The Ruins of Middle-earth

[Andorinha]

I have always been intrigued by those sites scattered across Middle-earth maps and marked as "ruins." I'd like therefore, to open a new topic devoted to gathering the names/ locales and histories of these former habitations/ fortifications/ and places of burial. Certainly not an exhaustive list, but these would include such places from The Hobbit and LotR as Amon Sul, Annuminas, Carn Dum, Dale (before the fall of Smaug), Fornost, Framsburg, Osgiliath, Ost-in-Edhil, Tharbad, and Vinyalonde or Lond Daer. Are there others? Do we count the tunnels of the Dead at Dunharrow, the Pukel-lined roadway, the structures of the Barrow-downs, Moria? Some of these places, while showing up on maps from LotR, are not mentioned, or mentioned much, in the texts of The Hobbit and LotR but have their fullest treatments in the various other volumes of the Legendarium: Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, the HOME Series, etc.

What can we know about these abandoned sites: who build them, who lived in them, how did they fall into ruin? How does Tolkien use these ruins in his narrative?

[Andorinha]

Those Three Little Dots, The Ruins of Middle-earth

In the original maps published with the LotR trilogy, all habitation clusters (villages/ towns/ cities/ fortifications) are (in the hardback version) marked with a square black dot, sometimes accompanied by a name.* In the smaller paperback version maps, the dot is sometimes there, sometimes not, as in the case of Tharbad at the crossing of the Greyflood between Enedwaith and Minhiriath, where we have just the name and an indication of a ford or bridge. Further to the north, Fornost is prominently displayed as both a square dot and its actual name, but the nearby City of Annuminas (the former capital of the North Kingdom) is not indicated at all, no dot, no name (in the paperback version), while a square dot has been placed on the hardback version map, but without a name.

When Karen Wynn Fonstad produced her "Atlas of Middle-earth," she included many more place names than JRRT originally gave, taking some from narrative descriptions in the HOME series, or The Silmarillion, and Unfinished Tales. In her map legend, Fonstad uses a pyramid of three tiny circular dots to represent those places of habitation that were actually in ruins at the time of action for The Hobbit and LotR.

I have not yet exhaustively tracked down all of the "tripple-dot" ruins of Fonstad's maps, but have found so designated: Amon Sul, Carn Dum, Dale (for the period before the fall of Smaug), Fornost, Framsburg, Osgiliath, Ost-in-Edhil, Tharbad, (p. 53 dots only) Vinyalonde or Lond Daer, and on p53, in Mordor, there is another "ruin" sign without name that may represent Barad Dur before its rebuilding episode after Sauron was "driven" out of Dol Guldur. There are other ruined works, like Annuminas that somehow did not receive a three-dot designation (Vinyalonde shows up as a name only on some of Fonstad's maps, but then as three dots without the name on others). There are, we know from the narratives, many more places where ruins are to be found, like the Barrow-Downs, the Rhudaur castles, the Pukel-Men lined road to Dunharrow etc, which should probably be given three-dots, but for some reason were not so designated. Confining ourselves to just the "three-dot" sites, (and maybe Annuminas) what do we know about them? Where, in the vast corpus of the Legendarium do they show up? How/ when did they fall into ruins?

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* In LotR, paperback version, Michel Delving has a square dot, but no name; Hobbiton has a unique "hill-shape" and dot, together with its name; Bree has a square dot and no name; Fornost has square dot and name despite its being uninhabited; Rivendell, square dot and name; Esgaroth name only.

[Fredeghar Wayfarer]

I was thinking about this recently too. Now that I'm playing Lord of the Rings Online, I've been visiting a lot of these places and finding other ruins. Until seeing them in the game, I hadn't really thought about just how many ruins there are in Middle-earth. The vast number of them really enhances the feeling of the waning days of the Third Age. The ruined remnants of once majestic kingdoms are a common theme in the series.

I'm not familiar with all the ruins on your list, Andorinha, but I remember the backstory for some:

Annuminas was the capital of Arnor. It fell into ruin when Arnor split into three separate states -- Arthedain, Cardolan, and Rhudaur. Its people were divided and the seat of power had shifted, leaving the once great City of Kings to slowly decay.

Fornost was the second capital of Arnor. It came about after the break into separate states so technically it was the capital of Arthedain. It fell after being attacked by Angmar in the war that finally finished the North Kingdom off.

Carn Dum was the capital of Angmar. After Fornost fell, the people of Gondor laid siege to Carn Dum in revenge for their northern brethren and pretty much annihilated the place. The Witch-king abandoned his kingdom and it was taken over by tribes of Hillmen.

Amon Sul was the watchtower at the top of Weathertop hill. It was built by the Numenoreans after their arrival in Middle-earth to house a palantir. The Witch-king sacked and destroyed it in the Third Age during his war with Arnor.

The Barrow-downs were the tombs of the Edain, the Men of the First Age, and were later used by their descendants the Dunedain. After Arnor was fractured, the people of Cardolan tried to settle there. But by then, the barrow-wights were haunting the place (after being sent by the Witch-king. He just makes a mess of everything, doesn't he?) and it had to be abandoned.

Moria, obviously, was the great dwarf kingdom that was abandoned when they unleashed the Balrog.

Another one you didn't list is Eregion, the elf kingdom where the Rings of Power were forged. After Annatar, Lord of Gifts, was revealed as Sauron in disguise, he sacked and destroyed the place. The Elves fled to their other refuges in Lothlorien and Rivendell.

The rest of your list I'd have to research.

[Andorinha]

RE: Fredegarh's -- "Until seeing them in the game, I hadn't really thought about just how many ruins there are in Middle-earth. The vast number of them really enhances the feeling of the waning days of the Third Age. The ruined remnants of once majestic kingdoms are a common theme in the series."

Precisely! JRRT had a genuinely pessimistic streak at times, even the successful conclusion of the Third Age war against Sauron, is just a temporary slowing of the general collapse of the civilization the Elves started in the Elder Days. What Tolkien seems always conscious of, is the "Long Defeat," and "The Fading" that continue despite the brief renaissance under Aragorn and a few generations of his heirs.

Maybe this is a European thing? Civilizations/ cultures have been rising and falling there for thousands of years, leaving strong reminders of their collapse in the easily visible ruins of places like Stonehenge, Rome, the Pyramids, etc., etc... Here in the U.S., unless you live near some Hohokam or Anasazi ruin, you don't have the constant reminder of the passage of time and the crumbling of civilisation after civilization. And here, even our ruins usually go back to no more than 900 AD, and maybe lack that imponderable weight of "ancientry" that you experience when running your hands over a Sarsen Stone that was erected 4500 years ago?

Yeah, Eregion, I sort of left that one out, because I was thinking more along the line of individual fortress or city sites, rather than the entire realm. That said, from the movement of the Fellowship Company through that ancient Elven land, they do mention coming across many different ruined works, including the barely visible great road. JRRT might have given us a really dramatic example of "time lost ruination" had the Fellowship gone through the actual site of Ost-in-Edhel!

Apparently, vol. XII, The Peoples of Middle-earth, has some good data on many of the lesser known ruin sites, I'll have to start looking there as well.

[Fredeghar Wayfarer]

May 24, 2011 10:06:12 GMT -6 Andorinha said:

Maybe this is a European thing? Civilizations/ cultures have been rising and falling there for thousands of years, leaving strong reminders of their collapse in the easily visible ruins of places like Stonehenge, Rome, the Pyramids, etc., etc... Here in the U.S., unless you live near some Hohokam or Anasazi ruin, you don't have the constant reminder of the passage of time and the crumbling of civilisation after civilization. And here, even our ruins usually go back to no more than 900 AD, and maybe lack that imponderable weight of "ancientry" that you experience when running your hands over a Sarsen Stone that was erected 4500 years ago?

I'm currently reading the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard (who was from Texas) and they have much the same theme. The civilizations of the Hyborian Age were built on the ruins of the Thurian Age of Atlantis and Lemuria and other lost lands. Those in turn were built atop pre-human cities created by mythical races like the serpent men and giants. And Hyboria itself is destined to fall and give way to the civilizations of recorded history.

Granted, Howard was drawing from European history and legends as his source material. But I find it interesting that this gradual fading and the rise and fall of civilizations is so prominent in his work. Maybe this is just a common thread in fantasy fiction in general. When dealing with an ancient world, one can't help but imagine that it eventually must fade to make room for the world we know.

[Andorinha]

Yes, Freddie, Howard seems to be part of the same tradition, picking up on the "Old World" culture base for his settings, mixed in a bit with the mythical Lemuria and Hyperborea -- just as JRRT developed the Classical Greek theme of Atlantis to evoke a sense of deep ancientry; and then both authors make it all realistic by tying the sequences of their vanished empires to an eventual development of our own, current situation. I'm not sure why the device works at such a deep, gut level (at least for me), but it does provoke quite a sense of wonder/ awe if I contemplate the presentation, even fictive, of one civilization succeeding another through a vast length of time. Maybe that ability to connect with the deep past is what led me into archaeology and ancient history?

Apparently, even the ancient Assyrians, some of 'em, had that same sense of awe, as when Ashurbanipal set up his museum, filled with the collected works of the long ruined cultures that were buried beneath his own new cities...

I'm trying to think now if this same "device" is used with the Far Eastern heritage region, must be some antiquarian response there that pre-dates the Maoist, deliberate belittling of their own past? I suppose in the deeper culture zones of Mexico and Yucatan/ Central America, one might be able to establish similar series of ruined civilizations -- I think there was a poet-king (Nezhualcoyotl?) who "brooded" upon the ruins of the ancient Toltecs, and then pondered in redoubled wonder when he visited Teotihuacan where the most ancient Nonoalcos had collapsed some 600 years before the Tolteca-Chichimeca ever came out of the desert...

LOL, think I'll be brooding a lot today on ancientry.

[Andorinha]

FRAMSBURG

This image by Robert Alexander is listed as being in the public domain:




The first I knew of Framsburg was my finding the three-dot symbol and the name way up in the left hand corner of one of Karen Wynn Fonstad's maps in The Atlas of Middle-earth.

I assumed from the Nordic composition, that Framsburg was probably an early community of the horse people who later moved south to enter Gondor's province of Calenardhon. There was a bit about this folk migration in the LOTR appendices (ROTK, appendix A, "The House of Eorl," pp 428-438, pap bk ver). But neither the maps of LOTR nor the appendices mentioned any sites where the Eotheod (horse-people) may have lived. "Eorl the Young was lord of the Men of Eotheod. That land lay near the sources of Anduin, between the furthest ranges of the Misty Mountains and the northernmost parts of Mirkwood." (ROTK, p 428)

Apparently, even this northernmost zone, shown on Fonstad's page 76, was not the original homeland of the Eotheod. From the appendix, ROTK 429, we learn that the ancestors of the Rohirrim, once had a realm in Rhovanion east of Mirkwood. Around the year 1977 TA, Dol Guldur began to become a very evil place once more, and Easterling tribes started moving west, putting pressure on the Eotheod. The Kingdom of Angmar was overthrown at this time by the Elves and the army of Gondor, and the Eotheod moved north around Mirkwood to settle in the vales where Anduin had its two source streams, the rivers Langwell and Greylin.

At this point, the two major source books we have, Unfinished Tales, ("Cirion and Eorl," pp. 288-320) and HOME XII, The Peoples of Middle-earth, have somewhat differing accounts of the foundation of Framsburg/ Fram's Fort. The actual king at this time was Frumgar, father of Fram, and it is unclear why the site was named after the son rather than the father. Perhaps, the son being more famous than the father -- it was Fram after all who slew the dragon Scatha -- the people named the town site after the prince, not the king?

Framsburg flourished a goodly while as the capital center of the Eotheod, from 1977 TA down to 2510 TA when Eorl the Young responded to appeals from Gondor and brought his host of riders south to defeat the invading Easterlings and the Orcs on the field of Celebrant. Because the northern provinces had been largely depopulated, the Steward of Gondor, Cirion, gave these lands to the Eotheod. Apparently there was a mass migration from the Framsburg area south to the newly established Kingdom of Rohan, for Framsburg seems to have been abandoned at this time.

[Stormrider]

Andorinha and Fredegahr:

Great topic and comments. I've been enjoying this much. I would love to know more about the Rohirrim and their past homeland. I should read Cirion and Eorl again--it has been awhile!

[Andorinha]

Thanks, Stormy!

A bit more on the Rohirrim and their settlements:

Aldburg in The Folde

I thought for a brief while that I had found another "ruin" for the Rohirrim themselves (in Rohan), a place called Aldburg ("Old Fort" or "Oldburg"), apparently the first Rohirric settlement (and capital) in the newly founded kingdom of Rohan. It was built by Eorl The Young, but it does not actually qualify as a "ruin" because it became a permanently inhabited site, a regional administrative center/ stronghold for the area known as the Folde. This seems a bit redundant, as Unfinished Tales, Index, p. 439, defines the "Folde" as: "A region of Rohan about Edoras, part of the King's Lands."

This region, the Folde and King's Lands around Edoras, was officially under the command of the First Marshal of the Mark. But, it seems that Aldburg (also in the Folde) must have been quite close to the late Third Age capital of Edoras. Yet Aldburg was not under the command of the First Marshal. Rather, it was the seat and hold of the Third Marshal (Unfinished Tales, p 367), who was responsible for maintaining security and order in the East-mark zone. I say it was no ruin, because in the Third Age, Aldburg was the seat of Eomer who acted as Third Marshal.

While Tolkien tells us the general location of Aldburg, it does not appear on his maps, nor can I find it on Fonstad's -- though both UT and Fonstad's atlas mention Aldburg in their indices.

Nonetheless, while not a "ruin," Aldburg was a new Rohirric site for me. Has anybody else heard of this place before? Maybe it also shows up somewhere in The Peoples of Middle-earth, HOME XII?

[Stormrider]

I've been thinking about all the ruins as I play LOTRO now, too. Especially since Burgette should be going to visit all of these ruins looking for her artifacts for her scholarly crafting. Instead of keeping her at the crafting hall, I should be sending her out to all of these ruins doing some resource gathering. There certainly are a lot of ruins in Middle Earth. Sandwen and Twizzle have seen many of them as they have traveled the lands. Twizzle was just in Aldburg gathering Eorlingas Skarn and Aldburg is rather worn down and in need of repairs. I will have to go dig up my Fonstad Atlas and take a closer look at it.

[Andorinha]

Regarding Aldburg -- at least in its LOTRO incarnation:

Has anybody seen this? Mmmm -- think I'll check it out next time I'm there…

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Mar 30 2014, 01:33 AM #1 Seregthol
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Aldburg Mystery
In the basement of the Aldburg Auction Hall there is what appears to be a miniature tree in a cage on the floor. Every few minutes, however, it seems to whip itself around and make a loud "whoosh" noise which can even be heard upstairs. Any ideas on what this is?

[fanuidhol]

You have just posted this...now Fan has to go check out Aldburg.
Fan

[Stormrider]

Sandwen and Twizzle have to go check it out now, too! I don't even recall a basement in the AH!

Twizzle went there and two doors where open (next to the Vault-keepers) that looked like they would lead to the basement. But she tried to go through them and they would not allow her to. There were no popup comments stating she had to have a certain quest to go through either. Then the doors shut on her and wouldn't open at all. I wonder if we caught the doors open from a previous player going through them.

I will have to see if Sandwen can get in.

[Andorinha]

Karadoc, level 60, had a little trouble finding the door to the basement -- he sort of stumbled down into and through it. Sure enuff, in a corner near some chickens, is a small cage with a small "whooshing" tree in it… LOL I had no idea there even was a basement! Wondering now what other little curiosities I've missed in Lotro ME?

[Stormrider]

What door did you use to get into that basement? Was it one of the doors next to the Vault keepers or another door somewhere else?

Oh! I found it! It is behind a banner or blanket draped over the railing and goes downstairs--not far from the door next to the vault on the right when you come in. It looks like a baby Huron in a cage. So why are those two Rohirrim guards blocking the other section of the basement?