Nowhere and Back Again

• Names: Rhosgobel (Sindarin?: “brown village”, or “russet town/enclosure”)
• Description: Rhosgobel is wizard Radagast the Brown’s home “near the borders of Mirkwood.”[1] It appears to be a house or enclosure, although Tolkien doesn’t describe it very much. Given Radagast’s proclivity for wildlife and particularly birds, we can assume Rhosgobel is a weird hippie aviary. By the end of The Lord of the Rings, Radagast has vacated Rhosgobel.
• Filming locations: Stone Street Studios, Miramar, Wellington, North Island

Rhosgobel, the wizard Radagast’s homestead, lies on “the forest borders between the Carrock and the Old Forest Road.”[2] Tolkien includes few other details about it. Unfinished Tales glosses Rhosgobel as “russet enclosure,” suggesting that it’s private land. The wizard’s lair refuses to be described.

Its occupant, Radagast the Brown, is the wizard Francis of Assisi, “a master of shapes and changes of hue” who “has much lore of herbs and beasts, and birds are especially his friends.”[3] Radagast is more reclusive than his fellow wizards Gandalf and Saruman, although he may be more outgoing than the Blue Wizards, two permanently offstage pieces of trivia. Rhosgobel’s positioning near Mirkwood lets Radagast watch for Sauron and monitor the forest’s decline, as well as be close to nature.

Radagast is one of the Istari, or Five Wizards, whom the Valar send to Middle-earth “to move Elves and Men to beware of their peril”[4] from Sauron. The wizards’ career begins at Mirkwood, meaning Radagast is the most ideally placed to monitor it. Like all the other wizards except Gandalf, Radagast strays from his charge, preferring birdwatching to sorcerer-fighting. At the Council of Elrond, Gandalf says when he convenes with Radagast, “he is one of my order, but I had not seen him for many a year.”[5]

With Radagast, Tolkien explores the trope of a wizard as a hermit. The Hobbit film trilogy emphasizes this, showing Rhosgobel is a house with a tree growing through it, metastasizing into a mess of tangled branches and roots across its wooden floors, surrounded by magical paraphernalia. Artist Alan Lee cites author T. H. White’s depiction of Merlin in The Sword in the Stone as an influence. John Garth points out that Radagast almost shares a name with the Slavic god Radegast, putting him in a tradition with the Carpathian Mountains and Slavic Dracula.

We can’t talk about the Hobbit trilogy without discussing Sylvester McCoy’s portrayal of Radagast. We’re Eruditorum Press, so we can’t escape McCoy’s connections to Doctor Who, where he played the mercurial Seventh Doctor. Like Radagast, the Seventh Doctor sticks to the margins, playing observer more than actor, although the Doctor is sinister in a way Radagast couldn’t dream of being. Similarly he falls into cosmic plans, but again, Radagast never takes the Doctor’s Machiavellian path.

McCoy plays both characters as slightly cheeky but deceptively insightful, although unlike the Doctor, Radagast allows birds to nest under his hat and has bird shit caked on his face, a detail whose absence from Doctor Who is clearly a flaw.…

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Names: Lake-town, Esgaroth (“Sindarized” word; untranslated)

Description: A quay market town on the Long Lake, south of Erebor, built on the ruins of an earlier settlement, possibly Esgaroth. It is founded by descendants of Dale, who use the lakeside spot to make a modest living trading with Dorwinion and the Woodland Realm. The town is governed by an elected Master. After the Lake-men assist Thorin Oakenshield in his quest to Erebor, Smaug destroys Lake-town and is killed by Bard, a local bowman and descendant of Dale’s former lord Girion. Bard leads the Lake-men in a hard-won alliance with the Dwarves of Erebor and Wood-elves of Mirkwood, after which he rebuilds Dale and Lake-town as King of Dale. By the time Elrond convenes his own personal Yalta Conference to deal with Sauron, Lake-town is just a slice of Dale’s thriving kingdom.

Shooting location in Wingnut Films’ adaptations: Stone Street Studios, Miramar, Wellington

In its lone ‘onstage’ appearance in The Hobbit, Lake-town perches on the Long Lake, built on “rotting piles of a greater town [which] could still be seen along the shores when the waters sank in a drought” (The Hobbit, “A Warm Welcome”). Some of its younger denizens, who’ve never experienced Dale’s prosperity or seen Erebor in its heyday, “openly doubted the existence of any dragon in the mountain”. Under an ineffective and avaricious Master, Lake-town profits off the Lake’s trade while lacking the wealth or power of its neighbors, Erebor and Mirkwood. When Smaug destroys Lake-town, he plunges its people into true poverty and dispossession. His killer, Bard, saves the Lake-people by reviving their ancestral power.

Prior to its sacking, Lake-town is reasonably lucrative; it “still throve on the trade that came up the great river from the South and was carted past the falls to their town” (‘A Warm Welcome’). It plays liaison for Dorwinion, the wine-makers’ land, and Mirkwood’s Woodland Realm, its customer; Dorwinion floats its wine in barrels up the Running River to Lake-town, whose people transport the barrels up the stream, deliver them to Mirkwood, and then retrieve them when the Wood-elves send them downstream. Tolkien does not indicate whether the Lake-men drink any Dorwinion wine themselves.

In Smaug’s time, Lake-town has neighbors but lacks allies. Whereas Dale’s prosperity was inextricable from its friendship with the Erebor dwarves, Lake-town’s trade is buffeted by “the bickering of the Lake-men and the Wood-elves about the upkeep of the Forest River and the care of the banks” (‘A Warm Welcome’). The Master’s initial skepticism of Thorin and company partially stems from that fact that “the Elvenking [Thranduil] was very powerful in those parts and the Master wished for no enmity with him” (‘A Warm Welcome’). Lake-town rests precariously on the lake of Wilderland class society; it’s not at war with anyone, but its deference to external power cuts against Tolkien’s utopian monarchism.

Lake-town also has an internal class society, illustrated by its socially stratified architecture (a rare piece of social realism from Tolkien).…

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Erebor’s isolation makes it a magical symbol. It hunches over Northern Wilderland like a god of its terrain. Its six spurs reach across its territory like a maimed skulltopus, reaching in every direction, clutching the ground underneath it. Its southern spurs hold Dale like a trinket while Mirkwood watches from an apprehensive distance. Erebor’s power is individualism. What causes more catastrophe in Middle-earth than standing alone?

Tolkien’s identity politics are intrinsically geographic. Tolkien assigns territories to individual peoples: the Shire is for Hobbits, Lothlórien is Elvish, Gondor belongs to Númenórean Men. Threatened homelands invariably drive Tolkien’s plots, which often involve the survival efforts of their inhabitants. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings’s casts are ensembles from numerous peoples and lands who collaborate against a common enemy. Both novels’ denouements involve the improvement of peoples’ and territories’ social and political relationships before everyone goes home to their own peoples. A few characters gain special status among other peoples, like Gimli, the only Dwarf to sail to the Undying Lands, but as ‘exceptions’ they’re nonetheless strictly racially categorized. Otherwise, the Dwarves, who Tolkien considered Middle-earth’s Jews, live outside of the Elves’ resting place.

A quintessential racial home, The Kingdom Under the Mountain is the Dwarves’ greatest city, except for possibly Moria, whose sacking is one of their most catastrophic tragedies. A coil of “halls, and lanes, and tunnels, alleys, cellars, mansions and passages” (The Hobbit, “An Unexpected Party”), the kingdom is seen both through Thorin’s nostalgic recaps and as a ruin, a juxtaposition that underlines its effects. But even then, most of it is unseen. The Hobbit’s third act depicts events in only a few halls and cellars. It’s an underground city with some visible edges, not unlike how some of Pompeii’s ruins are still buried. Erebor’s culture is a secret. Its kingdom is every conspiracy theorist’s wet dream: disorientingly grand, ambivalent, intrinisically racial halls of power and commerce.

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Past the Front Gate’s “old carven” arch, “a stone-paved road” runs alongside a small channel, which initiates the River Running (The Hobbit, “Not at Home”). At the opposite end, a number of doorways lead to Thrór’s great chamber, which Thorin calls “the hall of feasting and of council”. Its proximity to the Front Gate indicates its stature: visitors will see it before anything else, even if they venture downstairs. It’s where the Dwarves decide and observe significant events. Its designation as Thrór’s chamber points to ancestral pride; the Dwarves commemorate Thorin’s grandfather with this hall.

Thrór is one of Erebor’s pivotal kings, shepherding Erebor’s resurgence after a Dwarvish sojourn from the mountain, driving his people’s return to their kingdom after warring with dragons, and then seeing his kingdom destroyed by a dragon. Over 300 years before Thrór’s birth, his ancestor Thorin I leaves Erebor to mine the “rich and little explored” Grey Mountains, “where most of Durin’s folk were now gathering” (The Return of the King, Appendix A: “Durin’s Folk”).…

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Names: Erebor (Sindarin: “ereb”: lonely, isolated, “-or”: rise, mount), glossed as “the Lonely Mountain”

Description: A solitary mountain in northern Wilderland. Karen Wynn Fonstad estimates Erebor’s summit as 3500 ft (1066.8 m.) while at its broadest spurs its furthest reaches are about 9 mi. apart (approx. 14 km). The Lonely Mountain has six spurs, between the southern and southeastern of which originates the River Running, which flows through Dale, a city of Men. Home to the Longbeard Dwarves’ Kingdom under the Mountain, Erebor encompasses formidable mines, cellars, and throne rooms.
In T.A. 1999, Thráin I, a dwarf refugee from Khazad-dûm, arrives at Erebor and establishes the Kingdom under the Mountain. Dwarves begin mining Erebor, and collect gems and gold, including the Arkenstone (the Heart of the Mountain). The Kingdom under the Mountain prospers King Thrór, as the dwarves of Erebor arm the Iron Hill Dwarves and Wilderland’s Men against Easterlings.
In 2770, the dragon Smaug sacks Erebor, killing and dispersing the dwarves. He occupies the Mountain until 2941, when Erebor’s exiled king Thorin Oakenshield arrives at the Mountain with a small party. In retaliation, Smaug destroys Lake-town, a local settlement of Men, where Bard the bowman kills him. In the wake of Smaug’s demise, the Maia Sauron sends orc forces to conquer Erebor. The dwarves and their Iron Hills cousins fight in the Battle of the Five Armies. They triumph, though Oakenshield is killed. His successor as King is his cousin Dáin II Ironfoot.
In 3019’s Battle of Dale, Easterlings besiege Erebor and kill Dáin. They retreat when Barad-dûr falls. Thorin III Stonehelm is crowned King under the Mountain, and establishes a relationship with Gondor’s King Aragorn II Elessar, after which Erebor comes under Gondor’s protection.

Location in Peter Jackson’s films: Wanaka, Otago, South Island.

“I see the mountain/That is all I see.”

Carter, “The Mountain.”

This adventure began on a mountain. Now it arrives at another one, also solitary, hospitable yet apocalyptic when it chooses to be. The Lonely Mountain changes hands and talons many times, and yet its six spurs, summit, and cavernous interiors belong to no person. The Kingdom under the Mountain is not the Lonely Mountain itself; it’s an occupying force that the Mountain permits to dwell in its guts. Smaug scorches the earth around Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, strengthening its mighty power over Wilderland. Guy Debord says that psychogeography is “the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographic environment, whether consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behaviors of individuals” (“Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography”). Some of Tolkien’s most memorable characters are seismically changed and affected by Erebor. The shaking of windows or rattling of walls has little sway on the Mountain’s power; people may only submit to it.

Erebor is one of the most haunting places in Tolkien’s mythology and a corridor to many of its crucial themes. It’s an anti-realist landmark; Tolkien’s geography has little quarter for geologic reality, a recurring aspect of his mythology that Alex Acks has analyzed in depth.…

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Name: Dale (as in the English word meaning “valley”)

Description: A merchant city nestled in a valley between the Lonely Mountain’s (Erebor) southeast and southwest ridges, settling on the shores of the River Running. Shortly after the T.A. 2590 revival of the Kingdom under the Mountain, Northmen emigrate to the valley and build Dale. Through a prosperous relationship with the Dwarves of Erebor, Dale becomes a prosperous city known for its toys and bells. In T.A. 2770, the dragon Smaug destroys Dale while sacking Erebor. Dale’s Lord Girion fails to slay Smaug and dies with many of his people. The charred lands around Dale and Erebor’s ruins cease to sire fauna, and become known as the Desolation of Smaug.
Dale’s survivors establish Lake-town and remain there until the latter’s destruction by Smaug in T.A. 2941. In the inferno, Girion’s descendant Bard kills Smaug and becomes the leader of his people, later called Bardings, as they participate in the ensuing Battle of the Five Armies, a conflict fought partially in Dale. After the Lake-men win the battle, with their allies the Mirkwood-elves and Erebor-dwarves, Bard leads an effort to restore Dale. in T.A. 2944, Dale is rebuilt and Bard becomes its King. Its prosperity returns, alongside a rebuilt Lake-town in conjunction with the repopulated Erebor.
In T.A. 3019 during the War of the Ring, Easterlings attack the city in the Battle of Dale. After driving the Bardings into Erebor, and slaying their King Brand, Bard’s grandson, the Easterlings occupy Dale for just over a week until the fall of Barad-dûr. The Easterlings flee Dale when they receive news of Sauron’s fall, and Brand’s son Bard II becomes King of Dale. When Aragorn is crowned King of Gondor, Dale sends ambassadors, and the city becomes a protectorate of Gondor.

Locations in Peter Jackson’s films: Speargrass Fields and Rock and Pillar Range, Maniototo, Otago, South Island

Maps of Wilderland go no further northeast than the Iron Hills and Rhûn, so let’s retrace our trajectory. Returning south, the confluence from the Sea of Rhûn breaks into the River Carnen, which culminates at the Iron Hills, and the River Running, which flows to Esgaroth (Lake-town) and Erebor. Having Thrór’s map in The Hobbit indicates that Erebor is west of the Iron Hills; as that map is the most intimate cartographic view of northern Rhovanion, we’ll use that as a source (Karen Wynn Fonstad positions Erebor and Iron Hills in a similar direction). Erebor’s six ridges span miles across; Karen Wynn Fonstad estimates parts of them span 9 miles from end to end. As a result the valleys between ridges are vast, and allow for settlements of their own.

The River Running flows into the Long Lake just south of Erebor, where Lake-town rests. A more straightforward geographic survey would look at Lake-town next, but this is not our approach. We’re going to save Lake-town for later while we have a look at Dale, a city which is Lake-town’s ancestor, its progeny, and then its ally.…

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• Name: The Iron Hills
• Description: The Iron Hills sit in northern Rhovanion. The River Carnen flows south from the expansive hill range, suggesting a fertility that the Lonely Mountain and other parts of eastern Wilderland lack. Spanning over 100 miles, the Iron Hills are truly remote, standing at a remove from any other topologically significant monument to Middle-earth’s diversity, being shorter both in altitude and range than the Grey Mountains or Misty Mountains (to its northwest and central west, respectively).
  Karen Wynn Fonstad says “the major yield of the Iron Hills is self-evident”; it is of course iron ore. Doubtless this factor is partially responsible for the First Age emigration of the Longbeards, or Durin’s Folk, one of the seven Dwarf kindreds, to the Iron Hills, which remains a Dwarf-realm well into the Third Age. In the wake of catastrophes at the Dwarf-strongholds Moria and the Lonely Mountain, the Iron Hills is a haven for the Longbeards. They’re also a center of commerce, as “there was great traffic of ore” between them and the dwarves of Erebor at the Lonely Mountain (The Return of the King, Appendix A: “Durin’s Folk”). As Northmen, amenable Men “who lived between Celduin (River Running) and Carnen (Redwater) became strong and drove back all enemies”; the region between the Iron Hills and Erebor sees bountiful trade for the Longbeards.
  This economic boom comes at a price, however, as Erebor is then sacked by the dragon Smaug. In the invasion’s wake, the Iron Hills become the last Dwarvish stronghold in Wilderland, with Erebor occupied by a dragon and Moria taken by Orcs. With their remoteness rendering them the securest dwarves in Middle-earth, the Dwarves of the Iron Hills are able to gather armies at a moment’s notice. When the War of the Dwarves and the Orcs over Moria culminates at the Battle of Azanulbizar, the Iron Hills’ forces turn the tide in the dwarves’ favor, as they cut through the orcs’ forces quite easily until the Lord of the Iron Hills Náin is killed. His son Dáin Ironfoot then decapitates the captain Azog, his father’s killer, which roughly wins the battle. Later Dain musters 500 dwarves to assist his kinsmen for the Battle of Five Armies in the climax of The Hobbit, where he becomes the new King under the Mountain upon his cousin Thorin Oakenshield’s death in battle. There is a mass emigration of Iron Hill dwarves to Erebor. The Iron Hills’ recorded history ends here, as the hills rule their quarter of Wilderland undisturbed by the pens of historians.

Maps of Rhovanion feature an expanse of uncolonized land, occupied by creatures beyond the Red Book of Westmarch’s scope. Mirkwood is hundreds of miles to the west, while in the east Rhûn’s shores fade from sight. To the northwest there’s a confluence of the Celduin (River Running) and Carnen (River Redwater); the Celduin leads northwest to Mirkwood, while the Carnen goes straight north to the Iron Hills. We’ll save Mirkwood for another day, so let’s look at our maps to read about the Carnen’s source, the Iron Hills. …

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Book II of Nowhere and Back Again begins here.

“It has long been said that the desert is monotheistic. Is it illogical or devoid of interest to observe that the district in Paris between Place de la Contrescarpe and Rue de l’Arbalète conduces rather to atheism, to oblivion and to the disorientation of habitual reflexes?”
— Guy Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography”

Names: Dorwinion or Dor-Winion (Sindarin for “Young-land country”, according to Tolkien)

Descriptions: Dorwinion lies on the Sea of Rhûn’s northwestern shore. Little is known of it beyond its vicinity to the River Running, which it uses to deliver some powerful wines to Rhovanion, particularly in Mirkwood, where the Silvan Elves get positively zonked on it. The wine is the only thing people know Dorwinion for, really. It seems to have had a brief tenure as a Gondor territory during the Third Age, which lasted as long as any pre-War of the Ring Gondorian conquest.

The next step of our adventure takes us into Rhovanion, or Wilderland as the Hobbits

call it, the massive, disparate and heavily populated but wild, rocky and deserted region of northeastern Middle-earth. It lies north of Mordor’s Ash Mountains, west of Rhûn, south of the enigmatic Northern Waste and its Grey Mountains, and east of the Misty Mountains and Eriador beyond them, Middle-earth’s relatively green and peaceful northeast haven. This makes Rhovanion landlocked, with the inland Sea of Rhûn the one significant body of water in its vicinity, from which runs the River Carnen to the north, where it meets the Iron Hills, and the River Running, which flows to the west, into the seemingly endless forest of Mirkwood. Mirkwood runs 600 miles from the north, just below the Grey Mountains, to the south, near the Brown Lands and Emyn Muil. To its west lies the Anduin, the Great River of Middle-earth, along which lie the Vales of Anduin, the elven haven of Lothlórien, and the residences of many foes, orc, Istar, elf, and Beorning alike.

Unlike Mordor, which is wholly ruled by Sauron, Rhovanion is lawless, with enigmas both from Valinor and from its own dark crevices, with no central authority or ruling citadel. Compared to Mordor’s monoculture of slavery and theocratic rule, Rhovanion shows us a multicultural and multiracial region (or macro-region, as Rhovanion homes many small regions), which gives us a look into the lives of more Peoples of Middle-earth. Tolkien sets many sequences of his most popular works here; Rhovanion is host to most of The Hobbit’s plot, and the latter stretches of The Fellowship of the Ring. We have far more information on Rhovanion than we do on Mordor; The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings’ appendices contain ample reports on its history. In short, it is a storied region, more ambiguous and varied in its geographic and cultural terrain than northern Mordor, where the conflicted interests of diverse peoples collide and change history. Wilderland shows us a path through light and darkness, one with no clear end in sight and no champion in the outcome.…

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