Gelion

Gelion is a Sindarin name. It belongs to the Elvish geography of Beleriand as the Quenta Silmarillion sets it out: rivers, fords and regions named in the Grey-elven tongue, which was the common speech of the land before the Noldor came. The river appears under this one form throughout the published narrative, with no second Elvish name and no Mannish or Dwarvish equivalent recorded beside it. The name is not glossed in the Silmarillion's appendix of name elements, and the index describes the river only by its place and its feeders. The published texts therefore leave its meaning open. Any translation offered here would be conjecture, and the name is best taken as it stands.1

Several further names are built on the river's own name. Gelion is said to rise from two sources in the northern hills, and each source bears the river's name with a qualifier: a Little Gelion and a Greater Gelion, which run separately before they join into the single great stream. This practice of naming branches after the main river, instead of giving them independent names, sets Gelion apart from the tributaries that reach it farther south. Those tributaries come down from the Blue Mountains and are each named in their own right. The river is thus both one name and a small family of names along its northern course.2

The river's name is also bound up with the naming of the land along its eastern bank. Ossiriand, the country between Gelion and the mountains, is interpreted in the Silmarillion as the Land of Seven Rivers. The seven are Gelion itself and the six streams that flow into it from the east, so the regional name counts the great river as one of its own members. Gelion therefore works in two ways in the nomenclature of East Beleriand. As a measure, it marks the eastern limit of the land reckoned from Sirion. As a name, it forms part of the count that gives Ossiriand its title.3

Gelion is the eastern of the two great rivers of Beleriand, the counterpart to Sirion in the west. Its northern headwaters are tied to two heights of the March of Maedhros: the lesser branch comes from the Hill of Himring, the greater from Mount Rerir farther east. The ground between these arms formed the open country called Maglor's Gap, one of the weak places in the northern defences of the Noldor. Once the branches had joined, the river ran southward through the whole length of East Beleriand. The Quenta Silmarillion calls it about twice as long as Sirion, yet less broad and less full, because the heavier rains fell in the northern and western highlands and not in the east.1

The land on either side of the river is described mainly by its relation to the stream. East of Gelion, north of the river Ascar, lay Thargelion, the country beyond Gelion as seen from the west, where Caranthir dwelt near Lake Helevorn below Mount Rerir. Farther south, the strip between Gelion and the Blue Mountains was Ossiriand, green and wooded, watered by the streams that came down from the east. The Dwarf-road from Nogrod and Belegost crossed the river at Sarn Athrad, the Ford of Stones, close to where Ascar flowed in. That crossing made Gelion a passage between the mountain peoples and the Elvish realms to the west, and not only a boundary.2

West of the river stretched the wide and thinly held lands of East Beleriand. In their southern part, below the long fall of the Andram, lay the tangled forest of Taur-im-Duinath, whose name marks it as the woodland between Sirion and Gelion. In the far south, the southernmost of the eastern tributaries divided around the island of Tol Galen before rejoining. That island later became the dwelling of Beren and Lúthien. Below the Ossiriand streams, Gelion continued south toward the sea and closed off Beleriand on its eastern side.3

The earliest history of Gelion is the history of the Elves who crossed it. When the Eldar made their long westward journey from Cuiviénen, the Vanyar and the Noldor passed quickly over the Blue Mountains and through East Beleriand toward the coast. The Teleri moved more slowly and stayed for a long time in the eastern lands, and while they waited there their lord Elwë went off into the woods of Nan Elmoth and was lost to them. Only after that long delay did most of his people move on toward the western shores, and many remained behind as the Grey-elves. In these years the river was not yet a border between realms. It was simply a feature of the wide country that the Elves passed through on their way to the Sea.1

Before the Noldor returned, the lands along Gelion were settled in two ways. From the east the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains began to come down into Beleriand to trade with Thingol. Their route across the river later became the ford described above. Later a group of the Nandor, who had once left the Great Journey, followed their leader Denethor over the mountains and settled in the country east of the river. They became the Green-elves, a woodland people who lived lightly on the land and kept apart from the kingdoms to the west. When Orc-hosts first came down on Beleriand, in the war now counted as the First Battle, the Green-elves marched out to help Thingol. Denethor was killed on the hill of Amon Ereb. After this loss his people no longer went openly to war. They relied on stealth and on the protection of their streams.2

The river is not named in The Lord of the Rings, but the country it watered survives there in memory.

After the Noldor arrived, the river came into the charge of the sons of Fëanor. Maedhros held the northern heights where Gelion rose, and Maglor guarded the open ground between its two branches. Caranthir settled in the country beyond the river, and the younger brothers Amrod and Amras hunted the lands farther south. Caranthir's realm met the Dwarves at the fords, and the trade across the river made both peoples prosperous, even though they had little love for each other. The first Men also entered Beleriand through this region. When the Noldor had been in the land for about three centuries, Finrod came upon Bëor and his people camped in the eastern dales below the mountains. Later the Haladin settled for a time in Caranthir's country, until Orcs attacked them there. Caranthir came to their rescue, and afterward they moved on westward.3

The Long Peace ended in the Dagor Bragollach, and the river's northern course was one of the first places to fall. Enemy forces broke through the gap between Gelion's headwaters. Maglor retreated to his brother on Himring, and the fortress there held. The lands east of the river were overrun, and Caranthir, Amrod and Amras fled far to the south. There they gathered a defence on Amon Ereb and were joined by some of the Green-elves. From this point the upper Gelion was no longer a guarded frontier. East Beleriand became open ground where Orcs and, later, Easterling Men in the service of the Fëanorians moved about, until the defeat of the Nirnaeth Arnoediad scattered what remained of the brothers' power.4

The one battle actually fought at the river came near the end of the First Age. Dwarves of Nogrod sacked Menegroth, killed Thingol and carried off the Nauglamír with its Silmaril. On their way home they had to cross Gelion at the Ford of Stones. Beren was waiting there with the Green-elves, and the Shepherds of the Trees came to his aid. The Dwarves were caught in the middle of the crossing. Beren killed their lord, and the treasure was thrown into the tributary Ascar, but he kept the necklace. Shortly after this, Dior left the eastern lands to restore Doriath. The river's part in the wars of the Silmarils ends at this point.5

Gelion did not survive the end of the First Age. In the War of Wrath the land of Beleriand was broken and most of it sank beneath the sea. Only a remnant of the country between the river and the Blue Mountains was left above water, and it kept the name Lindon in the Second Age. The published texts do not describe what became of the river itself. They record only that the eastern strip of Ossiriand outlasted the ruin, while the long valley of Gelion and the lands west of it were lost.6

No single realm ever held the whole length of Gelion, and the river was ruled by several peoples at once. In principle the Grey-elven king claimed lordship over all of Beleriand. When the Noldor came back, Thingol gave them leave to settle only in certain regions, among them the empty and untamed country east of Doriath. The Fëanorian holdings along the river were therefore granted by his consent, not won by conquest. This grant is why the sons of Fëanor held their lands in the east, away from the Sindarin heartland, while Thingol kept his claim to be the land's overlord.1

On the eastern bank, the two halves of the land were governed in very different ways. In the north, Thargelion came to be called Dor Caranthir after its lord, a name that shows it was held as a personal domain of one of the Fëanorian princes. South of Ascar, the Green-elves of Ossiriand had no king at all after Denethor's death. They lived as a free woodland people among their rivers and had little to do with the Noldorin princes in the north. When Men from the east later entered Fëanorian service, lordship along the river took on a new form. Ulfang and his sons swore themselves to Caranthir, and Bór and his sons pledged themselves to Maedhros and Maglor.2

The last lordship on the river was quieter than any before it. After Beren and Lúthien returned, they lived among the Green-elves in southern Ossiriand, in the country the Elves called Dor Firn-i-Guinar, the land of the dead who live. Their son Dior grew up there, married Nimloth, and had his children in that country. For a short time the lower Gelion thus sheltered the heir of Thingol's line, though no kingdom was proclaimed there. Rule in the region remained with the Green-elves, and Beren's standing among them rested on companionship, not on any formal crown.3

In the narrative of the Quenta Silmarillion, Gelion is seldom a place where the action stays. It works mostly as a threshold. The tales of the First Age are centred in the west, on Doriath, Nargothrond and Gondolin, and the eastern river marks the point where that familiar world ends and the unknown lands beyond the mountains begin. Almost everyone who comes to Beleriand from the east must first reach Gelion, so the river is where the story tends to register new arrivals before they go on westward. For the same reason it is also where the narrative stops following them. Once a people has crossed, the tale usually leaves the river behind.1

Near the end of the First Age, the river becomes a place of withdrawal. After their return, Beren and Lúthien live beyond Gelion and pass out of the main story, and for years nothing is told of them except what reaches the west as rumour. The narrative returns to them only when the fate of the Silmaril calls them back. Lúthien's wearing of the recovered jewel is said to have made that southern country seem like an image of the land of the Valar. For a brief time, the far side of the river holds the only vision of peace in a tale that is otherwise darkening. The brief return of fighting at the ford, told above, is the one moment when the river's quiet country draws the wider conflict to itself.2

The river is not named in The Lord of the Rings, but the country it watered survives there in memory. In his chant of the lands he once walked, Treebeard recalls wandering in summer through the elm-woods of Ossiriand, and he dwells on the light and music of its seven rivers. Readers of the later book thus meet Gelion's world only as an old ent's remembrance of a lost place. This gives it a particular quality in the legendarium: it is a landscape known less for events than for being remembered long after it was drowned.3