Anduin

Anduin is a Sindarin name, and its meaning is transparent once it is divided into its parts. The first element is the adjective for long, which also appears in other Sindarin place-names of the western lands. The second is the Elvish word for a large river, the same one that forms part of the names of other great watercourses, such as the Brandywine in its older form. Taken together, the name means simply the Long River. It is descriptive rather than commemorative: it honours no person or event, only the river's defining quality, its great length across the map of Middle-earth from the northern heights to the southern sea.1

Most speakers of the Common Speech did not use the Elvish name at all. In ordinary use the river was the Great River, or sometimes just the River, as if no other stream deserved the word. The Hobbit uses only this plain title, and The Lord of the Rings moves between the English and the Sindarin forms, so that the river is Anduin in the mouths of Elves, wizards and the lords of Gondor, and the Great River in the talk of travellers. The fuller form Anduin the Great combines both habits. The lower end of the river was also named: the chronicles of the South speak of the Mouths of Anduin where the stream divides before it reaches the Bay of Belfalas.2

Other peoples gave the river names in their own languages. Among the Northmen of the upper vales, the ancestors of the Rohirrim, it was called the Langflood, a name that is in effect a Mannish translation of the Elvish original, since it also means long river. The delta at the southern end had a Sindarin name of its own, Ethir Anduin, the outflow of Anduin, which names the place where the river spreads into many channels before it meets the sea. These parallel names show the river through the eyes of different peoples. What each people chose to call it depended on where they lived along its course and which language they spoke.3

Anduin is a river of great length that runs almost the whole height of the western lands. It rises in the far north beneath the northern mountains and runs southward through a long valley. On its western side lies the wall of the Misty Mountains, and on its eastern side the great forest of Greenwood, later called Mirkwood. This upper country, the Vales of Anduin, formed the western edge of Wilderland. In the days of Bilbo's journey the river there was crossed at a ford, and near it rose the Carrock, a single steep rock standing in the stream, where Beorn kept watch. Further south, where the Gladden flows in from the mountains, the river spreads among the reeds and pools of the Gladden Fields, the place where Isildur's Ring was lost.1

Below the Gladden the river passes the woods of Lothlórien, where the Silverlode joins it from the west. From there it runs broad and strong between low shores. The Brown Lands lie to the east, bare and withered, and to the west are the wolds and grasslands that border Rohan, where the Limlight comes down from Fangorn. The river then enters the hills of the Emyn Muil through a narrow gorge. There it runs over the rapids of Sarn Gebir and passes between the two great carved figures of the Argonath, which marked the ancient northern border of Gondor. Beyond them it widens into the lake of Nen Hithoel, with the island of Tol Brandir at its southern end, and falls in a great cascade at Rauros.2

Below the falls the river loses its speed among the fens of the Wetwang, where the Entwash meets it in many channels. It then becomes the central river of Gondor. It divides Anórien and the Pelennor on the west from Ithilien on the east, and the old capital, Osgiliath, was built across it. Minas Tirith has its landing at the Harlond on the river's western bank. Downstream lies the port of Pelargir, where ships of war once gathered. The river then spreads through its delta into the Bay of Belfalas. In Gondor the river served as a line of defence as well as a route for trade, and control of its crossings decided much of that realm's fortune in the War of the Ring.3

The river is older than any of the realms that later lined its banks. When the Eldar made their Great Journey westward in the Elder Days, their hosts came to the Great River and had to cross it before the Misty Mountains. Not all of them went on. A company of the Teleri led by Lenwë lost heart before the mountain barrier and turned aside, following the river southward. These were the Nandor, and their wandering down the valley of Anduin is the first recorded settlement of any people along its course. In the traditions of the Eldar the river therefore marks one of the earliest partings among the Elves.1

In the Second Age the lower river came into the hands of the Númenóreans. In the year 2350 they built the haven of Pelargir above the delta, and it became the chief harbour of the Faithful, those who kept their friendship with the Elves. After the Downfall of Númenor, Elendil's sons Isildur and Anárion established the southern realm of Gondor on both sides of the river, with the river itself at its heart. In 3429 Sauron attacked from the east and took Minas Ithil. Isildur escaped by boat down Anduin and went north to his father, while Anárion held Osgiliath and Minas Anor against the enemy. The war that followed ended the Second Age, and early in the Third, in its second year, Isildur was killed on his way north near the Gladden Fields, in the incident already mentioned.2

During the Third Age the river saw both settlement and ruin. The ancestors of the Hobbits lived for a time in its upper vales, and the chronicles place their first appearance in the records at about the year 1050, when the Harfoots crossed the mountains into Eriador. In Gondor, the Kin-strife that began in 1432 hit the river-city hardest. In 1437 Osgiliath was besieged and burned, and its great domed tower fell, carrying the city's palantír into the water. About 2463, two river-folk of Stoorish kin were fishing near the Gladden Fields when one of them, Déagol, found the lost Ring in the riverbed, and his companion Sméagol killed him for it. In 2475 Osgiliath was sacked again, this time by orcs from Mordor. After this the city was left in ruins and its stone bridge was broken.3

Further north the river was a boundary that invaders crossed at their peril. In 2510 a great host of Easterling horsemen and warriors, the Balchoth, came down through the Brown Lands, crossed the Anduin on rafts, and struck at the northern provinces of Gondor. The army of Gondor was hard pressed on the Field of Celebrant between the Silverlode and the Limlight. Eorl the Young then rode out of the north with the horsemen of the Éothéod and broke the enemy. From that victory came the gift of Calenardhon to Eorl's people and the founding of Rohan. In the upper vales, long afterwards, the Beornings under Grimbeorn kept the ford by the Carrock open for travellers in the years after the Battle of Five Armies.4

The river was at the centre of the War of the Ring. On 20 June 3018 Sauron attacked Osgiliath. The defenders, led by Boromir and Faramir, held the western shore only after the last bridge was thrown down. In February 3019 the Fellowship left Lórien in Elven boats and went down the river as far as the lawn of Parth Galen below Tol Brandir, where the company broke apart on 26 February. Boromir's body was laid in one of the boats and given to the falls of Rauros. In March, Aragorn led the Dead to Pelargir, drove off the Corsairs of Umbar and took their fleet. He brought it up the river with men of southern Gondor aboard and landed at the Harlond in time to decide the Battle of the Pelennor Fields on 15 March.5

After the war, the river flowed once more through a united and peaceful realm. Ithilien on the eastern bank was given to Faramir as its prince, and Legolas brought Elves of his people south to settle there, so that the land that had been abandoned became green again. The last event connected with the river in the chronicles belongs to the Fourth Age. When King Elessar died in the year 120, Legolas built a grey ship in Ithilien and sailed down the Anduin and out over the Sea, and the records say that Gimli went with him. That voyage closes the recorded history of the river.6

No single power ever held the whole length of Anduin, and the peoples along its course lived under very different kinds of rule. In the upper vales the land belonged to Northmen, related in speech and custom to the Men of Dale and the Lake. The Beornings in the valley below the Carrock and the Woodmen along the western eaves of Mirkwood were free folk under no king. Hobbits had once lived there too, and of their three kinds the Stoors stayed longest by the river, where they were less shy of Men than their kin. For a time the Éothéod also lived between the Carrock and the Gladden, before they moved to the country near the river's northern sources.1

The middle reaches were divided between realms that faced each other across the water. On the western bank lay Lothlórien, a land of Silvan Elves under Celeborn and Galadriel, which guarded its borders closely and let few strangers in. Across the river and further north, Dol Guldur in southern Mirkwood was a standing threat to the Elves and to every traveller in the vales. Below Lórien the western shore faced the plains that later became Rohan. After Eorl's settlement, the Riders there counted Gondor, their neighbour downstream, as their ally.2

The lower end of the river was also named: the chronicles of the South speak of the Mouths of Anduin where the stream divides before it reaches the Bay of Belfalas.

The lower river belonged to Gondor, whose authority passed from the kings of Anárion's line to the Ruling Stewards. The last king, Eärnur, did not return from Minas Morgul, and in 2050 the steward Mardil took up the government in his place. The stewards ruled from Minas Tirith, and in their day the eastern shore became debatable land, held in the last years by rangers under Faramir. The river also carried danger from the sea. In 1634 the Corsairs of Umbar sailed up to Pelargir, ravaged it, and slew King Minardil.3

In The Hobbit the river stays at the edge of the story. Bilbo sees it from the heights and later from the Carrock, a broad water that the company must cross, and it marks the point where the travellers leave the mountains and enter the wild country around Beorn's house. The Lord of the Rings gives the river a larger part. In Gandalf's account of Gollum's origins the river is where the Ring's story starts again, among a riverside folk who fished and dived and knew its banks well. The river thus runs through the book's history of the Ring long before any character in the main story reaches its shores.1

The river's main part in the story is the Fellowship's journey by boat. Celeborn gives them boats partly so that they can put off the choice between Minas Tirith and Mordor, and the chapters that follow read as a period of drift and uncertainty. The company cannot settle on which shore to take. Sam sees something like a log following them at night and realises that Gollum is paddling behind, and Frodo admits that he has seen it too. At Sarn Gebir orcs shoot at them from the eastern bank, and Legolas brings down a winged shape in the dark sky, while Frodo feels a sudden cold. The river carries the travellers forward, but it does not settle the choice they have to make.2

Later the river carries news and signs between the parts of the story. Faramir tells Frodo that he heard his brother's horn far off and then saw a grey boat drift past on the river at night with Boromir lying in it. This is the way Frodo learns that Boromir is dead. At the Pelennor the black-sailed fleet coming upriver first looks like a victory for the enemy, and only when the royal standard is unfurled do the defenders see who is aboard. For Legolas the lower river is where he first hears gulls, and he tells his friends that from then on he cannot forget his longing for the Sea.3

The analysis of the river's name was worked out well before The Lord of the Rings took shape. In the Etymologies, the dictionary of Elvish roots that Tolkien compiled in the 1930s, the name is entered under the stems for length and for flowing water. The name is treated there as a word of the tongue then called Noldorin. At that stage of the legendarium, Noldorin was the language of the Exiles. Only later did Tolkien reassign that phonology and vocabulary to Sindarin, the speech of the Elves who had stayed in Beleriand. The etymology therefore survived a large reorganisation of the languages without change. What altered was the account of which people had coined the name.1

The earliest parting of the Elves at the river also has a different form in the drafts. In the Quenta Silmarillion and the Lhammas of the later 1930s, the Elves who abandoned the march at the Great River and went south along it are led by Dan. His people take their name, the Danas, from him, and the figure of Denethor appears as his son. In the published Silmarillion the same leader is named Lenwë. The shape of the episode is already present in these texts, including the halt before the mountains and the turn down the river valley. Only the name of the leader and the naming of his people were changed later.2

In Peter Jackson's film trilogy the river keeps its structural role, but several episodes along its course are rearranged. The Fellowship's journey from Lórien to Parth Galen is much shorter than in the book. The attack at Sarn Gebir and Legolas's shot at the winged shape overhead do not appear, so the stretch of river between Lórien and the Argonath is not a place of open danger. The river's part in the history of the Ring is moved to the front of the story instead. The third film opens with Déagol's find in the riverbed and Sméagol's murder of him, an episode that the book gives only in Gandalf's retelling. The extended edition of the second film also changes how Faramir learns of Boromir's death. In the book he sees the grey boat pass at night from a distance. The film brings him into direct contact with his brother's funeral boat.1

The films make larger changes to the lower river. Faramir takes Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath, so the hobbits reach the ruined city on the river, which they never do in the book, and the book's quick release of the travellers becomes a detention. The greatest change concerns the fleet that comes up the river to the Harlond. In the book the Dead are released after the victory at Pelargir, and the ships reach the Pelennor carrying men of southern Gondor. In the films the Dead themselves come upriver and fight on the Pelennor, and only after that are they released. The capture of the Corsair ships at Pelargir appears only in the extended edition. In the theatrical cut the fleet arrives at the Pelennor with no scene at Pelargir before it.2