Lossoth

Origins

The Lossoth were the remnant of the Forodwaith, the Men of the far north who had lived in the cold lands beyond Eriador since the earliest ages, and who had learned to endure the bitter cold that Morgoth's northern realm left behind it. They are said in the lore of the Dúnedain to have been a strange and unfriendly folk, akin to no other people of Middle-earth then known, though they were certainly Men. When the Númenóreans founded Arnor the Lossoth lay beyond its northern border, on the shores of the great Ice Bay of Forochel that cut into the land north-west of the Hills of Evendim and around the cape of Forochel that closed the bay against the ocean. The Dúnedain had little to do with them and left them alone.

Life on the ice

The Lossoth lived by hunting and fishing along the frozen shore. They built houses of snow and lived in them through the long winter, and they were said to run on the ice with bones bound to their feet and to draw carts without wheels, which is to say that they used skates and sleds, arts unknown to the Men of the south. They wore furs and knew the ways of the ice as no other Men did: where it would bear weight, when the wind would come off the sea, and how to survive when the north wind blew for weeks together. They were wary of strangers, poor by the reckoning of the Dúnedain and rich in nothing but endurance.

Arvedui among the Snowmen

In the winter of T.A. 1974, when the Witch-king overwhelmed Arthedain and Fornost fell, King Arvedui escaped north with a few of his guard and came at last to the shores of Forochel. He and his men were starving in the old mine-workings of the Dwarves at the end of the mountains when the Lossoth found them. The Snowmen gave them food and shelter, though unwillingly, since the king had nothing to offer them but a few jewels that meant little to them and since they feared the Witch-king, who they believed could make frost or thaw as he pleased. Through the winter Arvedui lived in their snow-houses.

In March 1975 a ship sent by Círdan from the Grey Havens found its way into the bay to bring the king south. The chief of the Lossoth warned Arvedui not to board it: the wind, he said, was in the wrong quarter and the sea-monster, meaning the storm, would come, and he counselled the king to wait until the summer. Arvedui would not wait. He gave the chief his ring, the ring of Barahir, the most ancient heirloom of his house, in thanks for the winter's shelter, and sailed. That night the north wind rose and the ship was driven onto the ice and broken, and Arvedui was lost with the two palantíri he carried. The Snowmen's warning had been right.

The ring of Barahir stayed among the Lossoth until the Dúnedain of the North, who had heard where it had gone, ransomed it back for a great price. It went to Rivendell and was there when Elrond gave it to Aragorn nearly a thousand years later.

Relations with other peoples

The Lossoth had almost no relations with any other people. The Dúnedain of Arnor knew of them and feared little from them; the Witch-king's realm of Angmar lay to their east and they dreaded it. Their one recorded contact with the wider world was their shelter of Arvedui, an act of reluctant kindness to a king who could give them nothing but a ring they did not understand.

The Lossoth are not described in detail in the published texts. They were a hardy folk, shaped by a life on the ice, and they were held to be unlike any other Men in appearance as well as in custom. They dressed in the furs of the seals and beasts they hunted, and they had the strength and endurance to live through winters that killed the Dúnedain who tried them.

The Lossoth were a hunting people without lords or cities, ruled by chiefs of their own bands. They built snow-houses, travelled by sled and by bone skates over the ice, and hunted the seals and fish of the bay. They had no use for gold or gems, and the chief who took the ring of Barahir took it as a token, not as wealth. Their beliefs included a fear of the Witch-king of Angmar as a master of cold, and a wisdom about the sea and the weather of the north that the southern Men lacked. Their language was their own, though their chief could speak enough of the Common Tongue to counsel Arvedui.

The Lossoth were the descendants of the Forodwaith, the Men who had lived in the far north of Middle-earth from the earliest days of the race, in a land that had been made bitterly cold by the realm of Morgoth in the north and stayed so after his fall. They alone of Men had learned to live in that cold, and they remained there after all other peoples had withdrawn south.

The Lossoth are not mentioned after 1975. They remained on the shores of Forochel through the rest of the Third Age, unaffected by the War of the Ring, and there is no reason to suppose the Fourth Age changed them. The northern border of the refounded Arnor would have run near their country, but the Reunited Kingdom had no more interest in the ice than the old one had.