Carn Dûm

Carn Dûm, the fortress-capital of the Witch-king of Angmar, is never visited in the present action of The Lord of the Rings, yet its shadow falls across the entire northern theatre of the War of the Ring. As the seat of the chief of the Ringwraiths during his long reign in the North, Carn Dûm was the engine that destroyed the ancient North-kingdom of Arnor, drove the Dúnedain into hiding, and left the lands of Eriador scarred by war, plague, and the lingering malice of the Barrow-wights. Its name, spoken only in recollection, stands as a monument to a victory that the forces of the West could not prevent and a defeat whose consequences the Rangers of the North spent generations trying to repair.

The Seat of the Witch-king's Northern Dominion

Carn Dûm was the stronghold of the Witch-king of Angmar, the Lord of the Nazgûl, during the centuries when he waged war against the remnants of the Dúnedain in the North. From this fortress he directed the campaigns that ultimately shattered the divided successor-kingdoms of Arnor—Arthedain, Rhudaur, and Cardolan. The Witch-king's power was such that he could command not only Orcs and evil Men but also fell spirits that haunted the ancient burial mounds of the Barrow-downs, corrupting them into lairs of the Barrow-wights. The memory of Carn Dûm is thus inseparable from the desolation that befell the North long before the War of the Ring began.

The Fall of Arnor and the Legacy of Carn Dûm

The war that ended the North-kingdom reached its climax in 1974 of the Third Age, when the Witch-king captured Fornost, the capital of Arthedain, and drove King Arvedui into flight. Arvedui's desperate escape to the icy shores of Forochel and his eventual drowning in the Bay of Forochel marked the end of the line of the Northern Kings. The Dúnedain of the North were reduced to a secret, wandering people, the Rangers, who for generations thereafter guarded the borders of the Shire and the lands of Eriador from the shadows that Carn Dûm had unleashed. The Barrow-downs, where the Witch-king's evil lingered, became a place of dread where the hobbits Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin were nearly slain by a Barrow-wight before being rescued by Tom Bombadil. The swords they took from that barrow, forged long ago by the Men of Westernesse to fight the evil of Angmar, later proved decisive against the Witch-king himself at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.

Carn Dûm in the Narrative of the War of the Ring

Though Carn Dûm itself is never seen in the story, its legacy is woven into the fabric of the quest. The Rangers who aid Aragorn, the Grey Company that rides the Paths of the Dead, are the heirs of those who fought against Angmar. The very existence of the Shire as a peaceful, sheltered land was made possible by the vigilance of the Rangers, who kept the remnants of Angmar's evil at bay. When Merry, in the barrow, hears the voice of the Barrow-wight speaking of "the men of Carn Dûm" who came upon them at night, it is a direct echo of the ancient war. The Witch-king himself, the Lord of Carn Dûm, is the same foe who returns as the Captain of the Nazgûl in the South, and his final defeat by Éowyn and Merry is, in part, a closing of a circle that began in the North centuries before. Carn Dûm thus functions as a historical anchor, a place whose destruction of the past defines the precarious freedom of the present and the desperate stakes of the final war.