Resilient Seeker Coaching | Ross Raymond Nunamaker

In the Dark Journey of Turin the ancient location of Nan Dungorthin was referenced in the Lays of Beleriand:

“Thus reached they the roots     and the ruinous feet

Of those hoary hills     that Hithlum girdle,

The shaggy pinewoods     of the Shadowy Mountains.

There the twain enfolded     phantom twilight

And dim mazes     dark, unholy,

In Nan Dungorthin     where nameless gods

Have shrouded shrines     in shadows secret,

More old than Morgoth     or the ancient lords

The golden Gods     of the guarded West.

But the ghostly dwellers     of that grey valley

Hindered nor hurt them,    and they held their course

With creeping flesh     and quaking limb.

Yet laughter at whiles     with lingering echo,

As distant mockery     of demon voices

There harsh and hollow     in the hushed twilight

Flinding fancied,     fell, unwholesome

As that leering laughter     lost and dreadful

That rang in the rocks     in the ruthless hour

Of Beleg’s slaughter. “Tis Bauglir’s voice

That dogs us darkly     with deadly scorn’

He shuddering thought;     but the shreds of fear

And black foreboding     were banished utterly

When they climb the cliffs     and crumbling rocks

That walled that vale     of watchful evil,

And southward saw     the slopes of Hithlum

More warm and friendly.     That way they fared

During the daylight     o’er dale and ghyll,

O’er mountain pasture,     moor and boulder,

Over fell and fall     of flashing waters

That slipped down to Sirion,    to swell his tide

In his eastward basin     onward sweeping

To the South, to the sea,     to his sandy delta.”

(The Lays of Beleriand, lines 1472 – 1503)

The earliest form of the word was Nan Dumgorthin “The Land of the Dark Idols” in HoME Volume II, the Lays of Beleriand. In later  versions it was Nan Dungortheb, “The Valley of Dreadful Death”, which appears in HoME volumes I, II, X, and XI. 

The Valley of Dreadful Death

“And fleeing from the north she (Ungoliant) went down into Beleriand, and dwelt beneath Ered Gorgoroth, in that dark valley that was after called Nan Dungortheb, the Valley of Dreadful Death, because of the horror that she bred there.” (Sil. 81)

This was in year VY 1495 according to the Grey Annals in In the War of the Jewels (p.24)

Location

In of Men (page 260 of the War of the Jewels), “And that region was filled with fear, for upon its one side the power of Melian fenced the north-march of Doriath, but upon the other side the sheer precipices of Ered Orgoroth, mountains of terror, fell down from high Dorthonion.”

In the Silmarillion, Of Beleriand and its Realms (page 121):

“Upon the left hand of Sirion lay East Beleriand, at its widest a hundred leagues from Sirion to Gelion and the borders of Ossiriand; and first, between Sirion and Mindeb, lay the empty land of Dimbar under the peaks of the Crissaegrim, abode of eagles. Between Mindeb and the upper waters of Esgalduin lay the no-land of Nan Dungortheb; and that region was filled with fear, for upon its one side the power of Melian fenced the north march of Doriath, but upon the other side the sheer precipices of Ered Gorgoroth, Mountains of Terror, fell down from high Dorthonion.”

The location then is confirmed in the text, but inconsistent with the path Gwindor led Turin from the site of the death of Beleg to Eithel Ivrin. Turin was taken toward Angband traveling from Amon Rudh north around Brethil and then to the east of Gondolin, along the Pass of Anach, which is west of Nan Dungortheb in Dorthonion. Gwindor takes Turin to Nargothrond by travelling north and west of Gondolin to the base of the Ered Wethrin, Mountains of Shadow and continue west to Eithel Ivrin then south along the Narog to Nargothrond.

Christopher writes in the Lays of Beleriand, “The travellers (Turin and Flinding) then find themselves in Nan Dungorthin, which was mentioned in the Tale of Tinuviel; Huan found Beren and Tinuviel after their escape from Angband in that ’northward region of Artanor that was called afterward Nan Dumgorthin, the land of the dark idols’, ‘even then a dark land and gloomy and foreboding, and dread wandered beneath its lowering trees’. My father hesitated long about the placing of this land: in the Gnomish dictionary it was east of Artanor, in the Tale of Tinuviel a ‘northward region of Artanor’, while here it is west of Sirion, in a valley of the southern slopes of the Shadowy Mountains. In the earliest ‘Silmarillion’ map Nan Dungorthin was first likewise placed west of Sirion (west of the Isle of Werewolves), before being returned once more to the region north of Doriath, where it remained.” (Failivrin, page 83)

The Land of the Dark Idols: Nan Dumgorthin

In the Book of Lost Tales, Part Two (page 47) Nan Dumgorthin is described as a, “glade in that northward region of Artanor that was called afterward Nan Dumgorthin, the land of the dark idols, but that is a matter that concerns not this tale. Howbeit it was even then a dark land and gloomy and foreboding, and dread wandered beneath its lowering trees no less even than in Taurfuin;”

And on page 86: “in the gnomish dictionary Nan Dumgorthin is defined as ‘a land of dark forest east of Artanor where on a wooded mountain were hidden idols sacrificed to by some evil tribes of renegade men’ (dum ‘secret, not to be spoken’, dumgort, dungort ‘an evil idol’. In the lay of the Children of Hurin in alliterative verse Turin and his companion Flinding (later Gwindor), fleeing after the death of Beleg Strongbow, came to this land: There the twain enfolded phantom twilight and dim mazes dark, unholy, in Nan Dungorthin where nameless gods have shrouded shrines in shadows secret, more old than Morgoth or the ancient lords the golden Gods of the guarded West.

Page 87: “But the ghostly dwellers of that grey valley hindered nor hurt them, and they held their course with creeping flesh and quaking limb. Yet laughter at whiles with lingering echo, as distant mockery of demon voices there harsh and hollow in the hushed twilight Flinding fancied, fell, unwholesome…”  There are, I (Christopher Tolkien) believe, no other references to the gods of Nan Dumgorthin.

Morgoth we know, and the golden Gods of the guarded West are the Valar, but what of the nameless gods who have shrines, something very rare in the stories of Middle-earth.

The notion that there were gods deemed to be older and more ancient than the Valar, while according to the Elves’ history would be inaccurate, is not a foreign concept and would be reported by them in the being of Ungoliant. After all Ungoliant, of whom this region is closely associated was described as “the primeval spirit Moru whom even the Valar know not whence or when she came, and the folk of Earth have given her many names. Maybe she was bred of mists and darkness on the confines of the Shadowy Seas, in that utter dark that came between the overthrow of the Lamps and the kindling of the Trees, but more like she has always been; and she it is who loveth still to dwell in that black placing taking the guise of an unlovely spider, spinning a clinging gossamer of gloom that catches in its mesh stars and moons and all bright things that sail the airs.” (The Book of Lost Tales, Part One, p. 141)

As we learn that the earliest of men fell and worshipped Morgoth, it would not be too much of a stretch that Elves of a very early period, separated from the other Eldar and never having seen the light themselves, could have become ensnared in her gloomy world and come to worship her.

It also could have been a later forgotten group of men who had crossed into Beleriand either having fled Morgoth or in pursuit of those who fled and encountered Ungoliant and as they worshipped Morgoth they did so with Ungoliant as well.

This is all pure speculation on my part, but it does seem that within the construct of Middle-earth it is possible for this land to have had a people who worshipped a being that was believed to have pre-dated the Valar.

This part of Turin and Flinding’s journey is reminiscent of Aragorn’s journey to the Oathbreakers, or Dead Men of Dunharrow in the Third Age.

“But the ghostly dwellers     of that grey valley

Hindered nor hurt them,    and they held their course

With creeping flesh     and quaking limb.”

The darkness ends as they emerge from this region and see to the south the slopes of Hithlum they continued to journey in daylight now and waters they passed flowed into the Sirion and from there to the sea.

The location appears to have varied and ultimately was settled to be in the region between Angband and Doriath to the east of Gondor, as opposed to being west of Gondor along the Mountains of Shadow. 

For me it is a shame that this part of the journey had to be removed from the story of Turin in that the challenge it presented in advance of the healing at Eithel Ivrin presents in a much stronger manner.

Further, the ancient gods, provide enough of a reference to make one want to know more about who the people were and who they worshiped.

These earliest days, like our own, are rife with conflicting versions of the same stories, places, and events. Nan