The White Council

Re: Fall of Arthedain/Arnor

Tolkien and Inklings Discussion

: : I'm not sure how the settlement of the Hobbits in the Shire : : area indicates the extreme depopulation of the Evendim Hills. : : I've always thought of that area as a perfect refuge within : : Eriador. Extensive hill lands (not mere downland ridges) : : provide excellent defensive opportunities, as the German's : : found in Yugoslavia in WWII and indeed provided a means for the : : Basque people to maintain their identity from a period before : : Rome to the present. The same can be said for a number of : : peoples in the Caucasus Mountains, for example the Ossetes who : : are descended from the Alans who menaced The Roman Empire.

: I have to get offline because of an electrical storm, but I wanted to say I didn't mean to imply (if I did -- no time to reread it all) that the settlement of the Shire implied the depopulation of the Hills of Evendim. I was thinking that the abandonment of Annuminas removed the economic and military base which would support large communities in those hills. The Dunedain, I think, would have moved east to Fornost and the North Downs, where apparently more of their people still lived.

I see what your basis for the depopulation of the region is now. I would agree that the shift of the centre of power of Arnor westwards would leave the Evendim Hill region as a backwater. While a fall in population would be expected, I think there would be no reason to assume the area became totally deserted. Pinnath Gelin, Anfalas, Morthond Vale and Lamedon all supported quasi-Dunedain populations at the time of TWOTR without being cheek by jowl to a major town or city. The choice of residence of Faramir as Prince of Ithilien shows that hill-land was not unattractive to the Dunedain nobility for settlement - as indeed does the Cardolanish settlement of the Barrow Downs. Later in Arthedain's troubled history there is no direct evidence that the area was ever subject to the devastation so many other areas of Eriador suffered. Indeed at the time when Cardolan had fallen and the area around Fornost and the Baranduin were hard pressed by Angmar, The Evendim Hills may have looked very attractive as a settlement area and may have had a resurgence in population.