Dor-lómin

Dor-lómin is a Sindarin name, and the editorial apparatus of The Silmarillion renders it as the Land of Echoes. Its first element is dor, the common Sindarin word for a land or country, which appears in a number of other regional names of Beleriand and its borderlands. The second element rests on lóm, glossed as echo, with lómin read as a form meaning echoes or echoing. The accent marks a long vowel, and the hyphen joins a generic term to a descriptive one. The name therefore describes the character of the land. It does not refer to a people or a ruler.1

The same element recurs in Ered Lómin, the Echoing Mountains, a range on the western side of Hithlum. The shared stem ties the region's name to its surroundings and places it within a group of related names in that part of the north-west. The enclosing land, Hithlum, is glossed separately as the Land of Mist. Its elements have nothing to do with echoes. Beyond the bare glosses, the published texts do not explain why echoes in particular gave the district its name. Any account of the acoustics of its hills or valleys would therefore be conjecture rather than report.2

Once the region was granted to the House of Hador, its name became attached to that house's lordship. In the narratives it appears chiefly in the style Lord of Dor-lómin, which is borne by Húrin. The name thus functions both as a geographical term and as a title of rule held in fealty. The texts give no separate name for the region in the tongue of the Edain who dwelt there. They also do not identify the particular speaker or occasion that first applied the Sindarin name. What can be said with confidence is that the name belongs to the Elvish naming of the lands around Hithlum. It is used consistently in that form wherever the region is mentioned.3

Dor-lómin was not a realm of its own but a district within Hithlum, the wide northern land walled in by mountains on its eastern, southern and western sides. It lay in the south of that country, where the Ered Wethrin, the Mountains of Shadow, curved round to form a great barrier between Hithlum and the lands of Beleriand beyond. Eastward and northward lay the other parts of Hithlum, among them the region about the lake of Mithrim, where the Noldor had first encamped on their return to Middle-earth. Within the Noldorin order of the north-west, the district fell to Fingon, and from there it passed as a fief to the lords of the Edain of Hador's line. For its people the mountain wall was both a protection and a confinement, because the roads out of Hithlum to the south ran only through its passes.1

The fuller narrative of Húrin's children describes the land at closer range. Húrin's house stood in the uplands near the northern slopes of the Ered Wethrin. A small stream, Nen Lalaith, came down past it from a spring beneath Amon Darthir, a height of that range. The account presents a country of hills, pasture and scattered homesteads. It was a settled land of Men under Elvish lordship, with none of the fortified character of the Noldorin strongholds. Like the rest of Hithlum, it lay in a cool and often misty climate, yet it was habitable and could be farmed.2

The enclosed position of Dor-lómin shaped its fate after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Once the host of the Noldor and their allies was broken, Morgoth sent Easterling Men into Hithlum as its new holders. The surviving people of Hador's house were held there in thraldom, shut in by the same mountains that had once guarded them. Morwen remained in Dor-lómin through those years, and her son was sent secretly over the mountains to Doriath. From then on the land appears in the texts less as a lordship than as an occupied country cut off from the free peoples of Beleriand.3

The history of Dor-lómin as a lordship of Men begins with the arrival of the Edain in Beleriand during the First Age. Before that time the district formed part of the Noldorin dominion of Hithlum. Fingolfin ruled as High King there, and Fingon held Dor-lómin as his own portion. Hador, called Lórindol, entered the service of Fingolfin and won his favour. The king granted him the lordship of Dor-lómin, and Hador gathered most of his kindred into that land. From then on the district was the chief seat of the Third House of the Edain. Its people became known for their fair hair and their steadfast loyalty to the house of Fingolfin.1

The long peace of the Siege of Angband ended with the Dagor Bragollach, which the chronicle places in the four hundred and fifty-fifth year after the coming of Fingolfin. Hithlum itself was not overrun in that war. Its lords and warriors, however, bore much of the fighting on its borders. Hador, by then very old, fell defending Fingolfin at Eithel Sirion, and his younger son Gundor died with him. The lordship passed to Galdor the Tall, Hador's elder son. Galdor was later slain at the same fortress, when the forces of Angband assailed the passes of the Ered Wethrin. His son Húrin was still young when he inherited Dor-lómin.2

Under Húrin the land had a brief final season as a free lordship. Húrin wedded Morwen of the House of Bëor, who had fled north after the ruin of Dorthonion. Their son Túrin was born in Dor-lómin, and a daughter, Lalaith, followed. The fuller narrative tells that the girl died as a child of a pestilence that came out of Angband on the wind. That tale also describes the household in those years. It mentions Sador, a lamed servant who befriended the boy, and the close ties of Húrin's house with its neighbours. Húrin himself stood high in the counsels of Fingon, who had become High King after his father's death.3

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad destroyed the power of Dor-lómin. Húrin and his brother Huor led the Men of Hador's house out with Fingon's host. When the battle was lost, they held the rearguard at the crossing of the Fen of Serech so that Turgon could withdraw toward Gondolin. Almost the whole fighting strength of the land perished there, and Húrin was taken alive to Angband. As the earlier section notes, the conquered land then passed to Easterling newcomers. The narratives record that many of its remaining women and children were taken as thralls. Among the Easterling lords was Brodda, who took Aerin, a kinswoman of Húrin, as his wife by force.4

The land appears twice more in the tragedy of Húrin's kin. After the fall of Nargothrond, Túrin was deceived by the dragon Glaurung and came back over the mountains. He found that Morwen had long since departed for Doriath. In Brodda's hall he learned of the oppression of his people, slew Brodda, and was forced to flee with a few followers. Many years later Húrin was released by Morgoth and returned to Hithlum. The Easterlings did not hinder him, yet he found no welcome in his former country. He soon left it and went southward. After this the texts do not trace the fortunes of the district. The published narratives leave its fate at the close of the Age unrecorded.5

The settled population of Dor-lómin were Men of the Third House of the Edain, the kindred that followed Hador into Hithlum. Their lords did not rule in their own right. They held the land in fealty to the Noldorin kings of Fingolfin's line, who were overlords of Hithlum as a whole, and in war the Men of Dor-lómin marched under the banners of those kings. The texts describe this bond as one of service and friendship rather than subjection. Hador's people were counted among the most faithful allies the Noldor had among Men. Rule within the district passed from father to son in Hador's line, and each lord owed counsel and armed service to the High King.1

The house of Dor-lómin was bound to the other Edain by marriage and fosterage. Galdor took as his wife Hareth of the Haladin, the people of the forest of Brethil, so that Húrin and Huor were of Haladin descent through their mother. In their youth both brothers were fostered in Brethil. From that sojourn came their brief stay in Gondolin, which gave Hador's house a tie to Turgon that no other lordship of Men shared. Marriage also linked the house to the kindred of Bëor. Húrin's union with Morwen was one such link, and Huor wedded Rían, likewise of Bëor's line.2

Dor-lómin was not a realm of its own but a district within Hithlum, the wide northern land walled in by mountains on its eastern, southern and western sides.

After the Nirnaeth Arnoediad the order of rule in the district was reversed. Morgoth confined the Easterlings to Hithlum as their reward, although they had hoped for richer lands, and forbade them to leave it. They became masters over the remnant of Hador's folk, who were mostly the old, women and children. Under the new masters these survivors lost their goods and their standing. The fuller account of Túrin's childhood shows how uneasy this arrangement was. The newcomers held Morwen in fear and did not dare to wrong her openly, and Aerin, though bound to one of them, gave her help in secret. Elsewhere in Hithlum, the tale of Tuor names Lorgan as a chief of the Easterlings there, under whom captive Men were held in bondage.3

In the narrative, Dor-lómin is where the tragedy of Húrin's children begins. The fuller account opens here and shows the land at first through a child's eyes. The house, the household and the fears of the grown-ups are what Túrin understands of the world before war reaches it. After the great defeat, the district becomes the place of the first parting. Morwen chose to remain in her husband's country, partly still hoping for word of him, and she sent her son away alone to a foreign kingdom. Her daughter Niënor was born there after the boy had gone. Brother and sister therefore never shared the home that bound them, and the story later turns on that estrangement.1

Later the land serves as a lure. At the sack of Nargothrond, Glaurung turned Túrin's thoughts toward the kin he had left behind. Túrin set out for Dor-lómin instead of following Finduilas, and the choice cost her life. The journey itself is a homecoming that fails. The hero finds his old house cold and empty, and the kin he came to save had left long before. His violence against the Easterling masters gives his people no lasting relief, and he departs again as a fugitive. The episode shows that the land cannot be restored by force of arms. Húrin's own brief return in old age repeats the pattern.2

Beyond these episodes, the name of the land stands for inheritance and identity. The Dragon-helm, an heirloom of Hador's line, is known in the tales as the helm of Dor-lómin. When Túrin wears it on the marches of Doriath, he carries the claim of his house into foreign service. Elsewhere he hides his lineage under assumed names. The district thus remains the fixed point of the story, a home that its people must leave and cannot truly regain.3

In the earliest phase of the legendarium Dor-lómin did not yet denote a single district. In The Book of Lost Tales it serves as the Gnomish counterpart of Hisilómë, the name of the whole shadowy land in the north-west, and the element it shares with that name was then understood in the sense of dusk or shade, not of echoes. In the tale of Turambar, the early form of the story of Túrin, this land is where Úrin and Mavwin, the precursors of Húrin and Morwen, have their home. After the great defeat Men are shut up there by Melko. The later interpretation of the name as a land of echoes therefore reflects a reworking of its meaning, not its original sense.1

The early prose summaries of the mythology and the alliterative lay of Túrin's life still treat Dor-lómin and Hithlum largely as alternative names for the same country, and the lay places Morwen's dwelling there without marking out a smaller region. Only in later revisions of the Annals and the Quenta did Tolkien confine the name to the southern part of Hithlum. The Noldorin overlordship and the grant to Hador's house, as the published text presents them, belong to that later stage. The move from a synonym for the whole enclosed land to a particular fief is thus one of the clearer examples of how the geography of the north-west grew more detailed over successive drafts.2