Easterlings

None of the names by which this people is known in the sources are their own. No record survives of what they called themselves; every name comes from the Eldar and the Edain, who described them from outside. "Easterlings" names the direction they came from: they entered Beleriand from the lands beyond the Blue Mountains, some time after the Edain had settled there. "Swarthy Men" names their appearance. The Silmarillion describes them as shorter and broader than the Edain, strong in the arm, with dark hair and eyes and skin ranging from sallow to swart. The same account says that some of them were already under Morgoth's influence when they arrived, so the Elves met them as a people whose loyalty was uncertain.1

Among the remaining folk of Hador in Dor-lómin, the Easterlings whom Morgoth settled in Hithlum were more often called the Incomers. The name refers neither to a compass point nor to skin, but to the conquest itself: these were newcomers holding a land that belonged to others. The fuller telling of Túrin's story uses it consistently, including for Brodda. There it reads as a word of grievance rather than description, a reminder that the Hadorian survivors regarded the new masters of their country as occupiers.2

Much later the word Easterlings reappears as a general term for the Men of Rhûn and the lands beyond it who attacked Gondor and its allies, among them the Wainriders and the Balchoth. The accounts of the Third Age use it as a collective name based on geography and do not trace these peoples back to the Swarthy Men of Beleriand. Whether any line of descent connects the two is not stated, and the shared name should not be taken as evidence of one.3

The Easterlings enter the history of Beleriand in the years after the Dagor Bragollach, when the Siege of Angband had been broken and the realms of the Eldar were weakened. They came in several companies, and two chieftains among them are named: Bór and Ulfang the Black, each followed by his sons and his people. The sons of Fëanor received them and gave them land in the east of Beleriand, since their own hold on those territories had been badly shaken. Bór and his sons Borlad, Borlach and Borthand attached themselves to Maedhros and Maglor. Ulfang and his sons Ulfast, Ulwarth and Uldor followed Caranthir.1

When Maedhros gathered the alliance later known as the Union of Maedhros, the Easterlings were counted among his strength, and the two houses took opposite paths. The people of Bór kept faith with the Eldar through everything that followed. The house of Ulfang had been secretly in Morgoth's service from the beginning, and their outward friendship was part of his design against the alliance. Their disloyalty went unrecognised until it was too late to guard against it.2

The treachery came to light in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Before the battle Uldor delayed Maedhros's march with false warnings of an attack from Angband, so the eastern host arrived late and could not join Fingon's army at the planned moment. When Maedhros finally engaged, Ulfang's men changed sides and attacked the flank of the sons of Fëanor. At the same time further Easterlings, who had been kept hidden in the eastern hills, came down on the Elvish rear. This betrayal broke the eastern host and helped decide the battle. Maglor killed Uldor. The sons of Bór killed Ulfast and Ulwarth, and they themselves died in the fighting.3

Morgoth's reward to his Eastern allies fell well short of what they had hoped for. They had wanted the rich lands of Beleriand. Instead he sent them into Hithlum and ordered them to stay there, a cold region between the mountains, and they resented it as a poor return for their service. There they became masters over the remaining people of Hador, most of them women, children and the old, since the fighting men had died in the battle. What followed was occupation rather than settlement. The newcomers took land and goods by force and put the conquered to forced labour, while their loyalty to the master who had placed them there was grudging at best.4

The occupation of Hithlum appears again in the stories of Húrin's kin. Túrin returned to Dor-lómin years later and found his mother's house empty. He then confronted Brodda in his hall and killed him, and a fight broke out with the Easterlings present, in which more of them died. Afterwards Túrin had to flee the land, since the Incomers would take revenge on anyone who sheltered him. In Tuor's youth an Easterling chieftain in Hithlum named Lorgan held him as a thrall for several years before he escaped into the wild. Both episodes show the Easterlings entrenched as lords of the northern land for most of the remaining history of the First Age.5

The sources do not give a separate account of how the Easterlings of Beleriand came to an end. The ruin of the land in the War of Wrath is described in broad strokes, and they are not followed as a distinct people after it. The house of Bór died with its sons at the Nirnaeth, and the house of Ulfang lost its leaders to its own betrayal. What remained was the people settled in Hithlum, whose later fate, like that of the whole region, disappears in the general destruction at the end of the age.6

Very little of the Easterlings' own culture has come down in the sources. No word of their language is recorded, and no craft, song, law or belief is attributed to them. Nothing is said of how they regarded death or the passing of time. Everything known about their ways comes from the Eldar and from the Men they ruled, and so it concerns what they did to others rather than how they lived among themselves. Their organisation shows most clearly: they moved and fought as kindreds bound to a chieftain and his sons, and the loyalty of each group followed its lord. Because two such kindreds could choose opposite sides in the same war, the name Easterlings is better read as a label for a group of peoples than as a single nation with one custom.1

In Hithlum their manner of life is described as a lordship over a subject population. Their chieftains kept halls with armed followers around them, and the conquered Hadorians worked as bondservants. A master could keep such a servant for years and treat them as property. Some of the new lords took wives from the defeated people, as Brodda did with Aerin, so the two peoples were joined by force rather than by alliance. The Hadorian accounts describe these households as places of hard mastery. They also show the Incomers as warier than their power required, quick to take offence and quick to avenge a slight.2

The sources show one of their attitudes more clearly than any other, their fear of what they could not understand. They kept away from Morwen and spoke of her as a sorceress in league with the Elves. This suggests a people for whom Elvish lore and the old dignity of the Edain seemed uncanny and threatening rather than admirable. It separates them from the Houses of the Edain, who had learned from the Eldar and prized that learning. Even so, the tales present the Easterlings only through the eyes of those they wronged. The faithfulness of Bór's people is a reminder that the unfavourable picture belongs to one branch and one land, not necessarily to the whole people.3

The sources separate the Easterlings into distinct kindreds only for their first coming into Beleriand. Only two houses have names, each known by its founding chieftain, and every figure attributed to them is a chieftain or a chieftain's son. No wives, heirs or later generations are recorded for either line. Within the house of Ulfang the youngest son, Uldor, is marked out by a byname calling him accursed, which fixes the betrayal of the Nirnaeth on him above his kin. Nothing comparable is recorded for the house of Bór, and no successor to its leadership is named. With the deaths of its chieftain's sons the house vanishes from the record as a separate group.1

After the battle the distinction disappears. The Silmarillion speaks of the Easterlings sent into Hithlum only as a single body, and it does not say whether they came from Ulfang's people, from the companies hidden in the eastern hills, or from other groups. The fuller tales in Unfinished Tales name individual lords among them but give no lineage for any of them. Lorgan, Tuor's master, is described as the chief of the Easterlings in Hithlum, which suggests some overlordship above the separate holdings. Brodda appears as one master among several in Dor-lómin, with his own hall and followers, and is not presented as a ruler over the others. The texts never connect these later lords to the named houses of Beleriand, and any such descent would be conjecture.2

They represent what the defeat cost the Edain in daily life: a homeland held by strangers, and a noble house reduced to servitude.

In the design of the Silmarillion the Easterlings serve mainly as a test of Men. The Edain came west and chose friendship with the Eldar. The Easterlings reached Beleriand later, and the narrative uses them to show that such a choice was not guaranteed, and that Morgoth could reach Men before the Elves did. The contrasting paths of the two houses therefore carry more weight than their numbers suggest. Together they show that the Easterlings were not bound to evil by birth. A people could divide over loyalty, and each part was answerable for its own choice.1

The betrayal at the Nirnaeth does lasting harm beyond the battle itself. After it the account records a lasting estrangement: the Elves withdrew their trust from Men in general, keeping it only for the Three Houses of the Edain. In this way the treachery of a few chieftains becomes the reason one kind of Children of Ilúvatar grows suspicious of the other. This division suited Morgoth's purposes better than a single victory in the field. The Easterlings thus stand for a theme the book returns to often, that Morgoth wins chiefly through division and deceit.2

In the tales of Húrin's children and of Tuor, the Easterlings of Hithlum act less as characters than as a condition of the world. They represent what the defeat cost the Edain in daily life: a homeland held by strangers, and a noble house reduced to servitude. The occupation gives Túrin's return to Dor-lómin its bitterness and makes his violence there costly to the people he meant to avenge. For Tuor, years of bondage form the hard school from which he goes out to seek Turgon. In both stories the Incomers mark the low point from which the heroes of the House of Hador have to begin.3

The occupation of Hithlum by Men from the East is one of the oldest parts of this material. It already appears in the earliest prose form of Túrin's story in The Book of Lost Tales. There the land of Húrin's people falls after the great defeat to incoming Men who serve the Enemy's purpose, and Túrin's return is set against their mastery. The figure of Brodda belongs to this first layer as well. He is already married to a kinswoman of Húrin, whose name in that text has the early form Airin, and already meets his death at Túrin's hands in his own hall. The organised story of the Easterlings' coming into Beleriand developed later, in the Quenta texts collected in The Shaping of Middle-earth. The treachery of Men at the great battle had been only loosely sketched in the Lost Tales. In the Quenta it takes a definite form around two named chieftains, Bór and Ulfang, whose houses divide between faithfulness and betrayal. The drafts therefore show the Hithlum occupation and the Brodda episode existing before the chieftains and their genealogy, which were added afterwards to explain how such a people came to be in the land at all.1