór, who were not related to them. They seem to have dwelt for a while in southern Rhovanion where they had contact with the Entwives: ‘many men learned the crafts [of agriculture] of the Entwives and honoured them greatly.’ (TT) Hence, when the Bórrim arrived in the West, they were known as skilled ‘tillers of the earth.’ (GA)

  They left Rhovanion on the northern path between the Misty (Hithaeglir) and the Iron Mountains (Ered Engrin) where they may have met the Forodwaith (see chapter II). In 463 F.A. some had finally crossed ‘Eriador, and passing north about the Eryd Luin entered into Lothlann.’ (GA) Others stayed behind: ‘Of the people of Bór, it is said, came the most ancient of the Men that dwelt in the north of Eriador in the Second Age and … after-days.’ (GA) Unfortunately, we do not know who are these later descendants of the ‘most ancient’ Men of Eriador. Is this a reference to the Hillmen of Rhudaur?

  In the fourth century of the First Age, the still migrating part of the Haladin reached the Ered Lindon and passed into Beleriand to enter recorded Elvish history.[1] The situation in the White Mountains worsened meanwhile as the Men of Darkness (see chapter III) hunted the Drúedain and brought them almost to extinction: ‘from the East … had come the tall Men who drove them from the White Mountains, and they were wicked at heart.’ (TD) Some escaped into the forests of Anórien and, down the Cape of Andrast, into of Drúwaith Iaur. There they may have survived even into the late Third Age. (TD)

  The remaining pre-Haladin suffered as well. Apparently they were driven out of most dales of the Ered Nimrais. Hence, ‘in the Dark Years others [of the pre-Haladin] removed to the southern dales of the Misty Mountains; and thence some … passed into the empty lands as far north as the Barrow-downs. From them came the Men of Bree.’ (LP)

  The sources do not agree when this may have happened. Historians used the term ‘Dark Years’ to refer to the Second Age. But the Bree-folk claimed that they had already ‘survived the turmoils of the Elder Days’ (FR) in Bree-country, which, if taken for granted, should mean that their ancestors had settled Eriador already during the Long Peace of the First Age.

  [1] A few Drúedain may have joined them. Sador, of Húrin’s household in Dor-Lómin, was said to be a Drúadan in some notes, but this notion never entered narrative text.

  Migration patterns of the Bórrim

  Migration of the pre-Bëorrim (green dotted line) and the pre-Marachrim (full red line)

  The Northern Atani had taken a completely different path. It was said of them that from early on, ‘they were ever at war … with Men who had made [Morgoth] their god and believed that they could render him no more pleasing service than to destroy the “renegades” with every kind of cruelty.’ (DM) The first other Free People who became aware of their presence, though, were the Dwarves. Somewhere in northern Rhún this happened, for ‘in ancient days the Naugrim dwelt in many mountains of Middle-earth, and there they met mortal Men (they say) long ere the Eldar knew them.’ (NE) Thus it came to pass that their earliest language, Atani, showed distinct influences of Khuzdul.

  Myth-making of the Northern Atani commences at the shores of the Sea of Rhún. During a prolonged settlement there, they divided into two folks of distinct language, phenotype, and culture. The Greater Folk of the pre-Marachrim ‘long dwelt … by the shores of a sea too wide to see across; it had no tides, but was visited by great storms. … They lived in the north-east, in the woods that there came near to the shores.’ The other part, the Lesser Folk of the pre-Bëorrim, had advanced further and ‘had reached the same sea before them, and dwelt at the feet of the high hills to the south-west. They were thus some two hundred miles apart, going by water.’ (PR) This was the land that would once be known as Dorwinion (see chapter V).

  Owing to the distance between them, even when the pre-Marachrim ‘developed a craft of boat-building’, they and their opposites across the Inland Sea ‘did not often meet and exchange tidings. Their tongues had already diverged … though they remained friends of acknowledged kinship.’ (PR) Maybe their generally darker, sometimes even swarthy complexion allows to conclude that the pre-Bëorrim had been ‘mingling in the past with Men of other kinds’ (DM). This is even a conceivable reason for why their language seemed to the pre-Marachrim to contain ‘many elements that were alien in character.’ (DM) Such an early blend of Dúnedain and Rhúnedain may have been behind the origin of the indigenous inhabitants of the territory that would one day become Dorwinion, see chapter V.

  The Northern Atani

  This trickle of information prevented the pre-Marachrim from learning on time that one day, ‘the Lesser Folk had fled from the threat of the Servants of the Dark and gone on westward, while they had lain hidden in their woods.’ (PR) Much later, the pre-Marachrim followed their trail, passing by the Hithaeglir/Misty Mountains in the North, close to the dreadful Ered Engrin and yet outside of Morgoth’s Shadow. But many groups of both peoples stayed behind, and when the shrinking vanguard led by Bëor and Marach, respectively, reached Beleriand in the fourth century, ‘in Eriador and Rhovanion (especially in the northern parts) their kindred must already have occupied much of the land.’ (DM) This assumption is supported by the notion that the Northmen of Rhovanion ‘appear to have been most nearly akin to the third and greatest of the peoples of the Elf-friends, ruled by the House of Hador’. (CE)

  In Eriador, the ancestors of the Middle Men gathered in places where later would be the major population centres of Arnor: ‘about Lake Evendim, in the North Downs and the Weather Hills, and in the lands between as far as the Brandywine, west of which they often wandered though they did not dwell there.’ (AE, DM) There, instead, were later found ‘many, it would seem, in origin kin of the Folk of B
ëor, though some were kin of the Folk of Hador’. (DM, cf. also AE), aside of Bórrim.

  Examining the natives of Eriador, the Númenóreans of the Second Age would one day assume that ‘some of their ancestors may indeed have been fugitives from the Atani’ (DM), i. e. proper Edain. Then they recalled that according to the Elves, some Hadorians had in fear of the Evil Power in Angband turned away from their encampment in Beleriand; ‘and they went back over the mountains into Eriador, and were forgotten.’ (S)

  That there were real Edain among them ‘may have been actually true of those Men in Middle-earth whom the returning Númenóreans first met …; but other Men of the North … can only have been akin as descending from peoples of which the Atani had been the vanguard.’ (DM) Those others constituted ‘their laggard kindred [who] were either in Eriador, some settled, some still wandering, or else had never passed the Misty Mountains and were scattered’ (DM) in Rhovanion.

  To them added the deserters of the Edain who turned their back to Beleriand when ‘Bereg led a thousand of the people of Bëor away southwards, and they passed out of the songs of those days’. (S) Some people of Marach, too, who ‘went back over the mountains into Eriador, and are forgotten.’ They would come back into history at some darker spots.

  They went back over the mountains into Eriador, and are forgotten.

  Settlements in the late First Age

  At the end of the First Age, the situation that had developed looked like this:

  The predominant culture of Rhovanion and south, towards the Sea of Rhún, were the Northmen, chiefly of pre-Marachrim origin, except perhaps for a lasting pre-Bëorrim enclave in Dorwinion (see V.4) and some Bórrim in southern Rhovanion.

  The pre-Haladin meanwhile had spread from Umbar through the White Mountains to Isengard and Dunland, across Enedwaith and Minhiriath and as far North as Cardolan. Their northernmost kinsmen apparently dwelt along the line from Sarn Ford to the junction of Gwathló and Mitheithel. There, their expansion had been stopped by the settlements of the Middle Men. (The Númenórean ‘term Middle Men was … originally applied to Men of Eriador’, (DM) i.e. those pre-Marachrim who mainly inhabited later Arthedain, whose territory was accessible from the sea, along the rivers.) A thriving population of Swarthy Men was also present in Eriador, more or less mingling with the others.

  The mysterious Forodwaith, ancestors of the Lossoth, centred in the very foothills of the Ered Engrin (see II).

  The Drúedain dwelt in small parts of the White Mountains and along the coasts of Andrast and Minhiriath. Save for their secluded settlements, the ethnic and geographical boundaries were otherwise of course by no means fixed or defended. There was much traffic and mingling to and fro, and the War of Wrath helped to profoundly stir the kettle.

  THE SECOND AGE

  Before the Númenórean colonisation

  In the Second Age, ‘the dark years for Men of Middle-earth’ (KR) when their culture and civilization ‘went backward and light and wisdom faded’, (AK) the indigenous Men of Eriador, Gondor and Rhovanion entered recorded history in the guise of many numerous and wide-spread populations. The Middle Men maintained contact with Gil-galad in Lindon and ‘were friendly with the Elves, though they held them in awe and close friendships between them were rare. Also they feared the Sea and would not look upon it’. (DM) Yet such ‘close friendships’ did exist, for there were Elves led by Galadriel and Celeborn as well who ‘for a while … dwelt in the country about Lake Nenuial (Evendim, north of the Shire)’, (GC) right among the Middle Men, and thus could hardly avoid to establish contact with them.

  In the early Second Age, the Middle Men were frequently terrorised and subjected by scattered refugees from Angband who apparently took to the hills of Rhúdaur and the Mountains of Angmar in larger numbers. Still, ‘Men in those parts remain[ed] more or less uncorrupted if ignorant [and] in a simple “Homeric” state of patriarchal and tribal life’ (L131). The Númenóreans recorded that ‘the native people were fairly numerous and warlike, but they were forest-dwellers, scattered communities without central leadership.’ (GC) Their condition evidently resembled what the Romans met in Gaul and Germania: many tribal territories, among which border skirmishes and raids were frequent but large-scale wars were rare.

  Second Age: Settlements of the Middle Men (green), the Forodwaith (blue), the pre-Númenóreans (dark grey) and the Drúedain (reddish). The coastlines in the Bay of Belfalas approximate the description given in PM

  The cultural influence of the Elves had slowly extended to touch the pre-Númenóreans in the White Mountains. This was the reason why ‘between Pelargir [that did not yet exist] and the Gulf of Lune …, the settlers in this region had refused to join in the rebellion against the Valar’, (DM) i. e. they had not submitted to the Dark Lord, Morgoth. These early inhabitants had retreated from the coasts: ‘The shores of the Bay of Belfalas were still mainly desolate [though not entirely, as the tale of Tar-Elmar suggests (EL)] except for a haven and small settlement of Elves at the mouth of the confluence of Morthond and Rínglo.’ (DM) The inhabitants of this port, known as Edhellond, reported that at the time of its foundation ‘there was already a primitive harbour there of fisherfolk, but these in fear of the Eldar fled into the [White] mountains.’ (GC) This event terminated the pre-Númenórean adventure into the Bay of Belfalas prematurely, therefore, because of the existence of Edhellond ‘it was long before Númenórean settlers about the Mouths of Anduin … made contact with Men who dwelt in the valleys on either side of the White Mountains’. (DM) Matter of fact, this happened after the foundation of Pelargir in 2350 SA.

  When the Númenórean ships arrived at the shores of Middle-earth in 600 SA, the first Mannish people whom they made contact with were the Middle Men. The fleet landed in Lindon and its crews met with Gil-Galad (and, implicitly, with Celeborn and Galadriel). ‘The news spread swiftly and Men in Eriador were filled with wonder.’ Soon after, a meeting between the sailors from Westernesse and twelve messengers of Edainic descent came to pass on the Tower Hills, of which a detailed account is given in AE. For a limited time, ‘they mingled in friendship’. (AE)

  The Númenóreans began to civilise their newly won friends, ‘and none yet dared to withstand them. For most of the Men of that age that sat under the Shadow were now grown weak and fearful. And coming among them the Númenóreans taught them many things’ (TA), such as advanced agriculture, stonecraft and smithying.

  For some time, all seemed to work well. Even the Faithful among the Númenóreans recorded that ‘the Men of Middle-earth were comforted, and here and there upon the western shores the houseless woods drew back, and Men shook off the yoke of the offspring of Morgoth, and unlearned their terror of the dark. And they revered the memory of the tall Sea-kings, and when they had departed they called them gods, hoping for their return; for at that time the Númenóreans dwelt never long in Middle-earth, nor made there as yet any habitation of their own.’ (AK) A look behind this eruption of euphemism, however, will show that the tale of houseless woods drawing back from the coasts may hardly serve to conceal the irrecoverable damage which the Númenórean exploitation would inflict when king Tar-Aldarion came.

  At that time the Númenóreans dwelt never long in Middle-earth

  Prince Aldarion, the Enedwaith and the exploitation of Middle-earth

  ‘In Aldarion’s day the Númenóreans did not yet desire more room, and his Venturers remained a small people.’ (FI). But ‘Aldarion had a great hunger for timber, desiring to make Númenor into a great naval power’ (CE).

  In about 810, Aldarion founded the haven of Vinyalondë at the mouth of the river Gwathló as ‘a timber-port and ship-building harbour’. (CE) Vinyalondë became the starting point of a transfer that was no longer limited to ‘civilised’ technology but now included cultural domination.

  The Númenóreans, used to the euphonous languages of Elves and Edain, noticed with contempt that ‘the tongues of the Men of Middle-earth’ had, at least to their ears, ‘fallen into b
rutishness, and they cried like harsh birds, or snarled like savage beasts.’ (HA) This view was of course biased and derogative. It would still have been even if we did not consider that ‘many of the forest-dwellers of the shorelands south of the Ered Luin, especially in Minhiriath, were … the kin of the Folk of Haleth’ (DM) who spoke derivatives of the Halethian language family. If that was not Edainic, what was it?

  But the judgement had been passed. Middle-earth had been superficially cut in three, Forodwaith, Enedwaith and Haradwaith - Northern, Middle and Southern Folk -; and all of it was considered darkness and shadow. The languaga barrier ‘may have been one of the reasons why the Númenóreans failed to recognize the Forest-folk of Minhiriath as “kinsmen”, and confused them with Men of the Shadow; for as has been noticed the native language of the Folk of Haleth was not related’ (DM) to the Atani (now mostly Hadorian) language. This oversight had tragic consequences.