Beleriand

Beleriand was the northwestern theatre of the First Age, the land where the exiled Noldor waged their hopeless war against Morgoth for the recovery of the Silmarils. It was a country of deep forests, swift rivers, and hidden kingdoms: Doriath, the realm of Thingol and Melian, guarded by the Girdle of enchantment; Nargothrond, the caverned fortress of Finrod Felagund; and Gondolin, the hidden city of Turgon, which stood for centuries undetected until betrayed. The geography of Beleriand was shaped by the great mountain ranges of Ered Wethrin, Ered Gorgoroth, and the Blue Mountains, and by the three great rivers Sirion, Narog, and Gelion that drained its heartlands into the Bay of Balar.

The War of the Jewels and the Ruin of Beleriand

The history of Beleriand is the history of the War of the Jewels. Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, stole the Silmarils from Valinor and fortified himself in his northern fortress of Angband, from which he sent forth his armies of Orcs, Balrogs, and dragons. The Elves of Beleriand, joined by the Edain (the first Men to enter the West), fought a series of desperate battles that culminated in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, a catastrophic defeat that broke the power of the Noldor. The final hope of the Elves and Men lay in the voyage of Eärendil the Mariner, who carried a Silmaril across the Sundering Seas to Valinor and persuaded the Valar to intervene. In the Great Battle at the end of the Age, the Host of Valinor broke Thangorodrim and cast down Morgoth, but the violence of the war was so immense that Beleriand itself was rent and broken, and the greater part of it sank beneath the waves.

The Legacy of Beleriand in the Third Age

By the time of the War of the Ring, Beleriand was a lost land, remembered only in Elvish lore and in the songs and tales that Bilbo translated in Rivendell. The only remnant of its eastern edge that survived above the Sea was the region of Lindon, where Círdan the Shipwright dwelt at the Grey Havens. The Blue Mountains, which had formed the eastern border of Beleriand, still stood, and the Dwarves of Durin's Folk who had fled from the ruin of Nogrod and Belegost in the First Age settled there before moving east to Moria. The memory of Beleriand haunted the Elves who had lived there: Elrond, who was born in Gondolin before its fall; Galadriel, who had crossed the mountains from Valinor in the days of the Exile; and Celeborn, a kinsman of Thingol. The great tales of the First Age—the story of Beren and Lúthien, the fall of Gondolin, the children of Húrin—were preserved in Rivendell and formed the core of the lore that Frodo and his companions heard in the Hall of Fire.

Narrative Significance

Beleriand functions in The Lord of the Rings as a lost golden age of heroism and tragedy, a standard against which the deeds of the Third Age are measured. The Ring-verse itself, with its reference to the Three Rings for the Elven-kings, echoes the forging of the Great Rings in the Second Age, but the deeper past of Beleriand is the source of the lineage and destiny of the central characters: Aragorn is the heir of Elendil, who was descended from Eärendil of the line of Lúthien; the sword Narsil, reforged as Andúril, was forged in the First Age; and the very geography of the quest—the journey through Moria, the crossing of the Misty Mountains, the passage into Mordor—is shadowed by the memory of a world that was once wider and fairer, now lost beneath the Sea.