Mordor

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This article is about the location in The Lord of the Rings. For other uses of the name, see Mordor (disambiguation).

Mordor
Barad-dûr

In

Fellowship of the Ring in the quest to destroy the One Ring
. Mordor was surrounded by three mountain ranges, to the north, the west, and the south. These both protected the land from invasion and kept those living in Mordor from escaping.

Commentators have noted that Mordor was influenced by Tolkien's own experiences in the industrial

Shire or the beautiful elvish forest of Lothlórien
.

Geography

Overview

Rohan and Gondor

Mordor was roughly rectangular in shape, with the longer sides on the north and south. Three sides were defended by mountain ranges: the Ered Lithui ("Ash Mountains") on the north, and the Ephel Dúath on the west and south. The lengths of these ranges are estimated to be 498, 283 and 501 miles (801, 455 and 806 kilometres) respectively, which gives Mordor an area of roughly 140,000 square miles (360,000 square kilometres).[1]

To the west lay the narrow land of

Emyn Muil hills.[2]

The Black Gate

Further information: Battle of the Morannon

In the northwest, the pass of Cirith Gorgor led into the enclosed plain of Udûn. Sauron built the Black Gate of Mordor (the Morannon) across the pass. This added to the earlier fortifications, the Towers of the Teeth – Carchost to the east, Narchost to the west, guard towers which had been built by Gondor to keep a watch on this entrance.[T 4] The passage through the inner side of Udûn into the interior of Mordor was guarded by another gate, the Isenmouthe. Outside the Morannon lay the Dagorlad or Battle Plain, and the Dead Marshes.[T 3]

The Mountains of Shadow

"Cirith Ungol" redirects here. For the American heavy metal band, see Cirith Ungol (band).

The Ephel Dúath ("Fence of Shadow") defended Mordor on the west and south. The main pass was guarded by

Minas Morgul, a city built by Gondor as Minas Ithil.[T 5] The fortress Durthang lay in the northern Ephel Dúath above Udûn.[T 6] A higher, more difficult pass, Cirith Ungol, lay just to the north of the Morgul pass. Its top was guarded by a tower, built by Gondor. The route traversed Torech Ungol, the lair of the giant spider Shelob.[T 7][T 8]

Inside the Ephel Dúath ran a lower parallel ridge, the Morgai, separated by a narrow valley, a "dying land not yet dead" with "low scrubby trees", "coarse grey grass-tussocks", "withered mosses", "great writhing, tangled brambles", and thickets of

briars with long, stabbing thorns.[T 9]

Interior

The interior of Mordor was composed of three large regions. The core of Sauron's realm was in the northwest: the arid plateau of Gorgoroth, with the active volcano

Barad-dûr was on the north side of Gorgoroth, at the end of a spur of the Ash Mountains. Gorgoroth was volcanic and inhospitable to life, but home to Mordor's mines, forges, and garrisons.[T 6][T 4]
Núrn, the southern part of Mordor, was less arid and more fertile; Sauron's slaves farmed this region to support his armies,[T 11] and streams fed the salt Sea of Núrnen. To the east of Gorgoroth lay the dry plain of Lithlad.[T 4]

Mount Doom

"Orodruin" redirects here. For other uses, see Orodruin (disambiguation).
Tolkien identified the volcano of Stromboli off Sicily with Mount Doom.[3]

Mount Doom, Orodruin, or Amon Amarth ("Mountain of Fate") is more than an ordinary volcano; it responds to Sauron's commands and his presence, lapsing into dormancy when he is away from Mordor, and becoming active again when he returns. It is the place where the

Third Age with the destruction of the One Ring, the volcano erupts violently.[T 10]

Tolkien stated in his "

Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings", intended to assist translators, that the phrase "Crack of Doom" derives from William Shakespeare's play Macbeth, Act 4 scene 1. Tolkien wrote that the phrase meant "the announcement of the Last Day" by a crack of thunder, or "the sound of the last trump[et]" (he cites the use of "crack" to mean a trumpet's sound in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight at lines 116 and 1166) at the Last Judgment as described in the Book of Revelation. He further states that "Doom" originally meant "judgement", and by its sound and its use in the word "doomsday" carries the "senses of death, finality, and fate".[T 13] Another possible source of the name, mentioned by Tolkien and discussed by the Tolkien scholar Jared Lobdell, is a pair of tales of supernatural events by the English novelist Algernon Blackwood, "The Willows" and "The Glamour of the Snow".[4]
According to the fanzine Niekas, Tolkien "more or less found Mordor" on a Mediterranean cruise in September 1966.[3] When sailing past the volcano of Stromboli at night, Tolkien said he had "never seen anything that looked so much like [Mount Doom]."[3]

The International Astronomical Union names all mountains on Saturn's moon Titan after mountains in Tolkien's work.[5] In 2012, they named a Titanian mountain "Doom Mons" after Mount Doom.[6] The Swedish melodic death metal band Amon Amarth, whose lyrics deal primarily with Viking culture and Norse mythology,[7] and the North American doom metal band Orodruin, are named after the mountain.[8]

Mount Ngauruhoe was Peter Jackson's inspiration for the Mount Doom in his films.

In Peter Jackson's film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, Mount Doom was represented by two active volcanoes in New Zealand: Mount Ngauruhoe and Mount Ruapehu, located in Tongariro National Park. In long shots, the mountain is either a large model or a CGI effect, or a combination. The production was not permitted to film the summit of Ngauruhoe because the Māori hold it to be sacred, but some scenes on the slopes of Mount Doom were filmed on the slopes of Ruapehu.[9]

In the TV series

Second Age. This was set off when orcs opened a floodgate, releasing water on to hot magma deep underground. The water would, a geologist explained, then flash to steam, causing an explosion.[10]

Barad-dûr

Further information: Architecture in Middle-earth

The name Barad-dûr is

metonyms for Sauron.[T 15]

In the

Second Age, Sauron began to stir again and chose Mordor as a stronghold in which to build his fortress.[12] It was strengthened by the power of the One Ring, which had recently been forged; its foundations would survive as long as the Ring existed. Gandalf described the Ring as being the "...foundation of Barad-dûr..."[T 16] The Dark Tower is described as being composed of iron, being black and having battlements and gates.[T 17] In a painting by Tolkien, however, the walls are of mainly grey stone and brick, and battlements, gates and towers are not visible.[T 18]

In

Mount Doom where Frodo and Sam had a terrible glimpse of the Eye of Sauron.[T 20] Barad-dûr's west gate is described as "huge" and the west bridge as "a vast bridge of iron."[T 20]

In The Return of the King, Sam Gamgee witnessed the destruction of Barad-dûr: "... towers and battlements, tall as hills, founded upon a mighty mountain-throne above immeasurable pits; great courts and dungeons, eyeless prisons sheer as cliffs, and gaping gates of steel and adamant..."[T 20]

Barad-dûr, along with the One Ring, Mordor, and Sauron himself, were destroyed on 25 March, a traditional

Anglo-Saxon date for the crucifixion; the quest to destroy the One Ring began in Rivendell on 25 December, the date of Christmas.[13]

First Age

In

Orocarni, its western end being close to the head of the Great Gulf (later the Mouths of Anduin).[14][a]

History

Early history

Sauron settled in Mordor in the

Eriador, and secretly forged the One Ring in Orodruin. He then set about conquering Middle-earth, launching an attack upon the Elves of Eregion, but was repelled by the Men of Númenor.[T 22]

Over a thousand years later, the Númenóreans under

its destruction. He at once returned to Mordor as a spirit and resumed his rule.[T 23]

The Last Alliance and Third Age

Sauron's rule was interrupted again when his efforts to overthrow the surviving Men of Númenor and the

Elves failed. The army of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men advanced on Mordor; in a great battle on the Dagorlad ("Battle Plain"), Sauron's forces were destroyed and the Black Gate was stormed. Barad-dûr was then besieged; after seven years, Sauron broke out and was defeated on the slopes of Orodruin. Sauron fled into Rhûn, and Barad-dûr was levelled. Gondor built fortresses at the entrances to Mordor to prevent his return, maintaining the "Watchful Peace" for over a thousand years.[T 22]

The

Dol Guldur, feigning defeat, but readying for war.[T 22]

War of the Ring

Scraperboard illustration by Alexander Korotich
, 1984

Orcs fled or were killed. The land of Núrn was given to Sauron's freed slaves.[T 11][15]

Languages and peoples

At the time of the War of the Ring, Sauron had gathered great armies to serve him. These included

Mouth of Sauron), the Black Speech was still used, the language devised by Sauron during the Dark Years of the Second Age. In addition to ordinary Orcs and Trolls, Sauron had bred a more powerful strain of Orcs, the Uruk-hai, and a strong and agile breed of Trolls, the Olog-hai, who could endure the sun. The Olog-hai knew only the Black Speech.[T 24]

Naming

Within Tolkien's fiction, "Mordor" had two meanings: "Black Land" in

Moria, which meant "Black Pit", and Morgoth, the first Dark Lord.[T 25]

Popular sources have conjectured or stated directly that "Mordor" came from

Old English morðor, "mortal sin" or "murder".[16] Against this, the philologist Helge Fauskanger notes that Tolkien had been using both the elements of the name, "mor" and "dor" (as in Gondor, Eriador) for decades before assembling them into "Mordor".[16]

Fauskanger writes that there are however several words that sound like "mor" with connotations of darkness. Italian moro (cf. Latin maurus, black, and Mauri, a North African tribe) means a

Arthurian names like Morgana, Morgause, and Mordred; the Mor- element here does not mean "dark", possibly being connected to Welsh mawr "big", but Tolkien could have picked up the association with Arthurian evil.[16]

Origins

Grendel's wilderness in Beowulf

Tolkien's descriptions of the Dead Marshes and the grim Morgai have been compared to the Beowulf poet's account of Grendel's dangerous moors.[17] 1908 illustration by Joseph Ratcliffe Skelton
Further information: Beowulf and Middle-earth

Tolkien, a scholar of Old English, was an expert on Beowulf, calling it one of his "most valued sources" for Middle-earth.[T 26] The medievalists Stuart D. Lee and Elizabeth Solopova compare Tolkien's account of Mordor and the neighbouring landscapes to the monster Grendel's wilderness in Beowulf.[17] In particular, they compare Frodo and Sam's crossing of the Dead Marshes and what Gollum called its "tricksy lights", with Beowulf's "fire on the water"; and their traversal of the parched Morgai, full of rocks and vicious thorns, with Grendel's dangerous moors.[17] Lee and Solopova write that the Beowulf description both emphasises the coming horror, "play[ing] on ideas of desolation, wintry landscapes and the supernatural",[17] and like Tolkien giving realistic descriptions of nature. At the same time, they write, both the Beowulf poet and Tolkien incorporate "an element of fantasy": Grendel's moor is both full of water and a "craggy headland .. inhabited by supernatural evil",[17] while Tolkien fills the landscapes in and around Mordor with "similar ambiguity and sense of unease".[17]

Lee and Solopova's comparison of Beowulf landscapes with Mordor[17]
Grendel's wilderness
in Beowulf II.1345-1382		 Translation Landscapes around Mordor
... ... ... ... Hie dygel lond
warigeað, wulfhleoþu, windige næssas,
frecne fengelad		 ... ... ... ... They a secret land
watch, wolf-infested slopes / windy headlands
dangerous moor-path		 The Morgai: rocks, thorns,
"grassless, bare, jagged ... barren",
"ruinous and dead"
wudu wyrtum fæst / wæter oferhelmað.
þær mæg nihta gehwæm / niðwundor seon,
fyr on flode. ... Nis þæt heoru stow!		 Well-rooted trees / overshadow the water
There one may each night / a horrible wonder see:
fire on the water, ... This is not a safe place.		 "wide fens and mires...
Mists curled and smoked
from dark and noisome pools".
"Candles for corpses"
(lights in the Dead Marshes)

'Black Country' of the West Midlands

Mines, ironworks, smoke, and spoil heaps: the Black Country, near Tolkien's childhood home, has been suggested as an influence on his vision of Mordor.[18]
Further information: Environmentalism in The Lord of the Rings

An art exhibition entitled "The Making of Mordor" at the

industrial wastelands of Isengard and Mordor."[20] Baratta comments that Tolkien clearly intended the reader to "identify with some of the problems of environmental destruction, rampant industrial invasion, and the corrupting and damaging effects these have on mankind."[20]

First World War's Western Front

Tolkien stated that his trench warfare experience with his regiment, the Lancashire Fusiliers, on the Western Front influenced his account of the landscape around Mordor.[21]
Further information: The Great War and Middle-earth

First World War.[22] Jane Ciabattari, writing on the BBC culture website, calls the hobbits' struggle to take the ring to Mordor "a cracked mirror reflection of the young soldiers caught in the blasted landscape and slaughter of trench warfare on the Western Front."[21] In one of his letters in 1960, Tolkien himself wrote that "The Dead Marshes [just north of Mordor] and the approaches to the Morannon [an entrance to Mordor] owe something to northern France after the Battle of the Somme".[21]

Evil

The critic Lykke Guanio-Uluru sees Mordor as specifically evil, marked by Sauron: a land that is "dying, struggling for life, though not yet dead",

Lothlorien, and marked by negative adjectives like "harsh, twisted, bitter, struggling, low, coarse, withered, tangled, stabbing, sullen, shrivelled, grating, rattling, sad".[23]

Allusions in other works

In film

Barad-dûr, all rendered using digital technology[24]

Mordor features in all three films of

Council of Elrond that "one does not simply walk into Mordor".[25] In the second, Andy Serkis's digital Gollum guides Frodo and Sam to the Black Gate.[26] In the final film, Frodo and Sam struggle across the shattered volcanic plain of Gorgoroth to Mount Doom,[24] dressed as orcs, under the red glare of the volcano and the watchful Eye of Sauron from an exaggeratedly Gothic Barad-dûr,[27] while the Army of the West gathers for the final battle in front of the Black Gate and witnesses the cataclysmic destruction of everything Sauron had built when the Ring is destroyed.[24]

For Jackson's film trilogy,

big-ature") of Barad-dûr.[28] Jackson's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King movie (2003) showed Barad-dûr as clearly visible from the Black Gate of Mordor, which is not the case in the book. Jackson portrayed Barad-dûr, like the other enemy fortresses of Isengard, Minas Morgul and the Black Gate, in "an exaggerated Gothic fashion" with a black metallic appearance.[29]
In The Lord of the Rings, the Eye was within the "Window of the Eye" in the topmost tower, whereas in Jackson's film trilogy the Eye appeared between two horn-like spires that curved upwards from the tower top.

In Womack's view the 2019 biopic Tolkien explicitly connects Mordor to trench warfare: "riders become bloody knights; smoke billows and turns into the form of dark kings."[19]

In other media

The third verse of Led Zeppelin's 1969 song "Ramble On" by Jimmy Page features a "bizarre" Middle-earth including a Mordor where one can meet beautiful women: "Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor / I met a girl so fair / But Gollum, and the evil one crept up / And slipped away with her".[30][31]

In the city of Warsaw, Poland, an area in the south-western district of Mokotów, in the neighbourhoods of Służewiec and Ksawerów, is commonly known as Mordor. There are located two small streets named in reference Tolkien works, J. R. R. Tolkiena Street, and Gandalfa Street.[32]

The 2014

third-person open world action-adventure video game set in Middle-earth.[33]

In 2015 NASA published photographs taken as the New Horizons space probe passed within 7,000 miles (11,000 km) of Pluto. A photo of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, shows a large dark area near its north pole. The dark area has been unofficially called Mordor Macula.[34]

See also

Notes

  1. Sea of Rhûn exists already in the First Age.[T 21]

References

Primary

  1. ^ Tolkien 1955, ch. 10, "The Black Gate Opens": "A single banner, black but bearing on it in red the Evil Eye"
  2. ^ Tolkien 1954, book 4, ch. 7 "Journey to the Cross-Roads"
  3. ^ a b Tolkien 1955, Map of Rohan, Gondor, and Mordor
  4. ^ a b c Tolkien 1954, book 4, ch. 3 "The Black Gate is Closed"
  5. ^ Tolkien 1954, book 4, ch. 8 "The Stairs of Cirith Ungol"
  6. ^ a b Tolkien 1955, book 6, ch. 2 "The Land of Shadow"
  7. ^ Tolkien 1954, book 4, ch. 9 "Shelob's Lair"
  8. ^ Tolkien 1955, book 6, ch. 1 "The Tower of Cirith Ungol"
  9. ^ Tolkien 1955, book 6, ch. 2 "The Land of Shadow"
  10. ^ a b c Tolkien 1955, book 6, ch. 4 "The Field of Cormallen"
  11. ^ a b Tolkien 1955, book 6, ch. 5 "The Steward and the King"
  12. ^ Tolkien 1954a, Book 1, ch. 2 "The Shadow of the Past"
  13. ISBN 978-0875483030
    .
  14. ^ Tolkien 1955, Appendix F
  15. ^ Tolkien 1955, Index: III "Persons, Places, and Things"
  16. ^ Tolkien 1955, "The Last Debate"
  17. ^ a b Tolkien 1954a, Book 2, ch. 10 "The Breaking of the Fellowship"
  18. ^ Tolkien 1979, Plate 30: Orodruin and Barad-dûr
  19. ^ Tolkien 1954, "The Road to Isengard"
  20. ^ a b c d e Tolkien 1955, "Mount Doom"
  21. ^ Tolkien 1996, p. 373, note 13
  22. ^ a b c d e Tolkien 1977, "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age"
  23. Akallabêth
  24. ^ Tolkien 1955, Appendix F, "The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age"
  25. ^ Carpenter 2023, #297 to Mr. Rang, draft, August 1967
  26. ^ Carpenter 2023, #25 to the editor of The Observer, signed "Habit", published 16 January 1938

Secondary

  1. ISBN 978-0-261-10277-4
    .
  2. ^ Wetwang is a place in Yorkshire; its name means "wet field", which is also the meaning of Nindalf in the elvish language Sindarin. Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull (eds), The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, p. 779
  3. ^ a b c Plotz, Dick (1968). "Many Meetings with Tolkien: An Edited Transcript of Remarks at the December 1966 TSA Meeting". Niekas (19): 40. Retrieved 8 September 2021.
  4. doi:10.1353/tks.2004.0013
    .
  5. ^ International Astronomical Union. "Categories for Naming Features on Planets and Satellites". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. Accessed 14 Nov 2012.
  6. ^ International Astronomical Union. "Doom Mons". Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. Accessed 14 Nov 2012.
  7. ^ "Amon Amarth". Discogs. Retrieved 28 March 2020.
  8. ^ "Orodruin". Metal Archives. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
  9. Houghton Mifflin
    (2002).
  10. ^ Hibberd, James (29 September 2022). "'The Rings of Power' Showrunners — and a Geologist — Explain That Mount Doom Surprise". Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2 October 2022.
  11. ISBN 0905220102
    .
  12. ISBN 978-0345275479
    .
  13. ^ Shippey 2005, p. 227
  14. ISBN 0-395-53516-6
    .
  15. ^ McNelis 2006.
  16. ^
    ISBN 978-91-973500-4-4
    .
  17. ^
    ISBN 978-1403946713
    .
  18. ^ a b Jeffries, Stuart (19 September 2014). "Mordor, he wrote: how the Black Country inspired Tolkien's badlands". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  19. ^ a b Womack, Philip (4 May 2019). "Why is Tolkien's work so successful, and why did the new film leave out his Christianity?". The Independent. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  20. ^
    ISBN 978-1-4438-3542-8
    .
  21. ^ a b c Ciabattari, Jane (20 November 2014). "Hobbits and hippies: Tolkien and the counterculture". BBC. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  22. ^ Loconte, Joseph (30 June 2016). "How J.R.R. Tolkien Found Mordor on the Western Front". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  23. ^
    ISBN 978-1-137-46969-4
    .
  24. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7864-8473-7
    .
  25. ^ Warner, Sam (1 June 2020). "'Lord of the Rings' director reveals Sean Bean was reading iconic Mordor speech on camera". NME. Retrieved 6 July 2020.
  26. New York magazine
    . February 2012. Retrieved 6 July 2020.
  27. ISBN 978-9-04201-682-8
    .
  28. ISBN 978-9042020627
    .
  29. ISBN 978-9-04201-682-8
    .
  30. ISBN 978-0-19-065844-1
    .
  31. ^ Greene, Andy (13 December 2012). "Ramble On: Rockers Who Love 'The Lord of the Rings' | A look back at Middle Earth in rock & roll, from Led Zeppelin to Rush and beyond". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 19 August 2020.
  32. ^ Martyna Konieczek (8 January 2023). "Ulice Tolkiena i Gandalfa powstały w Warszawie. Autor "Władcy pierścieni" i bohater jego powieści zostali patronami ulic w Mordorze". warszawa.naszemiasto.pl (in Polish).
  33. ^ Plante, Chris (1 October 2014). "'Shadow of Mordor' is morally repulsive and I can't stop playing it". The Verge. Archived from the original on 8 August 2015. Retrieved 29 July 2015.
  34. ^ Talbert, Tricia (1 October 2015). "Pluto's Big Moon Charon Reveals a Colorful and Violent History". NASA. Retrieved 19 August 2020. Charon's color palette is not as diverse as Pluto's; most striking is the reddish north (top) polar region, informally named Mordor Macula.

Sources

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