Himring

The hill

Himring was a broad, bare hill rising alone at the north-eastern corner of Beleriand, higher than the ridges around it and with a wide, flat crown. Its name in the Grey-elven tongue meant the Ever-cold, and it earned it: the summit was treeless, swept by the wind off the northern plain, and snow lay on it long after the lowlands were clear. On its west lay the pass of Aglon, the narrow way between the hill and the eastern spur of Dorthonion that led south into Himlad; on its east the ground opened out into the broad, undefended country called Maglor's Gap, where no hills stood between the northern plain and East Beleriand. The hill looked straight north over Ard-galen toward Thangorodrim.

The fortress and the March

Maedhros, after his rescue from Thangorodrim and his surrender of the kingship of the Noldor to Fingolfin, led his brothers away east so that the feud between the two houses should have room to cool. He chose Himring for his seat because of that northward view and because it stood between the two ways into eastern Beleriand. He built strong walls and a great fortress on the crown and gathered about him the Noldor of the east and many of the Grey-elves of those lands.

The whole line of hills and watch-posts running from Himring eastward to the Blue Mountains took its name from him: the March of Maedhros, the eastern half of the leaguer of Angband. His brothers held its other points. Celegorm and Curufin kept Aglon and the land of Himlad south of the pass; Maglor held the Gap on the east; Caranthir held Thargelion beyond it about Lake Helevorn; Amrod and Amras ranged the open lands to the south. Maedhros was the head of them all, and by common report the wisest and most far-sighted of the sons of Fëanor, a lord who could work with Elves he had wronged and with Men and Dwarves whom his brothers distrusted.

A frontier command

Himring was never a city and never a place of great beauty. It was a working fortress on a cold hill, and what it produced was watchfulness: patrols in the Gap, riders on the plain, beacons and messages, and the machinery of a border held for four hundred years. The Men of the houses of Bór and Ulfang came into Maedhros's service in the years before the Nirnaeth and were quartered on the eastern marches; the sons of Bór stayed faithful, and the sons of Ulfang did not.

The Siege

Maedhros fortified the hill about F.A. 7 and held it through the whole of the Siege of Angband. In F.A. 60 Morgoth's sortie north of Dorthonion was caught between the eastern and western hosts and destroyed in the Dagor Aglareb, the Glorious Battle, and after that the leaguer was formally set; the March of Maedhros was its eastern half and Himring its command post. Twice more in the Long Peace the enemy tried the eastern flank, and twice the riders of Himring and the Gap turned him back. Maedhros used those centuries to do the diplomatic work no one else among his brothers could: he kept peace with Fingolfin and Fingon, gave up his claim to the High Kingship, dealt honestly with the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost, and took Men into his service when they came over the mountains.

The Dagor Bragollach

When Morgoth broke the Siege in the winter of F.A. 455 with rivers of fire and the full-grown Glaurung, the eastern front collapsed everywhere except at Himring. The pass of Aglon was forced and Celegorm and Curufin fled south to Nargothrond; Maglor's Gap was overrun by Glaurung and the orc-host poured through it into East Beleriand and as far as Thargelion, which was ruined. Himring itself was assaulted and held. Maedhros did what almost no other lord in the north managed that winter: he kept his fortress, rallied the fugitives from Dorthonion and Aglon to it, and then counter-attacked, driving the orcs back out of the country between the hill and the pass and retaking Aglon. When the fires died down the hill stood like an island in a sea of enemies, with the plain to the north lost and the Gap unsafe, but with the eastern lands behind it still free.

The Union of Maedhros

From Himring, in the years after 464, Maedhros planned the greatest alliance the Elves ever assembled against Morgoth. He gathered the sons of Fëanor, the men of Bór and Ulfang, the Dwarves of Belegost under Azaghâl, and, after a long reconciliation, the strength of Fingon and Hithlum and of Turgon out of hidden Gondolin, while Doriath and Nargothrond stood aside because of the deeds of his brothers. In F.A. 472 the eastern host marched out of Himring for the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and the hill was emptied of its fighting men.

After the Nirnaeth

The battle destroyed the alliance and the March together. The sons of Ulfang turned on Maedhros in the field, the eastern host was broken, and though Maedhros himself escaped, the strength that had held Himring for four hundred years was gone. Morgoth gave the northern lands to his Easterlings, and the sons of Fëanor withdrew from the hill and from the whole March; they wandered for a time and made a new seat far to the south at Amon Ereb, and afterwards in Ossiriand. Himring was left to Morgoth, and it is not recorded what he did with it.

Himling

When Beleriand was broken and drowned at the end of the Age, the crown of the hill was high enough to stay above the water. It remained as an island off the north-western coast of Middle-earth, north of Lindon, where it was known as Himling, one of the very few pieces of the eastern marches of Beleriand that the Second and Third Ages could still see. Maps of the later ages showed it, and the neighbouring isle of Tol Fuin that had been the highland of Dorthonion, but no history records anyone landing on either. That the name survived at all is preserved in the notes and maps published in Unfinished Tales.

Himring stood at the head of the eastern marches, with the pass of Aglon on its west between the hill and the eastern arm of Dorthonion, and the wide opening of Maglor's Gap on its east between the hill and the hills of Thargelion. North of it the ground fell to Ard-galen and thence to Angband. South of Aglon lay Himlad between the rivers Aros and Celon, and the river Little Gelion rose in the hill's eastern slopes. The line of the March ran east from Himring to the foothills of the Blue Mountains and the dwarf-roads.