Who told you, and who sent you?
I shan't call it the end, till we've cleared up the mess.
 | |
| Mountain | |
| Mount Dolmed | |
|---|---|
| General Information | |
| Location | In the central parts of the Blue Mountains |
| Type | Mountain |
| People and History | |
| Inhabitants | Firebeards Broadbeams |
| Gallery | Images of Mount Dolmed |
Mount Dolmed was a mountain in the Ered Luin.
History
Mount Dolmed loomed over the only known pass from Eriador into Beleriand. According to the Dwarves, it was here that the founders of the Broadbeams and the Firebeards established the Dwarven cities of Nogrod and Belegost.
The two cities were established on the Eastern side of the mountain. A little to the Northeast of Dolmed was Belegost, and a little to the Southeast was Nogrod.
In Y.T. 1497, the First Battle of Beleriand was fought between the Elves and the forces of Morgoth. In the end, the Elves were victorious, and the surviving Orcs fled east toward the Ered Luin. There they were met and annihilated by the Dwarves.
Almost five hundred years later, the battle in the Thousand Caves occurred between the Elves of Doriath and the Dwarves of Nogrod. In F.A. 503, after returning from their victory in Menegroth, the Dwarves were ambushed and slaughtered at Sarn Athrad. After the battle, surviving Dwarves climbed the slopes of Mount Dolmed and were waylaid and slain by Ents.
Fate
Some Tolkienists such as Robert Foster and Karen Fonstad speculate that after the War of Wrath Dolmed was destroyed when the Ered Luin were broken and the Gulf of Lune broke through it.[1][2]
However, Ronald E. Kyrmse[3] and later Didier Willis[4] independently noted a prominent unidentified mountain exactly on the location of Dolmed in the map of Beleriand as well as Mount Rerir to the north. This, coupled with a reinterpretation of Tolkien's maps, shows that Dolmed at least partially survived the devastation.
Etymology
Dolmed contains the Sindarin, from dol ("head") and mêd (wet)[5]. The word for dol is used often in Sindarin to refer to hills.
Other versions of the legedarium
In an early version, the mount was called Mount Dolm[6].
References
- ↑ Robert Foster, The Complete Guide to Middle-earth, page 89
- ↑ Karen Wynn Fonstad, The Atlas of Middle-earth, p. 37
- ↑ Ronald Kyrmse, "The Geographical Relation between Beleriand and Eriador" in Mallorn no. 26, September 1989, pp. 25–27
- ↑ Didier Willis, Bulletin de géographie Hiswelóce, special issue no. 1, Winter 1994 (French); Mystères géographiques n°1 : Mont Dolmed & cités naines (c. 2000), Hiwelokë, accessed March 23rd, 2011 (French); revised and augmented in "Du Beleriand aux confins de Rhûn" in Tolkien, le façonnement d'un monde, vol. 2, 2014, pp. 197-230.
- ↑ . ""Mêd"". Eldamo - An Elvish Lexicon. Retrieved 22 October 2024
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Shaping of Middle-earth, "IV. The First 'Silmarillion' Map: The Eastward Extension", p.232.