Menegroth

Menegroth is a Sindarin name, given in the language of the Grey-elves who lived under Thingol in Beleriand. It joins two elements. The first is meneg, a word for a thousand. The second is groth, a form of grod, which names a delving or an underground dwelling cut into rock. The compound means the Thousand Caves, and that is how the name is usually rendered in English. The same element for a delved dwelling appears in other Elvish place-names of the period, most clearly in Nargothrond. That parallel marks Menegroth as belonging to a small group of halls cut into the living rock rather than built above ground.1

The account in the published Silmarillion ties the naming directly to how the place was made. Dwarves from the Blue Mountains, working with the Elves of Doriath, carved out chambers and passages on such a scale that the name followed from the sheer number of them. The name therefore describes the structure itself. It does not honour a founder or recall an event, and it makes no symbolic claim. It records what a visitor would have noticed first: a dwelling that went on beneath the ground in hall after hall. The text treats this as a straightforward act of description and gives no sign of any earlier or competing name used by the Sindar.2

In English the place is named both by its Sindarin form and by the translated phrase, with or without the article, and the German tradition follows the same pattern with a direct rendering. The published texts also link the Thousand Caves closely to Doriath. The realm's name is often used as shorthand for the king's seat, and Menegroth appears as its inner heart rather than as a separate domain. For pronunciation, the general rules Tolkien set out for Elvish names apply. The final th stands for the voiceless sound heard in English thin, not a t followed by an h, and the letter g is always hard.3

Menegroth lay at the heart of Doriath, the guarded forest realm that Thingol and Melian ruled in eastern Beleriand. Doriath was made up chiefly of two woods, Neldoreth in the north and Region to the south. Between them ran the Esgalduin, a river that came down out of the north through the forest and joined the Sirion further on. The Thousand Caves were set upon this river, in the space where the two woods met. The site placed the king's dwelling at the centre of his land rather than on any of its borders, with forest on every side and the river as its nearest defence.1

The halls were cut into a rocky hill on the bank of the Esgalduin, so that the river ran past the foot of the stronghold. A single bridge of stone spanned the water, and the account makes it the only way in to the gates. Anyone approaching had to cross the river in plain view and then pass through one guarded entrance before reaching the delved interior. Behind that entrance the hill was hollowed into a network of chambers and passages that lay wholly underground. It was a fortress by design, even though it was also a royal house.2

The interior was shaped to recall a forest under the earth rather than a cave. Pillars were carved in the likeness of beech trees, with trunks, boughs and leaves worked in the stone, and lit by lanterns of gold. Carvings of birds and beasts filled the halls, and there were fountains and basins of stone. In this way the dwelling brought the woods of Doriath and the memory of the Blessed Realm down beneath the hill. Later the whole of Doriath was enclosed by the Girdle of Melian, an unseen barrier woven by the queen's power, and from then on Menegroth stood at the centre of a protected land that no one could enter against the will of its rulers.3

The Thousand Caves were made during the long peace of the Years of the Trees, while Morgoth was held captive in Valinor and Beleriand lay largely undisturbed. Melian, who had foresight beyond that of the Eldar, warned Thingol that this peace would not last. The king therefore resolved to have a royal dwelling that could also stand as a stronghold if evil returned. He sought the help of the Naugrim, the Dwarves who had lately come over the Blue Mountains into Beleriand, and they laboured for him beside his own people. Thingol rewarded their work with pearls, which the Dwarves prized highly. Once the delving was complete, Dwarf-smiths also stocked the king's armouries with weapons and mail, so that the house was armed before the need arose.1

Melian's warning soon proved true. Creatures of Morgoth began to trouble the land, and when orc-hosts came down into Beleriand, Thingol went out from Menegroth to meet them. The Green-elves of Ossiriand joined the fight, and their lord Denethor was slain on Amon Ereb. After this first war the king withdrew into his realm and no longer went out to open battle. It was then that Melian set her power about Doriath, and from that time Menegroth was the guarded centre of a hidden kingdom. When the Noldor returned from the West, Finrod and his kin came as visitors to Thingol's halls. Finrod was so moved by the Thousand Caves that he later asked the Dwarves to help him delve Nargothrond after their pattern. Galadriel stayed in Doriath and learned much from Melian. The same halls also saw the first break between the Sindar and the exiles. When Thingol learned of the slaying of his kin at Alqualondë, he forbade the tongue of the Noldor to be spoken anywhere in his realm.2

In the later wars Menegroth stood apart from the defeats outside, but it was not closed to the fates of Men. Beren son of Barahir passed through Melian's Girdle, because a greater doom was working in him, and he was led before the throne. There Thingol set him the task of winning a Silmaril from Morgoth's crown as the price of Lúthien's hand. When Beren came back maimed but having kept his word, the king relented, and the Silmaril later passed into Thingol's keeping. A generation afterwards the child Túrin was sent to Doriath and fostered in the Thousand Caves as the king's ward. His years there ended in trouble. A quarrel with Saeros, one of Thingol's counsellors, began at the king's table and led to Saeros's death, and Túrin left the realm as an outlaw rather than face judgement.3

The fall of Menegroth began within its own walls. Húrin, freed by Morgoth after long captivity, came to Doriath carrying the Nauglamír, the necklace of the Dwarves that he had taken from the ruins of Nargothrond. He cast it before Thingol in bitterness, then took back his reproach and departed. Thingol wished to join his Silmaril with this necklace and summoned smiths of the Dwarves of Nogrod to his halls to do the work. When it was done the craftsmen coveted the jewel and refused to give it up. The dispute ended with the king slain by them deep within Menegroth. In her grief Melian left Middle-earth, and with her going the Girdle was lifted. A host out of Nogrod then marched into the unguarded land, overcame the defenders at the Thousand Caves and plundered them. Mablung fell there at the doors of the treasury. The Nauglamír was carried off with the other spoil, though Beren later waylaid the returning Dwarves in Ossiriand and recovered it.4

Doriath had one more brief season under Thingol's heir. Dior, the son of Beren and Lúthien, came from Ossiriand with his household and took up the kingship in Menegroth. For a time he sought to restore the realm. After his parents passed from the world, the Silmaril was brought to him, and he wore it upon the Nauglamír. The sons of Fëanor then claimed the jewel under their oath, and Dior would not yield it. They came against Doriath in winter, and in the fighting Dior and his wife were killed, as were three of Fëanor's sons. Dior's young sons were left to die in the forest, while his daughter Elwing escaped with the Silmaril to the mouths of Sirion. This Second Kinslaying ended Doriath as a kingdom, and it was never rebuilt. At the close of the First Age the lands of Beleriand were broken and drowned in the War of Wrath, and with them went whatever remained of the Thousand Caves.5

The Thousand Caves were home above all to the Sindar, the Grey-elves who had stayed in Beleriand under Elwë, known in their own tongue as Elu Thingol. From Menegroth he ruled not only Doriath but claimed lordship over all the Elves of Beleriand, and Círdan and the shipwrights of the Falas acknowledged him as their king. Melian the Maia ruled beside him, and her counsel shaped the policy of the realm as much as his own will. Around the throne stood a small circle of named servants. Mablung was one of the chief captains of the king. Beleg, the great bowman, kept the marches of the forest. Daeron was the king's minstrel and loremaster, credited with devising the Runes that the Dwarves later took up.1

Thingol's dealings with his neighbours were guarded and set on his own terms. When the Noldor came back to Middle-earth, he let them settle in the lands beyond his borders, but he insisted that he remained lord of Beleriand and that none of them should enter Doriath uninvited. Only the house of Finarfin, his kin through their mother, found a welcome in his halls. The Dwarves of the Blue Mountains stayed his allies in labour and trade. To Men, however, the realm stayed closed, and the king would not have them dwell inside the Girdle. The folk of Haleth were given leave to live in the forest of Brethil beyond his borders, on the condition that they guarded the Crossings of Teiglin.2

From Menegroth he ruled not only Doriath but claimed lordship over all the Elves of Beleriand, and Círdan and the shipwrights of the Falas acknowledged him as their king.

The same reserve governed Doriath in war. For the great alliance that ended in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, Thingol sent no host, since he would not make common cause with the sons of Fëanor. Mablung and Beleg alone went out from Doriath, because they were unwilling to stand aside. The line of rule from Menegroth was short. After Thingol it passed only to Dior, his grandson through Lúthien, and it did not continue beyond him.3

In the tales of the First Age, Menegroth is less a setting for action than a measure of what the Elves who stayed in Middle-earth could achieve on their own. Thingol had once seen the light of the Two Trees, and most of his people never had. His halls give that remembered light a home under a hill in Beleriand, with a Maia seated beside the king. The Silmarillion presents the Thousand Caves as the high point of Sindarin life, the place where the Grey-elves come closest to the Blessed Realm without leaving the lands they chose. The splendour matters to the narrative mainly because it can be lost.1

Within the stories the throne-hall works above all as a place of judgement and hard speech. Strangers are brought there to be weighed, and the king's decisions there set the great tales in motion. Beren's demand for Lúthien is answered with a task meant to destroy him. Túrin's flight is weighed there in his absence. Later, Húrin arrives full of Morgoth's lies and hears Melian tell him how his wife and son had actually fared. The hall is where outsiders meet the power of Doriath face to face, and it is also where that power reveals its pride.2

The Thousand Caves also carry the book's recurring doubt about safety bought through enclosure. The realm is protected against the Enemy, yet every blow that finally reaches it comes in through its own doors, and the Silmaril and the Nauglamír are both brought in by those whom the king himself allowed to enter. Thingol's growing attachment to the jewel turns his stronghold into a treasure-house, and the treasure draws ruin upon it. Nargothrond and Gondolin fell to armies sent by Morgoth. Doriath was destroyed by Dwarves and by Elves, and the Silmarillion lets its fall stand as the plainest example of the harm the Silmarils brought to all who kept them.3

The king's cave-dwelling is older in Tolkien's work than the name Menegroth. In the early Lost Tales the ruler of the hidden woodland realm is Tinwelint, and his queen, the fay Gwendeling, corresponds to the later Melian. Their kingdom is called Artanor rather than Doriath, and even in these first versions the king already lives in halls within a hill. The ruin of the realm in these tales also follows a different course. In the tale of the Nauglafring the Dwarves do not kill Tinwelint inside his dwelling. They ambush him while he is out hunting in the woods, and only afterwards does their host fall upon the caves and plunder them. Gwendeling's protective power fails with her grief, but the outline of the later story, with Dwarvish greed leading to the sack of the royal halls, is already visible.1

The Sindarin name took its settled form in the 1930s. In the Etymologies, Tolkien's dictionary of Elvish roots from that decade, Menegroth appears as an example under the stem for a thousand and again under the stem for a cave or delving. This confirms that the translated title and the Elvish form had been joined by then. Christopher Tolkien later explained that the account of the fall of Doriath in the published Silmarillion was not taken whole from any single text by his father. He and the other editors shaped it, above all the scene of Thingol's death at the hands of the smiths within Menegroth. Christopher said that he came to regret this construction, since it departs from his father's own conception of the story at important points.2