Middle-earth seen by the barbarians: The complete collection including a previously unpublished essay (9 page)

These sad events provided two essential changes. One, with the assent of the Stewards of Gondor, Isengard was passed into Saruman’s control. Second, due to the aggravation of ethnic conflict in Rohan’s western march, ‘
for many years the Rohirrim had to keep a strong force of Riders in the north of Westfold
.’
(
FI
)
Eventually, this guard lessened and the border was open again.

1. The advance of Wulf (grey) and his allies from Umbar (dark red)
   

1. Pre-Nú-menóreans (grey) and Drúedain (reddish) in the late Third Age
   

Once more, local traffic made many Dunlendings resettle into the west-march. This time, their residence was tolerated for a time, since Edoras was busy with defeating orc-bands that, escaping the grip of the Long Winter, tried to invade the White Mountains. But almost as soon as these were eliminated (with Gondor for once lending a helping hand once), king Folcwine (2830-2903) launched another pogrom and ‘
reconquered the west-march … that Dunlendings had occupied
.’
(
KR
)

The Rohirrim never realised that military decisions rarely improve social contacts among peoples. They had again created a condition that they would be reminded of the hard way: ‘
Beyond the Gap
[of Rohan]
the land between Isen and Adorn was nominally part of the realm of Rohan; but though Folcwine had reclaimed it, driving out the Dunlendings that had occupied it, the people that remained were largely of mixed blood, and their loyalty to Edoras was weak
.’
(
FI
)

There, Saruman found the ground well-prepared when he started to seek recruits and victims of his Man/Orc cross-breeding programme. The Dunlendings were easily ensnared by his cunning diplomacy, and at last they found themselves on the side of those whom they feared and despised most: the wizard’s fell orc-troops.

The awakening from his spell was terrible. It may be attributed to this traumatic experience and to King Elessar’s diplomacy that the neighbours this side and that of the river Isen, closely related by many generations of mutual marriage and procreation, were at least in parts reconciled in the Fourth Age. ‘I
n Éomer’s day in the Mark men had peace who wished for it
’.
(
KR
)

The books keep politely silence about the fate of those who did not.

^[1]
  The name applied to them in Gondor is obviously related to the river names Gwathir and Gwathló, ‘gwath
is a Sindarin word for “shadow,” in the sense of dim light, owing to cloud or mist, or in deep valleys.
’
(
GC
)
The proper adjective is
gwathui
, ‘shadowy’.

^[2]
  This ‘old speech’ was a late survivor of the Haladin language family, represented by J.R.R.Tolkien as a Celtic substrate to the translated languages in the Red Book of Westmarch. Hence,
forgoil
is not at all the only recorded Dunlendish word. There is also, for example, the first name
Kalimac
, translated by Tolkien as
Meriadoc
, that is Haladin, not Westron.

^[3]
  As were most Dúnedain. But this trivial detail seems to have escaped those Rohirrim for whom only a blond man was a good man.

^[4]
  This scene very closely resembles the climax of the ballad ‘Ein Faustschlag’ (A Blow of a Fist) that Moritz Graf Strachwitz published in 1842. It tells of a Norwegian king, Helge, who has become a man of peace in old age. One day, a delegation of noblemen approaches him and their spokesman, Iarl Irold, claims they are tired of tilling their fields and want to raid the coasts again like their ancestors used to do. Outraged, Helge informs them, if it’s his sword that they want they might taste his fist first, and strikes Irold dead with a single blow. The other noblemen quickly drop on their knees in submission. See Franz Strassen’s 1904 illustration on the opposite page.

1. T
   HE
   L
   OSSOTH AND THE
   F
   ORODWAITH
   

peoples in the lingering cold of the Iron Mountains

When the realm of Morgoth Bauglir foundered and Beleriand sank under the waves and the Iron Mountains were no more, the coasts of Middle-earth retreated far inland, and in the North they shaped a gulf almost as large as the Bay of Belfalas. This immense body was known as the Ice-Bay of Forochel, a prosaic name supplied by some Arnorian bureaucrat, and it simply read ‘Northern Ice’
(
L
154)
.

Morgoth’s power in the North stayed unchallenged beyond his fall for many thousands of years. The unnatural cold of Dor Daedeloth and the Iron Mountains prevailed to the extent that even in the early Fourth Age they ‘
linger still in that region, though they lie hardly more than a hundred leagues north of the Shire
’
(
KR
)
. In the months of winter, the Bay often froze completely over and turned inaccessible to ship and boat. No wonder that even the Elves of Lindon hardly ever ventured there. Thus, little more than the course of the coastline is known of these shores: the gulf itself, rimmed in the Northwest by a giant cape and promontory that is vaguely shaped like a human head (
TR
): Cape Forochel.

Coastline drawn according to the ‘first LR map’ found in
TI

1. Cape Forochel and the northern coastline of Middle-earth
   

1. T
   HE
   C
   ULTURE
   

And yet a tribe of Men lived there. They were known as the Lossoth or, more exactly, ‘
Loss(h)oth, the unfriendly Northern folk who lived in the snow
’ (
WPP
), also as the Snowmen of Forochel. Little is known of their culture, nothing of their language, save that they were well adapted to living in the cold climate. We have no evidence on how they found nutrition, whether they were hunter-gatherers or herded reindeer. A primitive, nature-bound people, the Lossoth did not value material riches like the jewels of Arvedui, last king of Arnor. They did not build large crafts, hence, when once a vessel from Lindon anchored off-shore, ‘
the Snowmen … were amazed and afraid, for they had seen no such ship on the sea within their memories
’.
(
KR
)

On the other hand, they were capable of innovative designs. They were mobile on the Ice Bay by skaters (‘
And it is said that they can run on the ice with bones on their feet
’,
KR
) and sleds (‘
carts without wheels
’). They approached the Elven ship as ‘
they drew the king and those that survived of his company out over the ice in their sliding carts, as far as they dared
’
(
KR
)
- a dramatic scene that is suited for illustration by artists.

But the most remarkable feature which the peoples of more southerly regions recorded was that ‘
the Lossoth house in the snow
’
(
KR
)
and they built ‘
snow-huts
’ for Arvedui’s companions. Contrary to popular belief, this does not need to mean huts
made of
snow (which would be really displaced in this part of Arda) but rather huts
in
the snow: no igloos but structures of bones and furs.

1. They can run on the ice with bones on their feet
   

The Red Book of Westmarch states that they ‘
are a strange, unfriendly people, remnant of the Forodwaith
’
(
KR
)
. But this only shifts the problem around, it does not to solve it. For who were again the Forodwaith?

Their epithet is at its best a collective term, attributed by Dúnedain who did not distinguish any tribes and nations.
Forodwaith
means simply ‘Northern folk’ or even ‘Northern region’. The geographic term is indiscriminatingly applied to all the lands north of the Mountains of Angmar and the Ered Wethrin.