Fornost

The city on the downs

Fornost stood on the North Downs, a range of hills about a hundred miles north of Bree at the end of the Greenway, the old North Road that ran up from Tharbad. It was the second city of Arnor and, from some time before the division of 861, its effective capital; after the division it was the seat of the kings of Arthedain. Its full name, Fornost Erain, means the northern fortress of the kings, and the Bree-folk called it Norbury.

The texts do not describe the city's walls or halls. Its importance lay in what it held and where it stood. After Weathertop fell in 1409 the palantír of Amon Sûl was brought to Fornost, and the city became the one place in the North where the king could still look into a Seeing-stone. The North Downs also formed a natural bastion; behind them lay the Hills of Evendim and the road west to the Lune and the Elves of Lindon, and in front of them the open plain stretching south and east toward the Weather Hills and the enemy.

Deadmen's Dike

By the time of the War of the Ring Fornost had been empty for over a thousand years. The Bree-folk, who had never gone there, called the ruins Deadmen's Dike and thought them haunted. A few Rangers, descendants of the kings who had reigned there, passed through it on their patrols, and Aragorn knew it well. The site was a mound of broken stone on the downs, and the Greenway that led to it was a green track through grass.

The kings' city

As the Dúnedain of the North grew fewer, the kings of Arnor left Annúminas beside its lake and made Fornost their seat. Amlaith, eldest son of Eärendur, took it as the capital of Arthedain in 861, and fourteen kings after him reigned there. Fornost survived the great invasion of 1409, when Araphor, still a boy, held the North Downs against the Witch-king with help from Círdan and the Elves of Lindon and Rivendell. For five and a half centuries more it remained the capital of a shrinking realm.

The fall

In the winter of 1974 the Witch-king struck before the help that Arthedain had begged from Gondor could arrive. Fornost was taken; most of the surviving Dúnedain fled west over the Lune to Círdan's protection or south into hiding, and King Arvedui escaped north to his death in the ice of Forochel. The Witch-king occupied the city and, for a few months, ruled Eriador from it.

The Battle of Fornost

In 1975 the fleet of Gondor under Prince Eärnur, so large that the Havens could scarcely hold it, landed at the Lune. With Círdan's Elves, the remnant of Arthedain, and Elves and Men gathered from all over Eriador, Eärnur marched east. The Witch-king, over-confident, came out from Fornost to meet the army on the plain west of the North Downs between the city and Lake Evendim. His host was broken and fled north; the cavalry of Gondor, which had ridden round the battle, came down on the fugitives and cut them off from Carn Dûm, and Glorfindel arrived from Rivendell with fresh strength. The Witch-king charged at Eärnur, whose horse bolted, and then fled alone into the dark when Glorfindel rode against him. Glorfindel's prophecy that the Witch-king would not fall by the hand of man was spoken as Eärnur tried to pursue.

Angmar was destroyed, but Arthedain was not restored. Arvedui's son Aranarth became a Chieftain rather than a king, and Fornost was never reoccupied. Its ruins remained on the North Downs through the rest of the Third Age, until the Reunited Kingdom rebuilt Annúminas rather than the fortress-city that had been the last capital of the North.

A city on the North Downs of northern Eriador, at the northern end of the Greenway about a hundred miles north of Bree; Lake Evendim and Annúminas lie to the west, the battlefield of 1975 between them.