Ulfang

Arrival and service

Ulfang, called the Black, led the second of the two companies of Easterlings who came over the Blue Mountains into East Beleriand around F.A. 463, following the people of Bór. These Swarthy Men were newcomers of a different stock from the Edain, and the Elves had reason to distrust them, but after the Dagor Bragollach Maedhros needed every sword he could find. Ulfang and his three sons, Ulfast, Ulwarth and Uldor, were received by Caranthir, who gave them lands in Thargelion, the eastern country he had once ruled beneath the mountains. Outwardly Ulfang was Caranthir's vassal and fought under his banner. In truth, as the histories make plain, his people had already been secretly won over by Morgoth's envoys before they ever crossed into Beleriand, and they answered the Dark Lord's call when it came.

The treachery

Maedhros built his union against Angband over several years, gathering Elves, Dwarves and Men, and the Easterlings of Ulfang marched in the eastern host with the sons of Fëanor. Morgoth's plan depended on them. In the summer of F.A. 472 Uldor delayed the eastern army with false reports of an attack from Angband, so that it came late to the field, and when at last the battle was joined he and his brothers turned their weapons against Maedhros's rear while an Easterling force they had hidden in the eastern hills fell on his flank. That stroke turned a hard battle into the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered Tears. Uldor was killed by Maglor; Ulfast and Ulwarth were cut down by the sons of Bór. The Silmarillion does not record what became of Ulfang himself, whether he died in the battle or lived to see Morgoth's reward.

Reward and legacy

That reward was itself a treachery. Morgoth gave the Easterlings Hithlum and shut them in it, denying them the rich southern lands they had been promised, and there the descendants of Ulfang's people oppressed the remnant of the House of Hador for the rest of the Age, chieftains like Brodda and Lorgan holding what had belonged to Húrin. In the memory of the Eldar the name of Ulfang became a byword for treachery, set against the faithfulness of Bór, and it was the reason the Elves of later ages long mistrusted the Men of the East. The betrayal also opened a wound between Elves and Men that the loyalty of the Edain took years to close, and it is counted with the kinslaying of Alqualondë among the great treasons of the First Age.

Not recorded; his sons all died in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and his house is remembered as accursed.