Forostar

The North-cape

The Forostar was the northernmost of the five promontories of Númenor and the least fruitful of its regions: a land of moor and heather, bare rock and open wind, where little was farmed. Toward its end the ground rose into high rocky heights, and on the lower western slopes stood woods of fir and larch, the chief timber of the north. Greatest of its heights was Sorontil, a mountain whose cliffs fell sheer into the sea on the northern coast, and on those crags the eagles nested.

Stone and stars

The Forostar gave the island its building stone. Its quarries were worked for the walls of Armenelos, for the quays of the havens and for the towers of the great houses, and the hardness of country that made the north poor in grain made it rich in rock. Its clear northern air drew watchers of the sky as well: Tar-Meneldur, the fifth king and father of Tar-Aldarion, was a loremaster of the stars, and he built a high tower in the Forostar near Sorontil from which he studied the movements of the heavens.

A land apart

Because it was barren the Forostar was never populous, and no city of Númenor stood in it. Its people were quarrymen, foresters and herdsmen of the hardier sort; its coasts were cliff-bound and gave no landing, so shipping kept away. Yet its stone runs through the whole record of the island's building, from the earliest halls of the Kingsland to the temple that Sauron raised in the last years.

Tar-Meneldur's tower gives the north-cape its one moment at the centre of the realm's story. He cared for the stars rather than for ships and was reluctant to judge his son's sea-voyaging; but when warning came from Gil-galad of a shadow rising in Middle-earth, he judged that the times needed a king who knew the sea, and surrendered the sceptre to Aldarion in S.A. 883. Nothing further is recorded of the region, which drowned with the rest of the island in S.A. 3319. Almost all that is known of the Forostar comes from the Description of the Island of Númenor in Unfinished Tales.

The Forostar ran north-east from the Mittalmar as the northern arm of the star. Its interior was moorland and heath on poor soil, rising at the cape's end into rocky highlands; fir and larch grew on the lower western slopes above the coast, and the Andustar lay across the water to the south-west. Sorontil stood on the northern shore, its cliffs going straight down into the sea.