DÚNEDAIN KINGDOMS
in the Third Age
The globed, mortal world was forever separated from the Undying Lands. Only the ships of the Elves were permitted to sail the Straight Road to reach it. At the end of the Second Age, the Dúnedain – or surviving Númenóreans – founded Arnor and Gondor, and with the Elves destroyed Sauron and Mordor. However, the Ring Lord secretly returned in the Third Age and rebuilt Mordor. Finally, Sauron’s plots against the Dúnedain and the Elves culminated in the War of the Ring.
By the power of the Ruling Ring, Sauron made the foundations of Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower of Mordor. The Last Alliance of Elves and Men laid siege to that Tower for seven years at the end of the Second Age before finally forcing Sauron into open battle. Though many of the greatest Eldar and Dúnedain lords were slain, the Alliance was granted victory and the One Ring was cut from Sauron the Ring Lord’s hand.
For more than a thousand years Sauron had no shape and wandered Earth as a powerless shadow. Yet because the One Ring was not destroyed, Sauron and his Tower were not ended. Both he and the tower were to arise in the Third Age, and once again Sauron the Ring Lord would seek to dominate the world.
At first, Sauron was one of the Maiar of Aulë, but he was soon corrupted by Morgoth, and he became the Dark Lord’s chief lieutenant. When Morgoth was cast into the Void at the end of the First Age, Sauron returned to Middle-earth, calling himself Annatar, ‘giver of gifts’, and appearing to offer friendship to the Elves of Eregion and the Men of Númenor. He taught the Elves the art of making Rings of Power, but unknown to them, he forged for himself the One Ring, which controlled all the others. Finally the Númenoréans made war on Sauron, and he fought with their leaders before the gates of Barad-dûr. In the Third Age, he took the form of a great lidless eye, ceaseless in his search for the One Ring, which seemingly had been lost forever.
The two dominant concerns of Tolkien’s history of the Third Age of the Sun are the survival of the Kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor, and the not unrelated fate of the One Ring of Sauron, the Ring Lord.
At the end of the Second Age, when Sauron the Ring Lord was overthrown, it was Isildur, the High King of the United Kingdom of Gondor and Arnor, who cut the One Ring from his hand.
At the time, this was deemed a righteous act and the only means of destroying the power of the Dark Lord; however, once Isildur himself seized the One Ring, a part of him was corrupted by its evil power. For strong and virtuous though he was, Isildur could not resist its promise of power.
Though he stood on the volcanic slopes of Mount Doom itself, in whose fires the Ring was forged and the only place where it could be unmade, he could not bring himself to destroy it. Isildur succumbed to temptation and took the One Ring as his own, and thus its curse soon fell upon him. In year two of the Third Age, Isildur and his three eldest sons were marching northward through the Vales of Anduin when the entourage was ambushed by Orcs.
This was the Battle of Gladden Fields which resulted in the death of Isildur and his three sons and the loss of the One Ring in the waters of the River Anduin. The disastrous consequences of Gladden Fields took over 3,000 years to right. The loss of the One Ring meant that the wicked spirit of Sauron could not be brought to rest until the Ring was found and destroyed, while the death of the High King of the United Kingdom of the Dúnedain resulted in the splitting of the realm into two separate kingdoms: Arnor and Gondor.
In effect, because Isildur succumbed to the temptation of the One Ring, the curse of the Ring was visited on the whole of the Dúnedain people. This curse of the Ring consumed the whole of the Third Age, for the United Kingdom could not be healed and made whole again until the One Ring was destroyed and a single legitimate heir (who had the strength to resist the temptations of the Ring) was recognized by the whole of the Dúnedain people. Only then could a High King once again rule in the Reunited Kingdom of the Dúnedain.
Nevertheless, during the first millennium of the Third Age, the power of the South Kingdom of Gondor grew, despite constant conflicts on its borders and the Easterling invasion of the fifth and sixth centuries. By the ninth century, Gondor had built a powerful navy to add to the military might of its army. By the eleventh century, Gondor had reached the height of its power, pushing back the Easterlings to the Sea of Rhûn, making Umbar a fortress of Gondor and subjugating the people of Harad.
Although the North Kingdom of Arnor never expanded its boundaries beyond Eriador, it prospered well enough until the ninth century. At that time internal disputes resulted in its division into three independent states, and these eventually fell to quarrelling among themselves.
By the twelfth century, the spirit of Sauron had secretly returned to Middle-earth in the form of a single eye wreathed in flame. He found refuge in southern Mirkwood in the fortress of Dol Guldur. From this time onward, the forces of darkness grew steadily stronger throughout the lands of Middle-earth.
From the thirteenth century forward, Arnor was steadily diminished by a combination of natural disasters and internal strife. However, the greatest of its curses was Sauron’s chief servant, the Lord of the Ringwraiths, who became the Witch-king of Angmar and maintained a state of war for over five centuries against Arnor’s kings. Finally, in 1974, the Witch-king stormed the last Arnorian stronghold of Fornost, and Arnor ceased to exist as a kingdom. After the death of Arnor’s twenty-third King, the royal bloodline was continued by the tribal Chieftains of the Dúnedain.
The decline of the South Kingdom of Arnor through the second millennium of the Third Age was attributed to three great curses. The first was the Kinstrife of the fifteenth century. This was a bloody civil war that resulted in thousands of deaths, the destruction of cities, the loss of most of Gondor’s navy, and the end of its control of Umbar and Harad.
The second curse was the Great Plague of 1636, which Sauron loosed upon Gondor and Arnor. From this evil the Dúnedain never really recovered, for so many died at that time that parts of their realm remained empty forever after. The third curse was the Wainrider Invasions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These invasions by a confederacy of well-armed Easterling peoples lasted for almost one hundred years. Although the Easterlings were finally driven back and defeated, they critically weakened the already diminished power of Gondor.
Nothing is known of the Halfling people, who became known as the Hobbits, before 1050 of the Third Age. These were a burrowing, hole-dwelling people said to be related to Men, yet they were smaller than Dwarves, and the span of their lives was about a hundred years. Their first histories tell us they lived in the Northern Vales of Anduin between the Misty Mountains and Greenwood the Great. In the centuries that followed, they migrated westward and lived peacefully with Elves and Men in the land of Eriador.
All Hobbits measured between two and four feet in height, were long-fingered, possessed of a well-fed countenance, and had curly hair on peculiar shoeless, oversized feet. It is said that Hobbits were of three strains: Harfoots, Fallohides and Stoors. The Harfoots were the smallest and the most numerous, with nut-brown skin and hair. The Fallohides were taller and thinner, fair-haired and the least numerous, while the Stoors were the largest, bulkiest and most Mannish of the strains, and to the amazement of their kin, some could actually grow beards and chose to wear shoes. The Hobbits of Eriador primarily lived in the Mannish lands near the town of Bree until the year 1601. This was Year 1 in the Hobbit calendar of Shire Reckoning, when the greater part of the race marched westward again to the fertile lands beyond the Brandywine River. There, after this great migration, they settled down in the Shire, the land that was recognized always thereafter as the homeland of the Hobbits.
The final battle in the War of the Dwarves and the Orcs took place in Dimrill Dale, before the eastern gates of Moria. The Dwarves triumphed, but they also took heavy losses, including the death of Fundin, the father of Balin and Dwalin, who were to be among the Company of Adventurers that later journeyed to Lonely Mountain, and Náin, the father of Dáin Ironfoot. In this battle, Thorin Oakenshield gained his reputation as a great warrior by seizing a mighty oak branch as a weapon after being disarmed by Orcs. However, it was Dáin who finally slew the Orc chieftain Azog, avenging his fallen father.
