Iron Mountains

The crescent of the Iron Mountains guarding Utumno during the Spring of Arda.

The Iron Mountains or Ered Engrin were an immense mountain range in the far north of Middle-earth, stretching almost from one end of the continent to the other, though falling short of the sea on either side.

History

Of old the Iron Mountains came close to touching the Blue Mountains (Ered Luin) of the West and the Red Mountains (Orocarni) of the East, but in the wars between the Valar and Melkor the mountain range was distorted. Melkor himself created the mountains as a fence for his citadel of Utumno.

Melkor's great fortresses of Angband and Utumno were built in the mountains. North of the range lay the regions of ever-lasting cold.

After the War of Wrath the Iron Mountains were broken and disappeared, at least the part of their length that lay directly north of Beleriand.

Portrayal in adaptations

Karen Wynn Fonstad, in her book The Atlas of Middle-earth, imagined that remnants of the Iron Mountains after the First Age could perhaps be all the northern mountain ranges of Eriador and Rhovanion: the Mountains of Angmar, the Ered Mithrin, and the Iron Hills, still occupied by Orcs and Dragons until the Third Age. However, this depiction predates publication of The Peoples of Middle-earth, where it is revealed that the Grey Mountains and Iron Hills existed in the First Age independently of the Iron Mountains. It was during this age that the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm first colonized the Iron Hills. They also considered the Grey Mountains, which lay between Khazad-dûm and the Iron Hills, to be part of their territory.