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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