Mirkwood

The forest

Mirkwood stretches for more than four hundred miles from north to south along the eastern side of the vale of Anduin, and at its widest is two hundred miles across. Its western eaves stand a day's walk from the river, and its eastern edge looks out over the grasslands toward the Sea of Rhûn. In the middle of the northern half rise the Mountains of Mirkwood, and from them the Forest River runs north-east through the Woodland Realm to the Long Lake. On the eastern side the forest bends sharply inward at the East Bight, a great bay of open land cut by the Northmen in the days of their prosperity. At the southern end, on the bare hill of Amon Lanc, stands Dol Guldur.

Two roads crossed it. The Old Forest Road of the Dwarves ran straight from the Old Ford to the eastern plains south of the mountains; by the late Third Age it was overgrown and led into impassable marshes at its eastern end. North of it the Elf-path went from the Forest Gate to the halls of the Elvenking, crossing the Enchanted River, whose black water brought sleep and forgetfulness to anyone who touched it. Under the Shadow the trees grew close and huge, oaks and beeches in the north, darker growth in the south, and the canopy was so dense that the path ran in perpetual dusk. Black squirrels, pale moths, the eyes of unseen watchers and the webs of the great spiders filled the woods; the spiders bred from the brood of Shelob and nested thickest between the Elf-path and the mountains.

Peoples of the wood

The Silvan Elves, descendants of the Nandor who settled the Anduin vale in the Elder Days, were the forest's oldest people. In the Second Age they accepted a Sindarin lord, Oropher, and his son Thranduil ruled them for the whole of the Third Age from his halls in the north-east. Their realm was rich in wine, trade and song but not in weapons of power; Thranduil held no Ring, and his people kept the darkness out by vigilance alone.

Along the western eaves lived the Woodmen, Northmen of the forest who hunted and farmed in clearings and fought a long war of attrition against the wolves and orcs of the Shadow. They were kin to the Beornings of the Anduin and to the men of Dale. The forest's darker population came from Dol Guldur: orcs, wolves, spiders, and in the last century of the age several of the Nazgûl with their servants.

Greenwood the Great

The Elves called the forest Eryn Galen, Greenwood the Great, and in the Second Age it was one wood from the Anduin to the eastern plains. Oropher, a Sinda from Doriath, came east and was accepted as king by the Silvan folk. He first dwelt on Amon Lanc in the south, but as Sauron's power grew in Mordor he moved his people north, first over the Mountains of Mirkwood and at last beyond the Forest River. In S.A. 3434 he led a great army to the Last Alliance and was killed at Dagorlad in a rash charge; only a third of his people returned, and Thranduil ruled them thereafter.

The Shadow

About T.A. 1050 a darkness crept into the southern forest from a new stronghold on Amon Lanc, and the Elves and Men began to call the wood Mirkwood, Taur-e-Ndaedelos, the forest of great fear. The power there was called the Necromancer and was taken for one of the Nazgûl. The Woodmen were driven north, the Hobbits left the Anduin vale, and the spiders came. In 2063 Gandalf entered Dol Guldur and the Necromancer fled east; the Watchful Peace that followed ended in 2460 when Sauron returned in greater strength. Gandalf went back in 2850, found the dying Thráin II, and proved that the Necromancer was Sauron. The White Council attacked in 2941 and Sauron withdrew to Mordor, but in 2951 he sent three of the Nazgûl, Khamûl among them, to reoccupy the tower, and the Shadow lay on the forest again.

Bilbo's crossing

In the same year that the Council struck, Thorin's company crossed the northern forest on the Elf-path. They lost their way after Bombur fell in the Enchanted River, were caught by the spiders, and were rescued by Bilbo with Sting and the Ring only to be taken by the Elves and imprisoned in Thranduil's halls. Bilbo's escape by barrel down the Forest River carried them to Lake-town, and after Smaug's death Thranduil's army marched to the Mountain and fought in the Battle of Five Armies.

The War of the Ring

Thranduil held Gollum from 3017 at Gandalf's request, and his escape in June 3018, during an orc raid, sent Legolas to Rivendell with the news. In the war's last month Dol Guldur struck north and west. On March 15, 3019, its host burst into the Woodland Realm, and Thranduil defeated it in the Battle under the Trees, in the same days that three assaults broke against Lórien. On March 28 Celeborn crossed the Anduin and took Dol Guldur, and Galadriel threw down its walls.

Eryn Lasgalen

On April 6 Thranduil and Celeborn met in the middle of the cleansed forest and renamed it Eryn Lasgalen, the Wood of Greenleaves. They divided it: Thranduil kept the north as far as the mountains, Celeborn took the south as East Lórien, and the wide middle was given to the Beornings and the Woodmen. Thranduil remained in his realm into the Fourth Age, while Legolas brought Elves of the forest south to Ithilien.

A forest more than four hundred miles long east of the Anduin, from the Grey Mountains and the Forest River in the north to the Brown Lands in the south. The Mountains of Mirkwood stand in its northern half, Thranduil's halls in the north-east, the East Bight on its eastern edge, and Dol Guldur on Amon Lanc in the south-west.