Beleriand

The name Beleriand belongs to the Sindarin tongue, the speech that developed in Middle-earth among the Elves who never completed the westward journey to Aman. It designates the country lying between the Blue Mountains and the shores of the Great Sea, and in its widest use covers both the lands south of the Firth of Drengist and the wide vales through which the Sirion runs to the sea. Tolkien's published account offers no single settled gloss of the word; unlike Doriath, whose name declares the girdle of enchantment about it, or Nargothrond and Menegroth, whose names are transparently descriptive of caverns and halls, Beleriand is presented simply as the ancient designation of the land. It has been connected with the name of Balar, the isle off the southern coast and the bay beside it, so that the country would be understood as the land about Balar, where the Teleri long waited for passage over the sea.

The naming was the work of the Sindar themselves, and it was already old when the exiled Noldor came over the Grinding Ice and took the name into their own speech. This order matters for the linguistic history of the region: the Noldor, who returned from Aman with the Quenya of Valinor on their tongues, largely adopted the Sindarin names already in use for rivers, hills and coasts rather than imposing their own, so that the map of the country preserves the older Grey-elven layer beneath the newer Noldorin realms set upon it. Where Quenya names for these lands are recorded at all, they tend to belong to lore and to the reckoning of the Valar rather than to daily speech in Middle-earth.

The extent covered by the name was not fixed. In its narrower sense Beleriand meant the lands about the lower Sirion and the southern coasts, while the northern marches, the highlands of Dorthonion and the plain before Angband, were sometimes counted apart from it; in its broader sense it took in all the country west of the mountains from the northern wastes to the southern shore. Later usage among the Elves also distinguished East Beleriand from West Beleriand along the line of the Sirion, a division of convenience that answered to how the land was in fact settled and defended. That the name should have been used both narrowly and widely is characteristic of Tolkien's geographical nomenclature, where terms grow and contract with the fortunes of those who use them.

The country was set like a wide basin between mountain walls and the sea, and its shape is best understood by the fences that enclosed it. Along the east ran the Ered Luin, high and long, dividing the land from the wide countries beyond; in the north the sheer Ered Wethrin curved down from those heights, and eastward of them rose the pine-clad highland of Dorthonion, so that the two together made a barrier facing the north. Beyond that barrier lay a great grassy plain, and beyond the plain the iron peaks under which Morgoth's fortress was delved, so that the northern march was at once the strongest and the most exposed part of the land. Between the mountain wall and the highland the ground fell away in a single pass, through which the Sirion rose and came down into the lands below; this gap was the road by which armies from the north might descend, and it was watched from an island in the river.

West of the Ered Wethrin lay Hithlum with its lake and its western province of Dor-lómin, shut off from the coast by a further range broken only by the long firth of Drengist; beyond that range the land of Nevrast lay open to the sea, and within the encircling mountains further south was hidden the plain in which Gondolin was built. The Sirion ran the length of the country from north to south, passing wooded Brethil and the marches about it, and roughly halfway down its course crossed a long ridge of hills that ran east and west across the whole land like a rampart, where the river sank underground and issued again below. South of that ridge the ground grew low and marshy toward the delta, with the willow-lands about the inflow of the Narog; the western shore was held by the mariners of the Falas at their two havens, and off the southern coast lay the isle of Balar in its bay.

Eastward the pattern was one of rivers rather than ranges. Gelion gathered its tributaries out of the Ered Luin and flowed south through open country, and the land between those streams and the mountains was Ossiriand, thickly wooded and thinly settled. North of it the passes and hills of the eastern march were held from a bare, windswept height, with a gap between the highlands giving onto the plain; south and west lay the shut forest of Nan Elmoth and, beyond it, the woods of Doriath, which no traveller entered against the will of its queen. The northern approach to Doriath was closed by a range of haunted precipices and the poisoned valley beneath them, so that the realm's defences were as much of terrain as of enchantment. Taken together, the land was one whose divisions were made by water and stone, and the wars fought in it turned repeatedly on who held the few passes, fords and river-crossings by which one part could be reached from another.

The history of the country begins in the ages of starlight, before Sun or Moon were made. When the Elves were summoned westward to Aman, a great part of the Teleri came down out of the eastern lands and halted along the rivers, and there they remained when their lord Elwë was lost in the woods and long enchanted by the Maia Melian; from that delay grew the Sindar, the people of the Grey-elves, who took the land for their own. Elwë came again as Thingol and ruled with Melian in the forest, and their halls at Menegroth were delved for them by the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains, who had come west upon the new-made road and traded stone-craft and weapons for the wealth of the woodland realm. Others of the Telerin kindred settled the western shores and became mariners under Círdan, and later a further host of Elves, the Nandor who had turned aside east of the mountains, was led over the passes by Denethor and dwelt in the wooded country between the rivers of the east. Thus before any Noldo set foot in it the land already held three distinct peoples, a network of trade with the Dwarf-cities, and a settled kingship in its heart.

That first peace was broken when Morgoth returned out of the West with the stolen Silmarils, re-established himself in the northern pits and let loose his Orcs. The First Battle of Beleriand was fought while the stars still gave the only light: two hosts came down, one on either side of the great river, and Thingol with Denethor's people met the eastern host in the open country. Denethor was cut off upon a lonely hill and slain there, and though the Orcs were broken between Thingol's power and the Dwarves, the Green-elves never again took a king. In the west the Orcs harried the coasts and shut Círdan within his havens, and after that assault Melian drew about the woodland realm the enchantment that closed it to all who came without leave. From this point the country's history is inseparable from the war in the north, and its internal divisions become military ones.

The exiled Noldor came next. Fëanor landed with his following on the northern firth and burned the ships that had carried them, and within days of that landing his people won the Battle-under-Stars against the Orcs sent to meet them; Fëanor himself pursued too far and was slain in sight of the enemy's gates. Fingolfin's host, which had crossed the northern ice, entered the land at the first rising of the Moon, and the Sun rose soon after upon their march. The bitterness between the two hosts was eased when Fingon brought Maedhros down from the peaks where Morgoth had hung him, and Maedhros yielded the high kingship to Fingolfin; thereafter the exiles parted out the land, Fingolfin and Fingon holding the north-west, Finrod delving Nargothrond with Dwarvish help, the sons of Fëanor keeping the eastern marches, and Turgon labouring more than fifty years in secret upon Gondolin. Some twenty years after the crossing the princes met at a great feast beside the springs of Ivrin, and Elves of all three older kindreds came to it. The fourth battle, the Glorious Battle, ended in a rout of Morgoth's Orcs, and out of that victory came the Siege of Angband, a watch upon the north maintained for well-nigh four hundred years, during which Men first crossed the mountains from the east and were taken into the service and friendship of the Eldar.

The Siege ended in a winter night, when rivers of fire ran down from the northern peaks and the grassy plain before them was burned into a desert of ash and dust. Glaurung came out full-grown with Balrogs and Orcs behind him, the pine-clad highland was overrun and its lords slain, and the island tower that guarded the river-pass fell and was made a place of dread under Sauron. Fingolfin, seeing the ruin, rode alone to the gates of Angband and there died. What survived of the northern defence was gathered again a generation later in the Union of Maedhros, but the Battle of Unnumbered Tears was undone by the treachery of Easterlings in the eastern host: Fingon was killed, the men of the forest fell covering the retreat, Húrin was taken alive, and only Turgon's people withdrew in order. After it Morgoth held the whole of the north; Hithlum was given over to faithless Men, the western havens were thrown down in the following year, and their remnant fled to the isle in the bay and to the marshes at the river's mouth.

The hidden realms then fell one by one. Nargothrond, whose secrecy had been abandoned for open war on Túrin's counsel, was stormed and plundered by Glaurung and his host. Doriath outlived its queen's protection only briefly: Thingol was killed in his own halls in a quarrel with Dwarvish smiths over the Nauglamír, Melian forsook Middle-earth and the enchantment failed, and after a Dwarvish sack the restored kingdom under Dior was destroyed by the sons of Fëanor in the second kin-slaying. Gondolin, betrayed at last by Maeglin, was taken and burned, and only a small company escaped by a hidden way. The survivors of all these ruins came together in a settlement at the Mouths of Sirion, which prospered a short while under Eärendil and Elwing until the sons of Fëanor fell upon it in turn for the sake of the Silmaril.

Eärendil's voyage into the West brought the host of the Valar over the sea, and the Great Battle that followed destroyed Morgoth's power: Angband was unroofed, the winged dragons were beaten out of the sky, and the towering peaks above the fortress were broken down. The land itself did not survive the violence of that war. Its northern and western parts were shattered and the sea came in over them, so that the country described in the songs of the Eldar ceased to exist at the close of the First Age; the few who would not depart over sea crossed the mountains eastward, and the surviving strip of coast beyond them kept the memory of the drowned land in its later name of Lindon, where Gil-galad ruled into the Second Age. Later ages knew Beleriand only as a lost country whose remnants were islands, and its wars became the matter of ancient lore rather than of living memory.

Authority in the country was older than any of its famous realms, and it rested first with Thingol, who claimed lordship over all the lands within the mountain fences and held that none might settle there without his leave. The seafaring folk of the western havens under Círdan acknowledged him as their king, and the scattered Sindar of the northern lakes and the eastern woods were reckoned his people even where he kept no garrison. When the exiles came he sent word defining their place: they might hold the northern highlands and the empty country east of his forest, but the woods of his own realm were closed to them and the coasts remained his. Learning afterwards how the Noldor had come by their ships, he forbade the Valinorean tongue to be spoken within his bounds, and that ban did much to make the Grey-elven speech the common language of the whole land. Older than all these were the Petty-dwarves, a dispossessed folk hunted as beasts in the earliest days before their kind was understood.

Among the Noldor rule took the form of a high kingship over separate realms rather than a single government, each prince holding his own land and owing loyalty rather than obedience. The title passed from Fingolfin to Fingon, from Fingon to Turgon in his hidden city, and at the last to Gil-galad, who had been sent away for safety to the havens and the island in the southern bay and so outlived the ruin. Nargothrond passed from its founder to his brother Orodreth when Finrod left it to keep an old promise, and under that second king the direction of the realm was often set by other voices than his own. Doriath was administered through wardens of its marches, of whom Beleg and Mablung were the chief, and its later kingship descended through Thingol's daughter to her son. Not everyone in the land owned a lord at all: Eöl in his shut forest denied any claim upon him, and refused the authority of his wife's kin.

Men entered as newcomers and held their lands by grant. The people of Bëor attached themselves to the sons of Finarfin and were given ground in the eastern part of the northern highland; the house of Hador received Dor-lómin from Fingolfin as a fief and set aside its own language for the Grey-elven speech; the followers of Haleth were allowed the forest between the rivers and lived there as a free people under their own chieftains, asked only to keep the crossings against the enemy. That last succession ran by chieftaincy rather than crown, and among Haleth's folk there also dwelt the Drúedain, a small woodland people whose skill against Orc-craft was valued by their hosts. Later Easterlings crossed the mountains and were taken into service on the eastern marches by the sons of Fëanor; their loyalties divided, and the kindred that kept faith was afterwards driven from the lands it had been given. The long commerce with the Dwarf-cities of the eastern mountains, which had shaped the land's building and armouries from the beginning, ended in open enmity in the last generation of the kingdom.

In the narrative of the First Age, Beleriand is less a backdrop than a set of distances that must be walked. The central tales are journeys through it, and their turning points are places on the map: Beren comes down out of the northern highland and passes the guarded forest to stand before Thingol, and afterwards the road to Angband is measured for the reader in fens, hills and river-crossings. Túrin's story is told as a circuit — out of his mother's house in the west, into the woods of the marches, to the caverns above the Narog, and at last back to the river where his life ends — so that his fate and his geography are described in the same sentences. Tuor's is the reverse movement, from a northern shore southward under the guidance of the sea to a valley that no map records. Where other writers would give a country in summary, Tolkien gives fords, gates and passes, and the plots turn on who can reach whom.

The land also carries a recurring argument about concealment. Nearly every people in it seeks safety by shutting a door — an enchanted border, a hidden gate, a cavern mouth, a haven behind a headland — and the story tests each in turn. Against this stands the presence of Ulmo, who does not abandon the country and works through its waters, sending counsel up the Sirion and speaking to those who will listen at the sea's edge, always urging that walls are not enough and that the road west should be sought. That the warnings are heard and then set aside gives Beleriand its particular narrative weight: it is a place where refusal to leave is the characteristic error, and where the reader is told the outcome in advance and watches the choices anyway.

For the later legendarium the country serves as the measure of what has been lost. Its realms survive in the Third Age chiefly as names in song and in the memory of a few who saw them, so that when Bilbo sings of Eärendil in Rivendell the older kingdoms are invoked as remote and half-legendary, and Elrond speaks of the Elder Days as a time whose scale dwarfs the present. Beleriand thus functions in Tolkien's writing as the deep past that later events echo without equalling.

The name reached its final shape only after a long series of experiments. In the long poems of the 1920s the country appears as Broseliand, a form that carries an audible echo of Brocéliande, the enchanted forest of Breton and Arthurian romance; Tolkien came to think the borrowing unsuitable and set about replacing it. Against the manuscript of the Lay of Leithian a succession of trial names was written in its place — among them Golodhinand, Noldorinan, Geleriand, Bladorinand, Belaurien, Arsiriand and Lassiriand — before Beleriand was fixed upon and carried forward into all the later prose. The sequence is instructive, since several of the rejected forms are built on the names of peoples rather than of places, and would have made the land the country of the Noldor rather than an older Grey-elven name that the exiles inherited.

The country's history was written and rewritten chiefly in annalistic form, and the successive versions differ in more than wording. The earliest Annals of Beleriand belong to the same period as the prose Quenta of about 1930, and were followed by a later set in the 1930s and, after the completion of The Lord of the Rings, by the Grey Annals, which are fuller in narrative and much altered in reckoning; dates assigned to the same events move considerably between one text and the next. The descriptive survey of the land's regions that stands in the published book derives from the Quenta Silmarillion of the later 1930s rather than from any late revision, and Tolkien's working map of the region, first drawn in that decade, was amended for many years afterwards. Some of the latest writing on the country, notably the long account of the forest people and their lands after the great battles, was left in a state that could not be fitted into the finished narrative at all.