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58-731: In J. R. R. Tolkien 's legendarium , Lothlórien or Lórien is the fairest realm of the Elves remaining in Middle-earth during the Third Age . It is ruled by Galadriel and Celeborn from their city of tree houses at Caras Galadhon. The wood-elves of the realm are called Galadhrim . The realm, a broad woodland between the Misty Mountains and the River Anduin, is the Elven centre of resistance against

116-532: A 1960 letter. In The Silmarillion , the forested highlands of Dorthonion in the north of Beleriand (in the northwest of Middle-earth) eventually fell under Morgoth 's control and was subjugated by creatures of Sauron , then Lord of Werewolves. Accordingly, the forest was renamed Taur-nu-Fuin in Sindarin , "Forest of Darkness", or "Forest of Nightshade"; Tolkien chose to use the English form "Mirkwood". Beren becomes

174-667: A celebration of Warwickshire, Kortirion Among the Trees . Garth suggests that the central green hill of Cerin Amroth in Lothlórien recalls the grassy Motte of Warwick Castle , known as Ethelfleda's Mound and the happy time he spent there in his youth. Lothlórien's appearance in Peter Jackson 's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy was based on the artwork of the conceptual designer Alan Lee . Some of

232-460: A correction stating "Mirkwood is too small on map it must be 300 miles across" from east to west, but the maps were never altered to reflect this. On the published maps Mirkwood was up to 200 miles (320 km) across; from north to south it stretched about 420 miles (680 km). The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia states that it is 400–500 miles (640–800 km) long and 200 miles (320 km) wide. The trees were large and densely packed. In

290-544: A deep, dark, and small lake, named, from the same cause, Mirkwood-Mere. There stood, in former times, a solitary tower upon a rock almost surrounded by the water... William Morris used Mirkwood in his fantasy novels. His 1889 The Roots of the Mountains is set in such a forest, while the forest setting in his The House of the Wolfings , also first published in 1889, is actually named Mirkwood . The book begins by describing

348-525: A devout Roman Catholic , associated light as the Bible does with "holiness, goodness, knowledge, wisdom, grace, hope, and God's revelation", and that Galadriel was one of the bearers of that light. Lothlórien is a locus amoenus , an idyllic land that Tolkien describes as having "no stain". The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey notes that to get there, the Fellowship first wash off the stains of ordinary life by wading

406-432: A few days. She notes that Sam actually exclaims "Anyone would think that time did not count in there!", while Frodo sees Galadriel as "present and yet remote, a living vision of that which has already been left far behind by the flowing streams of Time" and Legolas, an Elf who ought to know how things work in Elven lands, says that time does not stop there, "but change and growth is not in all things and places alike. For Elves

464-452: Is an actual difference in time between Lothlórien and everywhere else, and Legolas's, that it is a matter of perception. She considers Aragorn's view to reconcile these two positions, agreeing that time has passed as Legolas said, but that the Fellowship felt time as the Elves did while they were in Lothlórien. That is not, writes Flieger, the end of the matter, as she feels that Aragorn reintroduces

522-429: Is captured by Aragorn and brought as a prisoner to Thranduil's realm. Out of pity, they allow him to roam the forest under close guard, but he escapes during an Orc raid. After the downfall of Sauron, Mirkwood is cleansed by the elf-queen Galadriel and renamed Eryn Lasgalen , Sindarin for "Wood of Greenleaves". Thranduil's son, Legolas , leaves Mirkwood for Ithilien . The wizard Radagast lived at Rhosgobel on

580-482: Is depicted as a massive overgrown castle in ruins. According to Alan Lee and John Howe, the concept artists , this was used to give the impression that the fortress had been built by Númenóreans during the Second Age, only to fall into ruin when Númenór's power waned. Adrián Maldonado of AlmostArchaeology speculates that the derelict castle could be interpreted by viewers as the ruins of Oropher's halls, erected during

638-551: Is different, reflecting the traditions of European folklore ; and a land of light striving biblically with the darkness of evil. Tolkien gave the forest many different names, reflecting its fictional history and the way it is perceived by the different peoples of Middle-earth. Early in the First Age , some of the Eldar left the Great March to Valinor and settled in the lands east of

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696-567: Is exemplified in the medieval Thomas the Rhymer , who was carried off by the Queen of Elfland , and the Danish ballad Elvehøj ( Elf Hill ) . The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger writes that the Fellowship debated how much time had passed while they were there, Sam Gamgee recalling that the moon was waning just before they arrived, and was new when they left, though they all felt they had only been there for

754-661: Is in the First Age , when the highlands of Dorthonion north of Beleriand became known as Mirkwood after falling under Morgoth 's control. The more famous Mirkwood was in Wilderland, east of the river Anduin. It had acquired the name Mirkwood after it fell under the evil influence of the Necromancer in his fortress of Dol Guldur ; before that it had been known as Greenwood the Great. This Mirkwood features significantly in The Hobbit and in

812-599: The Ered Nimrais and never returned. Control of Lothlórien passed to Galadriel and Celeborn. Galadriel's Ring of Power preserved the land from death and decay, and warded off Sauron's gaze. As the War of the Ring loomed, the Company of the Ring , emerging from the dark tunnels of Moria and seeing their leader Gandalf perish, was brought through Lothlórien to Caras Galadhon, and there met

870-692: The First Age in Beleriand , as described in The Silmarillion , the other in the Third Age in Rhovanion, as described in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings . Tolkien stated in a 1966 letter that he had not invented the name Mirkwood, but that it was "a very ancient name, weighted with legendary associations", and summarized its "Primitive Germanic" origins, its appearance in "very early German" and in Old English, Old Swedish , and Old Norse , and

928-596: The Forest of Dean have been sold on the basis that the area inspired Tolkien, who often went there, to create Mirkwood and other forests in his books . Dol Guldur has been featured in many game adaptations of The Lord of the Rings , including the Iron Crown Enterprises portrayal, which contains scenarios and adventures for the Middle-earth Role Playing game. In the strategy battle game The Lord of

986-562: The Misty Mountains . These elves became known as the Nandor , and later as the Silvan Elves . Galadriel made contact with an existing Nandorin realm, Lindórinand, in what became Lothlórien, and planted there the golden mallorn trees which Gil-galad had received as a gift from Tar-Aldarion . The culture and knowledge of the Silvan elves was enriched by the arrival of Sindarin Elves from west of

1044-903: The Myrkviðr in the borderlands between the Goths and the Huns of the 4th century. The Atlakviða ("The Lay of Atli", in the Elder Edda ) and the Hlöðskviða ("The Battle of the Goths and Huns", in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks ) both mention that the Mirkwood was beside the Danpar , the River Dnieper , which runs through Ukraine to the Black Sea . The Hlöðskviða states explicitly in

1102-663: The dragon . One of the Dwarves, the fat Bombur, falls into the Enchanted River and has to be carried, unconscious, for the following days. Losing the Elf-path, the party becomes lost in the forest and is captured by giant spiders. They escape, only to be taken prisoner by King Thranduil 's Wood-Elves. The White Council flushes Sauron out of his forest tower at Dol Guldur, and as he flees to Mordor his influence in Mirkwood diminishes. Years later, Gollum , after his release from Mordor,

1160-675: The "'mountains green' of 'ancient time'" in William Blake 's Jerusalem . As evidence, Shippey explains that when they come to the deepest part of Lothlórien, the Elf Haldir welcomes them, calling the area the Naith or " Gore ", both unfamiliar words for the land between two converging rivers, the Hoarwell or Mitheithel , and the Loudwater or Bruinen , and then giving a third word with a special resonance:

1218-944: The "Angle". Shippey states that the name "England" comes from the Angle between the Flensburg Fjord and the River Schlei , in the north of Germany next to Denmark, the origin of the Angles among the Anglo-Saxons who founded England. He suggests that Frodo's feeling that he has "stepped over a bridge of time into a corner of the Elder Days, and was now walking in a world that was no more" may be exactly correct. Shippey writes that in Lothlórien, Tolkien reconciles otherwise conflicting ideas regarding time-distortion in Elfland from European folklore , such as

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1276-505: The Anduin lay the forest of Mirkwood and the fortress of Dol Guldur , which could be glimpsed from high points in Lothlórien. The river Silverlode or Celebrant flowed through Lothlórien and joined the Anduin; it had a tributary from the west, the river Nimrodel. The realm lay primarily to the north of the Silverlode, with a small strip of forested land to the south. The main part of the realm

1334-573: The Dark Lord Sauron in The Lord of the Rings . Galadriel had one of the Three Elf-Rings , and used it to keep Sauron from seeing into Lothlórien. The Company of the Ring spent some time in Lothlórien after passing through Moria . Galadriel prepared them for their quest with individual gifts. Scholars have noted that Lothlórien represents variously an Earthly Paradise ; an Elfland where time

1392-532: The Elf Haldir's explanation of this [from a flet or tree-platform high above Cerin Amroth], "In this high place you may see the two powers that are opposed to one another, and ever they strive now in thought; but whereas the light perceives the very heart of the darkness, its own secret has not yet been discovered" echoes a biblical description: "The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." The scholar of humanities Susan Robbins notes that Tolkien,

1450-802: The Elvish realm. The Dutch composer Johan de Meij wrote music inspired by the Lothlórien woods, as the second movement, "Lothlórien (The Elvenwood)", of his Symphony No. 1 "The Lord of the Rings" . Legendarium Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.133 via cp1102 cp1102, Varnish XID 104885135 Upstream caches: cp1102 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Fri, 29 Nov 2024 08:38:11 GMT Mirkwood At least two distinct Middle-earth forests are named Mirkwood in Tolkien's legendarium . One

1508-519: The First Age. Mirkwood is a vast temperate broadleaf and mixed forest in the Middle-earth region of Rhovanion (Wilderland), east of the great river Anduin . In The Hobbit , the wizard Gandalf calls it "the greatest forest of the Northern world." Before it was darkened by evil, it had been called Greenwood the Great. After the publication of the maps in The Lord of the Rings , Tolkien wrote

1566-654: The Lord and Lady of the Galadhrim. The Fellowship spent roughly a month in Lothlórien, though it seemed to them only a few days . Before they left, Galadriel allowed Samwise and Frodo to look in the Mirror of Galadriel, giving them a glimpse of events in the future or at other times; she also tested the loyalty of Fellowship members, and gave each of them a gift for their quest. After the fall of Sauron, Galadriel and Celeborn rid Dol Guldur of Sauron's influence. Galadriel left for Valinor at

1624-579: The Lothlórien scenes were shot on locations in Paradise Valley near Glenorchy , New Zealand . In The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria , Lorien was a region introduced to the game in March 2009, which allows players to visit Caras Galadhon and other places, and complete quests from the elves. Enya 's song "Lothlórien" on her album Shepherd Moons is an instrumental composition named for

1682-592: The Misty Mountains, and the Silvan language was gradually replaced by Sindarin . Amongst these arrivals was Amdír, who became their first lord, as well as Galadriel and Celeborn , who fled the destruction of Eregion during the War of the Elves and Sauron. In the Third Age , Amroth, the former Lord of Lothlórien, went to the south of Middle-earth with his beloved Nimrodel, but drowned in the Bay of Belfalas after she went missing in

1740-462: The Necromancer, Wild Warg Chieftain, and their respective armies. Giant Bats are also included in the game. In 1996, the black metal band Summoning released a music album named Dol Guldur . The Canadian artist John Howe has portrayed Dol Guldur in sketches and drawings for Electronic Arts . In Myth and Magic: The Art of John Howe , Howe includes Dol Guldur among Middle-earth fortresses. Howe created many drawings for Peter Jackson during

1798-642: The Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II , Dol Guldur appears as an iconic building. The campaign-scenario called "Assault on Dol Guldur" appears as the final part of the good campaign. Several portrayals of Dol Guldur are included in the Games Workshop game The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game , appearing prominently in the "Fall of the Necromancer". Several enemies are listed, including Spider Queens, Castellans of Dol Guldur, Sauron

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1856-627: The River Nimrodel. He compares this perfect place to the Earthly Paradise that the dreamer speaks of in the Middle English poem Pearl . But then, Shippey writes, the Fellowship have to cross a rope-bridge over a second river, the Silverlode, which they must not drink from, and which the evil Gollum cannot cross. What place can they have come to then, he wonders: could they be "as if dead"? Shippey notes however that it might be old England,

1914-494: The Third Age, deep in the forest, the city's dwellings were atop tall mallorn trees; the mallorn had been brought to that land by Galadriel. The city was "some ten miles" from the point where the rivers Silverlode (Sindarin: Celebrant ) and Anduin met, close to the eastern border of the realm. In the trees there were many tree-platforms , which could be elaborate dwellings or simple guard-posts. Stairways of ladders were built around

1972-453: The Wolfings . Forests play a major role in the invented history of Tolkien's Middle-earth and are important in the heroic quests of his characters. The forest device is used as a mysterious transition from one part of the story to another. A forest called Mirkwood was used by Walter Scott in his 1814 novel Waverley , which had a rude and contracted path through the cliffy and woody pass called Mirkwood Dingle, and opened suddenly upon

2030-666: The attack by the Huns in the 370s, when they moved southwest and with the permission of the Emperor Valens settled in the Roman Empire. The scholar Omeljan Pritsak identifies the Mirkwood of Hlöðskviða in Hervarar saga with what would later be called the "dark blue forest" ( Goluboj lěsь ) and the "black forest" ( Černyj lěsь ) north of the Ukrainian steppe. Tom Shippey noted that Norse legend yields two placenames which would place

2088-514: The beginning of the Fourth Age , and Celeborn later followed her. The city slowly became depopulated and Lothlórien faded. By the time of the death of Queen Arwen , Celeborn and Galadriel's granddaughter, Lothlórien itself was deserted. Lothlórien lay in the west of Wilderland . To its west stood the Misty Mountains, with the Dwarf-realm of Moria, and on its east ran the great river Anduin . Across

2146-444: The dangerous and disputed boundary of the kingdoms of the Huns and the Goths . Morris's Mirkwood is named in his 1899 fantasy novel House of the Wolfings , and a similar large dark forest is the setting in The Roots of the Mountains , again marking a dark and dangerous forest. Tolkien had access to more modern philology than Grimm, with proto-Indo-European mer- (to flicker [dimly]) and *merg- (mark, boundary), and places

2204-582: The dilemma when he says that the moon carried on changing "in the world outside": this suggests once again that Lothlórien had its own laws of nature, as in a fairy tale . Flieger writes that while time is treated both naturally and supernaturally throughout The Lord of the Rings , his "most mystical and philosophical deployment of time" concerns Elves. It is therefore "no accident", she writes, that Frodo has multiple experiences of altered time in Lothlórien, from feeling he has crossed "a bridge of Time" on entering that land, to seeing Aragorn on Cerin Amroth as he

2262-625: The early origins of both the Men of Rohan and the hobbits in his Mirkwood. The Tolkien Encyclopedia remarks also that the Old English Beowulf mentions that the path between the worlds of men and monsters, from Hrothgar 's hall to Grendel 's lair, runs ofer myrcan mor (across a gloomy moor) and wynleasne wudu (a joyless wood). A Mirkwood is mentioned in multiple Norse texts including Sögubrot af nokkrum fornkonungum , Helgakviða Hundingsbana I and II , Styrbjarnar þáttr Svíakappa , and Völundarkviða ; these mentions may have denoted different forests. The Goths had lived in Ukraine until

2320-454: The film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug . The term Mirkwood derives from the forest Myrkviðr of Norse mythology ; that forest has been identified by scholars as representing a wooded region of Ukraine at the time of the wars between the Goths and the Huns in the fourth century. A Mirkwood was used by the novelist Sir Walter Scott in his 1814 novel Waverley , and then by William Morris in his 1889 fantasy novel The House of

2378-486: The filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy , worked for Tolkien Enterprises, and drew for Iron Crown Enterprises' collectable Middle-earth card game, which mentions Dol Guldur on Gandalf's card. Mirkwood was added to the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar in the 2009 expansion pack Siege of Mirkwood . The storyline depicts a small Elven assault upon Dol Guldur. In Peter Jackson 's 2012-2014 film trilogy adaptation of The Hobbit , Dol Guldur

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2436-451: The folklorist Jacob Grimm and the artist and fantasy writer William Morris , speculated romantically about the wild, primitive Northern forest, the Myrkviðr inn ókunni ("the pathless Mirkwood") and the secret roads across it, in the hope of reconstructing supposed ancient cultures. Grimm proposed that the name Myrkviðr derived from Old Norse mark (boundary) and mǫrk (forest), both, he supposed, from an older word for wood, perhaps at

2494-450: The friendly elves of Rivendell . Near the end of the Third Age – the period in which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set – the expansive forest of "Greenwood the Great" was renamed "Mirkwood", supposedly a translation of an unknown Westron name. The forest plays little part in The Lord of the Rings , but is important in The Hobbit for both atmosphere and plot. It was renamed when "the shadow of Dol Guldur ", namely

2552-445: The main trees, and at night the city was lit by "many lamps" – "green and gold and silver". The city's entrance was on the southern side. The Tolkien scholar Paul H. Kocher writes that Galadriel perceives Sauron with Lothlórien's light, "but cannot be pierced by it in return". The good intelligence has the "imaginative sympathy" to penetrate the evil intelligence, but not vice versa . The Christian author Elizabeth Danna writes that

2610-472: The north they were mainly oaks , although beeches predominated in the areas favoured by Elves . Higher elevations in southern Mirkwood were "clad in a forest of dark fir ". Pockets of the forest were dominated by dangerous giant spiders. Animals within the forest were described as inedible. The elves of the forest, too, are "black" and hostile, drawing a comparison with Svartalfheim ("Black elf home") in Snorri Sturluson 's Old Norse Edda , quite unlike

2668-451: The novel" Mirkwood: A Novel About J. R. R. Tolkien . The dispute was settled in May 2011, requiring the printing of a disclaimer. A rock music group named Mirkwood was formed in 1971; their first album in 1973 had the same name. A different band in California used the name in 2005. Tolkien's forests were the subject of a programme on BBC Radio 3 , with Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and the folk singer Mark Atherton. Literary holidays in

2726-436: The power of Sauron , fell upon the forest, and people began to call it Taur-nu-Fuin ( Sindarin : "forest under deadly nightshade" or "forest under night", i.e. "mirk wood") and Taur-e-Ndaedelos (Sindarin: "forest of great fear"). In The Hobbit , Bilbo Baggins , with Thorin Oakenshield and his band of Dwarves , attempt to cross Mirkwood during their quest to regain their mountain Erebor and its treasure from Smaug

2784-403: The same passage that the Mirkwood was in Gothland. The Hervarar saga also mentions Harvaða fjöllum , "the Harvad fells", which by Grimm's Law would be *Karpat , the Carpathian Mountains , an identification on which most scholars have long agreed. Tolkien's estate disputed the right of the Tolkien fan fiction author Steve Hillard "to use the name and personality of J. R. R. Tolkien in

2842-407: The sole survivor of the men who once lived there as subjects of the Noldor King Finrod of Nargothrond . Beren ultimately escapes the terrible forest that even the Orcs fear to spend time in. Beleg pursues the captors of Túrin through this forest in the several accounts of Túrin's tale. Along with the rest of Beleriand, this forest was lost in the cataclysm of the War of Wrath at the end of

2900-418: The survival of mirk (a variant of "murk") in modern English. He wrote that "It seemed to me too good a fortune that Mirkwood remained intelligible (with exactly the right tone) in modern English to pass over: whether mirk is a Norse loan or a freshment of the obsolescent O.E. word." He was familiar with Morris's The House of the Wolfings , naming the book as an influence (for instance on the Dead Marshes ) in

2958-419: The upheavings of the water that one sees at whiles going on amidst the eddies of a swift but deep stream. On either side, to right and left the tree-girdle reached out toward the blue distance, thick close and unsundered... In such wise that Folk had made an island amidst of the Mirkwood, and established a home there, and upheld it with manifold toil too long to tell of. And from the beginning this clearing in

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3016-435: The western eaves of Mirkwood, as depicted in the film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey . Dol Guldur ( Sindarin : "Hill of Sorcery") was Sauron's stronghold in Mirkwood, before he returned to Barad-dûr in Mordor . It is first mentioned (as "the dungeons of the Necromancer") in The Hobbit . The hill itself, rocky and barren, was the highest point in the southwestern part of the forest. Before Sauron's occupation, it

3074-499: The wood they called the Mid-mark... A Mirkwood appears in several places in J. R. R. Tolkien 's writings, among several forests that play important roles in his storytelling. Projected into Old English , it appears as Myrcwudu in his The Lost Road , as a poem sung by Ælfwine . He used the name Mirkwood in another unfinished work, The Fall of Arthur . But the name is best known and most prominent in his Middle-earth legendarium, where it appears as two distinct forests, one in

3132-404: The wood: The tale tells that in times long past there was a dwelling of men beside a great wood. Before it lay a plain, not very great, but which was, as it were, an isle in the sea of woodland, since even when you stood on the flat ground, you could see trees everywhere in the offing, though as for hills, you could scarce say that there were any; only swellings-up of the earth here and there, like

3190-425: The world moves, and it moves both very swift and very slow. Swift, because they themselves change little, and all else fleets by. Slow, because they do not count the running years". Shippey considers Legolas's explanation to resolve the apparent contradiction between the mortal and Elvish points of view about Elvish time. Flieger however writes that there is a definite contradiction between Frodo's position, that there

3248-508: Was as a young man, dressed in white. Flieger notes that in The Monsters and the Critics Tolkien writes "The human-stories of the elves are doubtless full of the Escape from Deathlessness". In her view, this explains the exploration of time in his mythology, death and deathlessness being the "concomitants" of time and timelessness. The author John Garth writes of a possible Warwickshire connection for Lothlórien. The young Tolkien and his fiancée Edith Bratt visited Warwick; in 1915 he wrote

3306-401: Was called Amon Lanc ("Naked Hill" ). It lay near the western edge of the forest, across the Anduin from Lothlórien . Tolkien suggests that Sauron settled on Dol Guldur as the focus for his rise during the period before the War of the Ring in part so that he could search for the One Ring in the Gladden Fields just up the river. 19th-century writers interested in philology, including

3364-405: Was the triangular region between the converging rivers Silverlode and Anduin, called the Naith (Sindarin for "spearhead") by the Elves or the Gore or Angle in the Common Speech . The tip of the Naith was called the Egladil (Sindarin for "elven-point"). Caras Galadhon (from galadh (" tree ") was the city of Lothlórien and the main settlement of the Galadhrim in Middle-earth. Founded by Amroth in

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