Blue Mountains

In the published narrative the range goes by three names that alternate without comment. The English form, the Blue Mountains, is the one the appendices use most readily when they speak of the old dwarf-cities and of the later exile of Durin's line in the west. Beside it stands the Sindarin Ered Luin, which the same account uses for the eastern side of the range beyond the Lune. The Prologue gives the third name, the Mountains of Lune, in its sketch of the lands the Hobbits settled. That form does not name the mountains for a quality of their own. It ties them to the river and gulf of Lune, which cut through the range and lead down to the sea, so it describes the heights by their position along that waterway, much as a traveller from Eriador would place them.1

The Sindarin name translates exactly into the English one. Ered is the plural of orod, mountain, the element also found in Orodruin and Thangorodrim, and luin means blue, as in the star-name Helluin and in Mindolluin above Minas Tirith. The Blue Mountains is therefore a rendering of the Elvish name, not a separate coinage by Men or Hobbits. The texts do not explain why the colour was chosen, and it is best left unexplained here.2

The Elder Days add another name, Ered Lindon, the Mountains of Lindon. According to the account of Beleriand's realms, the Noldor gave the name Lindon, the land of music, to Ossiriand, the green country of the Seven Rivers, because of the singing of the Green-elves who lived there. They named the range after that land because they first saw it from Ossiriand, looking eastward from the Elvish side. The two Sindarin names thus look at the mountains from different directions: Ered Lindon names them from the country at their feet, while Ered Luin names them by their appearance. The appendix on name-elements lists both forms under the plural ered, and the English Blue Mountains corresponds only to the second.3

In the Third Age the Blue Mountains form the western wall of Eriador. East of them lies the broad country of the westlands, which reaches to the Misty Mountains and holds the Shire. West of them the narrow remnant of Lindon runs down to the sea, the last Elvish realm on the mainland after the Elder Days. The range is not a single unbroken barrier. The great inlet of the Gulf of Lune divides it, and at the head of that gulf stand the Grey Havens, where the road from Eriador meets the sea and the Elves take ship into the West. The Lune itself runs on the eastern side of the heights before it enters the gulf. The chronicles therefore describe the mountains with this water-line as their point of reference, much as the Names and Naming section observed of one of their names.1

This shape comes from the end of the First Age. Before the War of Wrath the range lay much further inland in the world's geography. It was the eastern fence of Beleriand, and the river-country of Ossiriand spread along its western foot. The Dwarves had delved their two cities, Nogrod and Belegost, in its eastern side, facing away from the Elvish lands. When Beleriand was overthrown and most of it drowned, the mountains did not escape unharmed. The range was broken, the sea poured in through the breach, and the gulf that later divided Lindon was formed. The heights that had once stood far from any coast became the shoreline of Middle-earth's north-west.2

In later ages the mountains are known less for their height than for what lies within them. Their eastern flank, on the far side of the Lune from Lindon, remained country that the Dwarves returned to. In the Third Age the exiles of Durin's line made their dwelling there after long wandering. The appendices show it as a modest place. The mines gave little of the precious metals, and the smiths' work there was mostly in iron, so the range was a refuge for the exiles more than a source of wealth. The Blue Mountains therefore stand between two worlds: the Elvish coast on one side, and on the other the open inland country of Men, Hobbits and passing Dwarves.3

The recorded history of the range begins with the Dwarves. In the long years before the rising of the Moon they came westward over the mountains into Beleriand, and the Grey-elves who met them there had never before seen a speaking people other than their own kin. Their two mansions in the range were known to themselves as Tumunzahar and Gabilgathol, called Nogrod and Belegost by the Elves, and a great road ran from them down toward the plains and across the Gelion. Trade grew between the mountain-folk and Doriath. The smiths of Belegost helped Thingol delve his halls at Menegroth, and before the first battles against Morgoth they armed the Sindar with weapons and mail, a craft the Elves of that country had not yet mastered.1

In the wars of the First Age the two cities chose differently. At the Nirnaeth Arnoediad the Dwarves of Belegost stood against the dragon Glaurung, and their lord Azaghâl wounded the beast even as he was crushed beneath it, so that it withdrew from the field. The relationship between Nogrod and Doriath later ended in bloodshed. Craftsmen of Nogrod were set to work on the Nauglamír, quarrelled with Thingol over the treasure and slew him, and a host from Nogrod afterwards sacked Menegroth. Belegost refused to join that assault. On their way home the returning army was caught at the ford of Sarn Athrad by Beren and the Green-elves, and the lord of Nogrod fell there.2

The old cities did not survive the end of the Elder Days. When the host of the West overthrew Morgoth and Thangorodrim was broken, Nogrod and Belegost were ruined in the upheaval that the Land and Place section describes for the range as a whole. Their people did not vanish. Many of them went east to Khazad-dûm early in the Second Age, and their numbers and craft added much to the strength of Durin's realm. From then until late in the Third Age the chronicles of Durin's Folk have little to say about the mountains themselves.3

The range became important again through a second exile. In 2770 of the Third Age the dragon Smaug took the Lonely Mountain, and Thrór, his son Thráin II and his grandson Thorin were left homeless with the remnant of their people. The war against the Orcs that followed Thrór's murder ended at the Battle of Azanulbizar in 2799. Thráin and Thorin then turned west and, after years of wandering, settled with their followers in the Ered Luin east of the Lune. Their numbers slowly grew there, as other Dwarves who had been scattered came to join them.4

The settlement in the mountains did not satisfy Thráin, who still wanted to reclaim Erebor. In 2841 he left the Blue Mountains with a few companions, and in 2845 he was taken and imprisoned in Dol Guldur. From that time Thorin led the exiles in the west. A century later, in 2941, Thorin set out from there with twelve companions and the hobbit Bilbo Baggins on the journey that ended with the death of Smaug and the refounding of the Kingdom under the Mountain. After this the range was no longer the chief seat of Durin's line.5

The Dwarves did not leave the western mountains after the Quest of Erebor. In the years before the War of the Ring, Dwarves still passed through the Shire on the East Road on their way to and from the western mountains. The hobbits there heard from them rumours of trouble growing in the East. The published narrative records no further events in the range, and it tells nothing of the fate of the Dwarf-holds there in the Fourth Age.6

In the Elder Days the range was held by two peoples who faced away from each other. The Dwarves occupied the eastern halls, and each of the two cities kept its own lords and pursued its own policy. The country along the western foot belonged to the Green-elves, and nothing in the accounts suggests that the Dwarves sought land on that side. Their dealings with the Elves were conducted through trade and travel rather than settlement. When the Noldor returned to Middle-earth, Caranthir, son of Fëanor, took the lands about Lake Helevorn, which the Dwarf-road crossed on its way into Beleriand. He and the mountain-folk had little affection for each other, but the exchange between them was profitable to both, and through him much of the Dwarves' traffic passed to the Noldor.1

Relations with individual Elves could be closer. Eöl of Nan Elmoth, who shunned the Noldor, counted the Dwarves among his few friends, journeyed to their mansions, and learned much of their metalwork, a knowledge his son Maeglin later carried into Gondolin. Not every Dwarf of the range stayed within its fellowship. The Petty-dwarves whom Túrin met in western Beleriand were said to descend from those who had been driven out of the great eastern cities in earlier times, and they had dwindled in stature and in craft.2

The Blue Mountains therefore stand between two worlds: the Elvish coast on one side, and on the other the open inland country of Men, Hobbits and passing Dwarves.

The fame of the old smithies lasted beyond their ruin. Aragorn names Telchar as the maker of Elendil's sword, so that the chief heirloom of the northern kings of Men came from a craftsman of the range. In the Third Age, rule over the western Dwarves passed to the exiled house of Durin, and Thorin, as its head, had no kingdom to govern, only a people to sustain. In Bilbo's hearing he spoke of that time without pride, as years of blacksmithing and even coal-mining for hire among Men. The published texts record almost nothing of dealings with the Elves across the Lune in this period, and they should not be supplied from conjecture.3

In the tales of the Elder Days the range works above all as a threshold. Peoples who come out of the unknown East reach it before they enter the story of Beleriand. The Dwarves are the first to make this crossing, and the Edain follow later. The narrative of the Coming of Men tells how Finrod, travelling in the east of the land, came upon the folk of Bëor camped in Ossiriand after they had passed over the mountains. That meeting opens the long history of the Elf-friends. The kindreds who came after them entered by the same way. For the storyteller, then, the mountains mark the edge of the world as the Elves knew it. What lay beyond them enters the legends only when it has climbed over the passes.1

In the two published narratives of the Third Age the range almost never appears on stage. It sits on the western horizon of the map, and the events that shape the books move away from it. The Hobbit starts in a hobbit-hole, yet the company that arrives at Bag End brings with it the hopes and grievances of a people whose home in exile lay in these mountains. In The Lord of the Rings the Prologue uses the heights to fix the limits of the country the Hobbits made their own. The quest itself then turns east. Only at the very end does the story return westward, when the Ring-bearers ride to the Havens in the gap the sea had cut through the range. There the mountains frame the final departure without taking part in it.2

Gandalf's own account of the Quest of Erebor gives the mountains a further, quieter role. He tells how he met Thorin by chance at Bree while the dwarf was heading back to his western home, and how their counsels began from that meeting. Seen this way, the range is where the chain of events leading to the Ring's discovery begins.3

The unpublished late writings give the Dwarves of the range an origin that neither the appendices nor the posthumous Silmarillion spells out. In the essay on the relations between Dwarves and Men, written long after The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien took up the old tradition of the Seven Fathers and gave their descendants separate names and homelands. Durin, father of the Longbeards, was said to have been laid to sleep alone. The other six lay in pairs, and one of these pairs woke in the Blue Mountains. From them came the Firebeards and the Broadbeams, the two kindreds whose mansions the Elves later knew as Nogrod and Belegost. The published narratives treat the dwellers of the two cities simply as Dwarves of the west, distinct from Durin's line in the east. The essay turns that loose distinction into a lineage, so that the two cities appear as the seats of separate houses from the beginning. Tolkien did not carry these names into any finished text. They therefore stand as a late elaboration of the tradition, not as settled lore.1