Template:Short description Template:Good article Template:Use British English Template:Infobox fictional location
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional legendarium, Beleriand ({{#invoke:IPA|main}}) was a region in northwestern Middle-earth during the First Age. Events in Beleriand are described chiefly in his work The Silmarillion: It tells the story of the early Ages of Middle-earth, in a style similar to that of the epics of Nordic literature—stories pervaded by a tone of impending doom. Beleriand also appears in the works The Book of Lost Tales, The Children of Húrin, and The Lays of Beleriand.
In Tolkien's early writing, he coined many prospective names for the region. Among them were Broceliand, the name of an enchanted forest in medieval romance, and Ingolondë—a play on the name England—when he hoped to root a mythology for England in the region. The scholar Gergely Nagy looked at the prose of the Silmarillion and found what may be evidence of the structure and syntax of Beleriand's poetry.
Fictional historyEdit
Events in Beleriand are described chiefly in the second half of the Quenta Silmarillion,<ref group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> which tells the story of the early ages of Middle-earth in a style similar to the epic hero tales of Norse mythology.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Beleriand also appears in the works The Book of Lost Tales,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The Children of Húrin,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and in the epic poems of The Lays of Beleriand.<ref name="Tolkien 1985" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref>
The land is occupied by Teleri Elves of King Thingol from the east, who founded the city of Template:Visible anchor in the forest realm of Doriath. Other Elves, the Vanyar and Noldor, cross the Belegaer sea to Valinor. Some of the Noldor return to Beleriand to retrieve the Silmarils from the evil Vala Morgoth, but they are resented by the Teleri. Later, Men arrive from the east.Template:Sfn Morgoth gathers an army of Orcs, Balrogs and other monsters in his fortress of Template:Visible anchor beneath the Template:Visible anchor mountains in the north of Beleriand, and attacks the Elves repeatedly. Despite the threat, Thingol refuses to fight alongside the Noldor. One by one, the realm of Doriath as well as the Noldor kingdoms Nargothrond and Gondolin fall to assaults, assisted by betrayals and disputes among Elves, Men, and Dwarves.Template:Sfn Finally, Earendil crosses the Belegaer Sea to ask the Valar to stop Morgoth. They send an army to overcome Morgoth in the War of Wrath. This ends the First Age of Middle-earth: Angband is destroyed, and Morgoth is banished to the void. Beleriand's inhabitants flee, and much of Beleriand sinks into the sea.<ref name="Voyage" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> Only a small section of the eastern edge of Beleriand survives, including part of the Ered Luin (Blue Mountain) range and the land of Lindon, which became part of the far northwestern shore of Middle-earth.<ref name="Foreword" group=T/>
Fictional geographyEdit
Beleriand is a region in the far northwest of Middle-earth, bordering the great sea, Belegaer. It is bounded to the north by the Ered Engrin, the Iron Mountains, and to the east by the Ered Luin, the Blue Mountains.<ref name="Beleriand and its Realms" group=T/>
| Place | Description |
|---|---|
| Arvernien | The southernmost region of Beleriand, bordered on the east by the Template:Visible anchor. It contained the birch forest of Nimbrethil, mentioned in the poem "Song of Eärendil", which Frodo hears in Rivendell: "Eärendil was a mariner / that tarried in Arvernien; / he built a boat of timber felled / in Nimbrethil to journey in; ..."<ref name="Many Meetings" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref><ref group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| Template:Visible anchor ("Land of the Shadow of Dread") | Far to the north, the area around Morgoth's fortress of Angband under the peaks of Thangorodrim, and the Ered Engrin, the Iron Mountains.<ref name="Beleriand and its Realms" group=T/> |
| Template:Visible anchor ("Land of the fence", i.e. the Girdle of Melian) | The realm of the Sindar, the Grey Elves of King Thingol.<ref name="Beleriand and its Realms" group=T/><ref group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| The Template:Visible anchor ("shore") | The realm of Círdan the Shipwright and his Sindar Elves in the years of Starlight and the First Age of the Sun. They lived in two havens, Template:Visible anchor at the mouth of the River Nenning, and Template:Visible anchor at the mouth of the River Brithon. The Havens were besieged during the First Battle of Beleriand. When the Havens were destroyed, Círdan's people fled to the Mouths of Sirion and the Isle of Balar.<ref name="Sindar" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| Gondolin ("hidden rock") | A hidden city of Elves in the north of Beleriand, founded by Turgon, and hidden from Morgoth by mountains.<ref group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| Hithlum ("mist-shadow") | The region north of Beleriand near the icy Helcaraxë. It contains Mithrim, where the High Kings of the Noldor had their halls, and Dor-lómin, later a fief of Men of the House of Hador. Hithlum was cold and rainy, but fertile.<ref name="Beleriand and its Realms" group=T/> It is bordered by mountains; to the east and south by the Template:Visible anchor, and to the west by the Template:Visible anchor.<ref name="Map of Beleriand" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| Template:Visible anchor | Shoreline west of the Ered Lómin. Named from Morgoth's great cry while fighting Ungoliant, the echoes of which ever lingered there.<ref name="Flight of the Noldor" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| March of Maedhros | The northeastern border region of Beleriand. A great fortress was built on the hill of Template:Visible anchor, the chief stronghold of Maedhros, from which he guarded the area.<ref name="Beleriand and its Realms" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> It was the only fortress to survive the Dagor Bragollach, the Battle of Sudden Flame; the forces of Angband captured it in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.<ref group=T>Template:Harvnb, "The Grey Annals", p. 77</ref> After the Drowning of Beleriand, the peak of Himring remained above the waves as an island.<ref group=T>See The Treason of Isengard, p. 124 and note 18, and Unfinished Tales, note on map in Introduction.</ref> The gap in the mountains to the south of this area was known as Template:Visible anchor.<ref name="Beleriand and its Realms" group=T /> |
| Nargothrond ("underground fortress on the river Narog") | Built by Finrod Felagund, delved into the banks of the river Narog in Beleriand.<ref name="Return of the Noldor" group=T>Template:Harvnb, ch. 13 "Of the Return of the Noldor"</ref> |
| Nevrast ("hither shore", as opposed to Aman) | A coastal region in the north of Beleriand; its city is Vinyamar.<ref name="Beleriand and its Realms" group=T/> It was the centre of Turgon's Elven kingdom until people left for Gondolin.<ref name="Garth 2020">Template:Harvnb</ref> |
| Template:Visible anchor ("land of seven rivers") | The most easterly region of Beleriand during the First Age, between the Ered Luin and the river Template:Visible anchor. It is a green and forested land.<ref name="Beleriand and its Realms" group=T/> The rivers are the Gelion, and its six tributaries: Template:Visible anchor, Template:Visible anchor, Template:Visible anchor, Template:Visible anchor, Template:Visible anchor and Template:Visible anchor.<ref name="Map of Beleriand" group=T /> |
AnalysisEdit
NamingEdit
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Beleriand had many different names in Tolkien's early writings, including Broceliand, the name of an enchanted forest in medieval romance,<ref name="Fimi 2007">Template:Cite journal</ref> Golodhinand, Noldórinan ("valley of the Noldor"), Geleriand, Bladorinand, Belaurien, Arsiriand, Lassiriand, and Ossiriand (later used for the easternmost part of Beleriand).<ref group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref>
One of Beleriand's early names was Ingolondë, a play on "England", part of Tolkien's long-held but ultimately unsuccessful aim to create what Shippey calls "a mighty patron for his country, a foundation-myth more far-reaching than Hengest and Horsa, one to which he could graft his own stories."Template:Sfn Tolkien's aim had been to root his mythology for England in the scraps of names and myths that had survived, and to situate it in a land in the northwest of the continent, by the sea.Template:Sfn
A sense of doomEdit
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Shippey writes that the Quenta Silmarillion has a tightly-woven plot, each part leading ultimately to tragedy. There are three Hidden Elvish Kingdoms in Beleriand, founded by relatives, and they are each betrayed and destroyed. The Kingdoms are each penetrated by a mortal Man, again all related to each other; and the sense of doom, which Shippey glosses as "future disaster", hangs heavy over all of the characters in the tale.Template:Sfn
| Hidden Kingdom |
Elvish Kings (all relatives) |
Man who penetrates the Kingdom |
Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nargothrond | Finrod | Túrin | City destroyed |
| Doriath | Thingol | Beren | |
| Gondolin | Turgon | Tuor |
Shippey writes that the human race seen in Beleriand in the First Age did not "originate 'on stage' in Beleriand, but drifts into it, already sundered in speech, from the East [the main part of Middle-earth]. There something terrible has happened to them of which they will not speak: 'A darkness lies behind us... and we have turned our backs upon it'".Template:Sfn He comments that the reader is free to assume that the Satanic Morgoth has carried out the Biblical serpent's temptation of Adam and Eve, and that "the incoming Edain and Easterlings are all descendants of Adam flying from Eden and subject to the curse of Babel."Template:Sfn
"Lost" poetryEdit
The Tolkien scholar Gergely Nagy, writing in 2004, notes that The Silmarillion does not contain explicitly embedded samples of Beleriand's poetry in its prose, as Tolkien had done with his many poems in The Lord of the Rings. Instead, the prose of The Silmarillion hints repeatedly at the structure and syntax of its "lost" poetry. Nagy notes David Bratman's description of the book as containing prose styles that he classifies as "the Annalistic, [the] Antique, and the Appendical". The implication of the range of styles is that The Silmarillion is meant to represent, in Christopher Tolkien's words, "a compilation, a compendious narrative, made long afterwards from sources of great diversity (poems, and annals, and oral tales)".<ref name="Nagy 2004"/><ref name="Foreword" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> Nagy infers from verse-like fragments of text in The Silmarillion that the poetry of Beleriand used alliteration, rhyme, and rhythm including possibly iambics.<ref name="Nagy 2004">Template:Cite journal</ref>
This applies to the Ainulindalë, Tolkien's account of the godlike Ainur:
| Ainulindalë,<ref name="Ainulindalë" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> with Nagy's emphasis | Nagy's commentary |
|---|---|
| <poem>and they built lands and Melkor destroyed them;
valleys they delved and Melkor raised them up; mountains they carved and Melkor threw them down; seas they hollowed and Melkor spilled them;</poem> |
Prose adapted from poetry, with "rhetorics" and "stricter syntactic patterns"; parataxis and balanced clauses "bearing a structural and thematic similarity" |
It applies, too, to the narrative of Elves and Men in the Beleriand landscape, in the Quenta Silmarillion:
| Poem-like prose<ref name="Noldor in Beleriand" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> with Nagy's emphasis | Nagy's commentary |
|---|---|
| <poem>But there was a deep way under the mountains
delved in the darkness of the world by the waters that flowed out to join the streams of Sirion.</poem> |
"Alliteration and rhythm are beautifully seen together" |
In a few places, it is possible to relate the adapted verse in the prose to actual verse in Tolkien's legendarium. This can be done, for instance, in parts of the story of Túrin. Here, he realizes he has just killed his friend Beleg:<ref name="Nagy 2004"/>
| "Adapted verse lines"<ref name="Túrin Turambar" group=T>Template:Harvnb</ref> with Nagy's emphasis | The verse Túrin (1273–1274) | Nagy's commentary |
|---|---|---|
| <poem>Then Túrin stood stone still and silent, staring
on that dreadful death, knowing what he had done.</poem> |
<poem>stone-faced he stood standing frozen
on that dreadful death his deed knowing</poem> |
"Nearly all the alliterating words, together with the alliteration pattern itself, doubtless derive from the poem; the imagery and to some extent the very phrasing of this very moving central scene ... [are] virtually unchanged." |
ReferencesEdit
PrimaryEdit
SecondaryEdit
BibliographyEdit
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External linksEdit
- Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth (3rd edition) by Michael Martinez
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