Emerië

The green downs

The Emerië was the pasture of Númenor, a district of the western Mittalmar made of long rolling downs, treeless and open, where the turf was cropped short by the flocks. It was the chief grazing country of the island, and the white sheep of the Emerië were famous throughout the realm; wool from its downs clothed much of the country, and the horses that the Númenóreans of the Inlands loved were reared on the same grass.

Settlement there was scattered rather than gathered. The herdsmen lived in white houses set far apart on the ridges, each with its own land, and there were no towns; a traveller crossing the Emerië saw few roofs and heard little but sheep and wind. The road from Armenelos to the western coast ran through it, so that the downs lay between the Kingsland and the havens of the Andustar.

The white house of Erendis

The Emerië is remembered chiefly for Erendis, who married Tar-Aldarion the mariner-king and could not endure his voyages. When she left him she took a white house on the downs among the flocks, and there brought up their daughter Tar-Ancalimë, keeping her from the sea and from her father's people. Ancalimë spent much of her girlhood among shepherds under an assumed name, and something of that upbringing stayed with her when she became the first Ruling Queen of Númenor: she was solitary, distrustful and slow to wed. It was on the Emerië that a shepherd who called himself Mámandil courted her, and he proved to be Hallacar of the kindred of the Lords of Andúnië, who became her husband and afterward her adversary.

Nothing further is recorded of the region. It sank with the island in S.A. 3319. Both the description of the downs and the story set upon them survive only in Unfinished Tales.

The Emerië lay in the west and south-west of the Mittalmar, between the slopes of the Meneltarma and the country that fell away toward the western coast. It was high open downland with no woods and no rivers of size, watered by springs and small streams, and it had no share of the island's coast. The highroad from Armenelos to the western bays crossed it.