Hador

Lineage

Hador was born in F.A. 390, the son of Hathol, grandson of Magor and great-grandson of Malach Aradan, the son of Marach who had gone into the service of Fingolfin in Hithlum. His golden hair earned him the Sindarin name Lórindol, Goldenhead, and the fair hair of his descendants became the mark of his house. As a young man he went to the court of the High King as his ancestor had, and Fingolfin came to love him above all the Men who served him.

Lord of Dor-lómin

In F.A. 416 Fingolfin gave Hador the lordship of Dor-lómin, the wide southern vale of Hithlum lying between the Ered Wethrin and the Mountains of Mithrim. Hador brought the scattered people of Marach there from Estolad and elsewhere, and under him they became a single people, the House of Hador, the greatest of the Edain in numbers and in strength. They kept their own Mannish tongue, though Hador and his lords spoke Sindarin, and it was from Dor-lómin's speech that the language of Númenor later descended.

Hador married a woman named Gildis, and they had three children. Galdor, the elder son, was his heir; Gundor was the younger; and his daughter Glóredhel married Haldir, lord of Brethil, binding the houses of Hador and Haleth together. Hador ruled Dor-lómin for nearly forty years in the long peace of the Siege of Angband, and his hall became the model of what a lord of the Edain should be: generous, open, loyal to the Elves, quick to laughter and quick to war.

The Dagor Bragollach

In the winter of F.A. 455 Morgoth broke the Siege. Fires poured across Ard-galen and armies of Orcs and Balrogs came against the northern fortresses, and though Hithlum held, the cost was heavy. Hador, then sixty-five years old, led the Men of Dor-lómin to the fortress of Eithel Sirion at the sources of the Sirion, the chief stronghold of Fingolfin on the eastern face of the Ered Wethrin, and fought in its rearguard. He was killed there, and Gundor fell beside him, pierced by arrows. Fingolfin himself died a few months later in his duel with Morgoth before the gates of Angband.

Legacy

Galdor succeeded his father and died at the same fortress seven years later. The house that Hador founded gave the First Age its greatest mortal warriors, Húrin and Huor, and its most famous tragedy and its most hopeful tale in Túrin and Tuor. When the Edain sailed to Númenor after the War of Wrath, the kings of that island reckoned themselves the heirs of the House of Hador, and the fair-haired, tall Men of the north in later ages were held to be its kin. Hador's name remained in the histories as the golden-haired lord under whom Men first stood as equals beside the Elves.

Slain in the rearguard at Eithel Sirion during the Dagor Bragollach, F.A. 455.