Dorthonion

Dorthonion is a Sindarin name, formed in the tongue that the Elves of Beleriand used for the lands around them. It is usually rendered as 'Land of Pines'. The first element is dor, the common Sindarin word for a land or region, which also appears in names such as Doriath. The second is thôn, 'pine-tree', and a closing -ion completes the compound as a place-name. The name therefore describes what marked the highland most plainly to those who saw it from the plains below, its dark and extensive pine forests, and says nothing of any founder, lord or event. In this it resembles many of the older Beleriandic names, which describe the land itself.1

The same idea survives in a second, poetic form of the name in The Lord of the Rings. In the long chant that Treebeard sings to Merry and Pippin about the forests he walked in the Elder Days, the pine-clad highland is remembered in winter, and it is named both as Dorthonion and as Orod-na-Thôn, 'mountain of the pine'. The variant uses the Sindarin orod, 'mountain', in place of the more general dor. It emphasises height rather than extent, and the pines remain the defining feature. This passage is also the only point at which the name reaches the published work of Tolkien's lifetime, and there it belongs to a land already long lost.2

Later names replaced the first one without keeping its meaning. When the highland fell under the power of the North, it came to be called Taur-nu-Fuin, 'Forest under Night' or 'Forest under Nightshade'. That name is built from taur, 'great forest', nu, 'under', and fuin, 'gloom' or 'darkness'. A further and harsher name is recorded as Deldúwath, glossed as 'Horror of Night-shade'. Where the older name describes pine trees, both later names describe dread, and the change of name records how differently the Elves came to regard the same uplands. The events behind this renaming belong to the history of the region rather than to its nomenclature.3

Dorthonion formed the central and highest part of Beleriand's northern border. It was a broad upland lying directly south of the grassy plain of Ard-galen, beyond which rose Thangorodrim and the fortress of Angband. From west to east it covered a span that the account gives as sixty leagues, which made it the largest single highland on that frontier. Its northern face rose gently out of the plain. That gentle rise left the slopes open toward the enemy's country, and most of the pine forest from which the region took its name grew on the northern and western sides.1

Above the wooded slopes the land became a cold and barren plateau. Small mountain lakes lay there beneath bare heights of rock, and those heights stood higher than the peaks of Ered Wethrin, the mountain wall further west. Two passes marked the edges of the highland. On the west, the vale of Sirion ran down between Dorthonion and Ered Wethrin; this narrow way was later guarded from the isle of Tol Sirion. On the east, the Pass of Aglon ran between Dorthonion and the hills of Himring. The south side of the highland ended in sheer precipices. Below these lay Nan Dungortheb, a dangerous valley that separated Dorthonion from Ered Gorgoroth and from the northern marches of Doriath.2

Two localities within the highland appear by name in the later chapters. Ladros lay in the north-east of Dorthonion and became the home of the House of Bëor among the first Men who entered Beleriand. Tarn Aeluin was one of the lonely lakes of the high moorland and was known for the clearness of its water. These places show that the upland was not uniform. Its sheltered eastern parts could be settled, while its high interior remained wild and thinly peopled. Taken as a whole, Dorthonion served as a natural rampart between the northern plain and the river-lands of Beleriand. It was steep and difficult toward the south, but more open and exposed toward the north.3

Nothing in the chronicles suggests that Dorthonion was a seat of any realm before the return of the Noldor. The Sindar of Beleriand knew the highland, but their chief dwellings lay far to the south and west, and the pinewoods of the north were left largely to themselves. The region's recorded history begins with the coming of Finarfin's house to Beleriand. When the Noldorin princes divided the northern marches among themselves, Angrod and Aegnor took the highland and turned its northern face into a watch-post over the plain toward Angband. From there they could observe the enemy's gates across the open grassland, and their presence closed one of the widest approaches into the heart of Beleriand.1

During the long years of the Siege of Angband the highland was one of the anchors of the Noldorin ring around the North. Its lords held their land as vassals of their brother Finrod in Nargothrond, though the soil of the uplands was poor and their following small. The character of Dorthonion changed when Men crossed into Beleriand. Finrod's friendship with Bëor and his people led the House of Bëor to settle in the north-eastern parts of the highland, where they lived under the protection of the sons of Finarfin. For a time the region was therefore shared by Elves and Mortals, and the Edain of that house became bound to the defence of the northern border.2

The Siege ended with the Dagor Bragollach, the Battle of Sudden Flame. Morgoth released rivers of fire across the northern plain on a winter night, and the flames ran up against the open slopes of the highland and set the pinewoods burning. Angrod and Aegnor were slain, and so were Bregolas of the House of Bëor and a large part of that people's warriors. Bregolas's brother Barahir rode west and saved Finrod when the king was surrounded in the Fens of Serech, receiving his ring as a pledge of lasting friendship. Barahir then returned to what remained of his people's lands and held on there against the hosts of Angband. His wife Emeldir led the women and children who survived away from the highland to safer country in the west.3

The resistance in Dorthonion lasted for some time after the battle, but Morgoth pressed it hard, and Barahir's following was worn down until only twelve outlaws remained, among them his son Beren. Their hiding place was betrayed when Gorlim, one of the twelve, was deceived by Sauron. The band was surprised and slain near Tarn Aeluin, and only Beren, who was absent on an errand, survived. He recovered Finrod's ring from the Orcs who had taken it from his father's hand. He then stayed on alone in the conquered highland for four years, fighting as a solitary outlaw until Morgoth set a great price on his head. At last he was driven out and made his way south over the precipices, through the terrors of Ered Gorgoroth and Nan Dungortheb, into Doriath.4

After Beren's departure no free people held the highland again. It became a haunted forest, full of dark sorcery and fell creatures, and even the Orcs crossed it only when they had to. That is the land to which the name Taur-nu-Fuin, noted above, belongs. It is the setting of one of the darker episodes in the tale of Túrin. Beleg Cúthalion followed the Orcs who had taken Túrin captive, and in that forest he met Gwindor of Nargothrond, who had escaped from the mines of Angband. The two freed Túrin from the Orc-camp at the forest's edge, but Túrin woke in darkness and confusion and slew Beleg in the belief that an enemy was upon him.5

The highland's history ends with the rest of Beleriand. In the War of Wrath, the host of the Valar overthrew Morgoth, and the northern lands were broken and largely swallowed by the sea. The Elder Days closed with Dorthonion gone as a place where anyone could dwell. It remained only a memory of the kind that lingers in Treebeard's song.6

The Noldorin lordship of Dorthonion was a divided one. Angrod and Aegnor held it jointly, and neither is recorded as its sole king. Their rule depended on their elder brother Finrod, whose lands lay west of the highland and who later ruled from Nargothrond. Finrod's other brother Orodreth kept the tower on Tol Sirion for him, so a single house watched both the vale of Sirion and the uplands east of it. The chronicles describe no Elvish towns or crafts in the pinelands. The land is presented as a military march. Its northern slopes were held for watch and defence rather than settled, and no great number of Elves followed the brothers there.1

The highland's neighbours were largely kin or allies of the brothers. Fingolfin's realm of Hithlum lay to the north-west. The sons of Fëanor held the country to the east, and Celegorm and Curufin guarded the Pass of Aglon between Dorthonion and Himring. Relations with Doriath were more strained. Angrod was sent to Thingol on an errand for Finrod, and in the course of it he disclosed the Kinslaying at Alqualondë. This revealed the deeds of Fëanor's following and led the king to forbid the speech of the Noldor in his realm. After this episode the lords of Dorthonion had few dealings with the Grey-elven kingdom beyond the precipices.2

Not all of Bëor's people went north. Many stayed for a time in Estolad, east of Doriath, and only part of the folk moved to Ladros. There Boromir of Bëor's line received the lordship, which passed to his son Bregor and then to Bregor's sons. The Men of Ladros ruled their own people but held their land from the sons of Finarfin, as those princes held theirs from Finrod. The house survived the fall of its land mainly through its daughters. Morwen, daughter of Bregolas's son Baragund, later married Húrin in Dor-lómin. Rían, daughter of his other son Belegund, married Huor. Through these marriages the blood of Dorthonion's lords passed into the House of Hador.3

In the narrative of the Elder Days, Dorthonion is less a realm than a stage on which the reader watches the northern defence contract. The highland is first seen through the eyes of watchers looking outward over the plain. It is next seen as a borrowed home for Mortals, then as a refuge for a handful of hunted men, and at last as a single outlaw's hiding-ground. Each time the story returns to it, fewer people are there and the horizon has drawn closer. The region never acquires a court or a city in the tale. It matters instead as the place where the cost of the long war first falls on individual lives rather than on armies.1

The tale of Beren gives the highland its most personal scenes. Tarn Aeluin, where Barahir's men hid, was held to have been hallowed by Melian long before, and the story sets its betrayal beside that sanctity. Gorlim is drawn back to his deserted house by what seems to be his lost wife, and the apparition proves to be a lure of the Enemy. Beren learns of the treachery in a dream, in which Gorlim's shade appears to him and confesses. During his lonely years in the conquered land, Beren is said to have become a friend of birds and beasts. Thereafter he would not kill any living thing that was not in Morgoth's service. Dorthonion is therefore the place where the hero is formed by grief and solitude before he ever meets Lúthien.2

Later the highland works in the story mainly as a threshold of dread that other characters must cross. The forest that Beleg and Gwindor enter is no longer described as a land with borders and lords, but as a darkness that confuses sight and judgement. The tragedy that follows grows out of exactly that confusion. In The Lord of the Rings the region survives only as an old memory in Treebeard's song. There the pinelands in winter are recalled as a place of beauty, with nothing said of what they became. That brief glimpse is the only view readers of Tolkien's lifetime were given of it.3

In the earliest layer of the legendarium the northern pine highland did not yet exist as a land of its own. The Lost Tales know only a dark forest in Melko's power, named Taurfuin or Taur-na-Fuin, the Forest of Night. In the tale of Túrin it is the place where Beleg is slain, and in the first tale of Beren and Tinúviel it is a region of peril near the Enemy's realm. At that stage no Elvish princes held it and no Siege of Angband stood behind it. The forest was dreadful from the beginning, not a land that had once been fair and then fell. The idea of a free upland that later became Taur-nu-Fuin arose only as the northern wars were worked out in more detail.1

The alliterative and rhyming poems of the 1920s gave the forest a larger role. In the Lay of Leithian, Barahir's outlaws hide in the wild country of Taur-na-Fuin, and the lonely lake of Aeluin already appears there. The two phases of the region's history, free and fallen, began to separate only in the later prose narratives. There the highland first bore a forest-name that referred to its pines. In the Etymologies of the later 1930s, the form Dorthonion appears under the stem for 'pine', and the older, darker name was kept for the land after its fall.2