Angmar

The witch-realm

Angmar lay at the far northern end of the Misty Mountains, straddling the range where it bends toward Mount Gundabad, so that its lands lay partly in Eriador and partly beyond the mountains in the north of Rhovanion. It was a cold, bitter country of highlands and stony valleys, and its capital and only city was Carn Dûm, a fortress on the western flank of the mountains. From there the Witch-king commanded orcs bred in the mountains, trolls from the Ettenmoors, and Men of the northern hills who had never accepted the rule of the Dúnedain and took his side willingly.

Angmar was not a kingdom in the ordinary sense. It existed for one purpose, and its people, for all their numbers, were tools. The Witch-king, chief of the Nazgûl, had been sent north by Sauron, still hidden at Dol Guldur and unrecognised by the Wise, to destroy the North-kingdom of Arnor piece by piece while Gondor was distracted by its own troubles in the south and east. Its wars were slow, patient and relentless, and it made use of plague, treachery and terror as readily as of armies.

Method

The division of Arnor into three kingdoms in T.A. 861 gave the Witch-king his opening. He subverted Rhudaur, the weakest, through its hill-men and made it a client state; he broke Cardolan by force and then sent evil spirits into the Barrow-downs so that the survivors could never return; and he pressed Arthedain, the strongest, generation after generation, until its last king fled and its capital fell. Every victory of Angmar was Sauron's, and its fall in 1975, when it seemed complete, was not the end of its lord.

Rise

About T.A. 1300 evil things began to multiply in the North and a new power appeared beyond the Ettenmoors. Its lord was known only as the Witch-king, and it was not until much later that the Wise understood him to be the chief of the Nine. The first blow fell in 1356: King Argeleb I of Arthedain, who had claimed all Arnor after the line of Isildur failed in the other two realms, was killed in battle against Rhudaur and Angmar in the Weather Hills.

The war of 1409

In 1409 a great host crossed the Hoarwell, surrounded Weathertop and burned the tower of Amon Sûl. King Arveleg I fell; Rhudaur was occupied entirely by Angmar's people; Cardolan was ravaged and its last prince died on the Barrow-downs. Fornost and the North Downs held, and help came from Lindon and Rivendell, so that the young Araphor beat the enemy back from the borders of Arthedain. Some of the Dúnedain of Cardolan held out on the downs and in the Old Forest for a while.

Plague and the barrows

The Great Plague of 1636 came north from Gondor and finished what the war had begun in Cardolan. The Witch-king took advantage of the emptied land and sent wights into the barrows of Tyrn Gorthad. For three centuries afterwards Angmar was quiet, gathering strength, while Arthedain's kings, foreseeing the end, sent to Gondor for help.

The fall of Arthedain and of Angmar

In 1974, before Gondor's help could arrive, the Witch-king struck. Fornost was taken, the remaining Dúnedain were driven over the Lune or into the wild, and King Arvedui fled north to the ice of Forochel, where he drowned the following spring. But the fleet of Gondor under Eärnur came to the Grey Havens in 1975, and with Círdan's Elves of Lindon and the survivors of Arthedain marched east. The Witch-king met them on the plain between Nenuial and the North Downs and was routed; a cavalry force cut off his retreat toward Carn Dûm, Glorfindel came down from Rivendell against him, and the army of Angmar was destroyed so completely that not an orc or a Man of it remained west of the mountains. The Witch-king himself escaped in the dark, and Glorfindel warned Eärnur not to pursue him, foretelling that his end would not come by the hand of man. He fled to Mordor and in 2000 laid siege to Minas Ithil.

Angmar was never refounded. Its capital lay in ruins, but orcs of its breeding remained in the northern mountains and Gundabad for the rest of the Age, and the realm's memory long outlived it: in the year 3019 the hobbits still remembered the Witch-king as the enemy of the ancient North, and the blade that broke his spell on the Pelennor had been forged for the wars against him.

A realm at the northern end of the Misty Mountains, spanning both sides of the range, with its capital Carn Dûm on the western flank and Mount Gundabad to the east. Its southern border ran along the Ettenmoors, its western toward the North Downs and Forochel.