Dunland

In the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien, Dunland was a place in north-west Middle-earth, the land of the Men called Dunlendings. These Men were tall, somewhat swarthy and dark-haired, and were descended from the same ancient stock as the House of Haleth, making them distantly related to the Dúnedain.

"Dunland" and "Dunlendings" are names given by the Rohirrim after these people, because of their being swarthy and dark-haired (Appendix F to the Lord of the Rings). The Old English (which represents Rohirric in the novel) word "dunn" means "brown".

Origins

The ancestors of the Dunlendings are the House of Haleth or the Haladin, the second of the Three Houses of the Edain. They were the descendants of Haldad, but the house was named after Haldad's daughter Haleth, who led her people from East Beleriand to Brethil. They were a reclusive folk, dark-haired but smaller in stature than the Bëorians or the Marachians. They kept separate from the other Men. Their language was different from the ones that used by the other Edain. After the fall of Beleriand, the survivors went to Númenor but those who didn't cross the Ered Luin settled upon either side of the Gwathló, "The River of Shadow", or in the Ered Nimrais. In the First Age, the Drúedain lived among them and shared close relationship, more than with any other race of men. In the early Second Age, on first contact with the more advanced Númenóreans, the ancestors of the Dunlendings were described as fairly numerous and warlike, but they were forest dwellers, scattered communities without central leadership ("History of Galadriel & Celeborn", "Unfinished Tales").

The Númenóreans found the speech of these "Gwathuirim" very different from their own language Adûnaic, but in fact the Númenóreans failed to recognize the Forest-folk of Minhiriath as their distant cousins and confused them with what they termed 'Men of the Shadow', meaning those descended from Morgoth's allies; for as has been noted the native language of the folk of Haleth was not related to the language of the Folks of Hador and Bëor ("Of Dwarves and Men", PoMe XII).

Together with the Númenóreans' great hunger for timber (UT), this estrangement ultimately meant that the Númenóreans treated the forest dwellers as foes (UT), and after much war and bloodshed, during which Sauron used these haters of Númenor as spies and guides for his raiders (UT), the surviving Forest-folk from south of the Gwathló took refuge in the eastern mountains where afterwards was Dunland (UT), becoming a folk of herd and hill.

Early history

At the end of the Second Age, these people (and their land) had become known to both Dúnedain and Eldar as "Enedwaith", meaning both 'Middle-folk' and 'Middle-land', as they lay between the newly founded Númenórean successor states of Gondor and Arnor. They were largely ignored despite the fact that a busy Númenórean city — Tharbad — arose nearby, and these Hillfolk kept their hatred of the descendants of Númenor and remained an isolated people, and as a result never learnt Westron, which developed from Adûnaic as the 'lingua franca' of Middle-earth in the Third Age. Despite this, these hill-folk were able to slowly colonize Calenardhon, the nearby and now sparsely populated province of Gondor, as the Dúnedain slowly dwindled in numbers and power, and they had already reclaimed all the land between the Adorn and Isen when Gondor decided to give Calenardhon to the numerous people of Éothéod in T.A. 2510.

Dunland

The newcomers, who renamed themselves Rohirrim, named the foot-hills of their western neighbours 'Dunland', the Hill Country, and its inhabitants 'Dunlendings'. For their part, the Dunlendings felt threatened by these "Forgoil" "Strawheads" (a demeaning reference to blond hair), although open war was not waged until the reign of Helm Hammerhand (T.A. 2741–2759). Freca, a lord of mixed Rohirric/Dunlending blood, tried to obtain the throne of Rohan for himself by petitioning for the marriage of his son Wulf to the daughter of Helm. Freca was consequently killed by Helm after insulting him upon being refused, and Freca's son Wulf led the Dunlendings into open war with Rohan. They unsuccessfully besieged the Hornburg during the Long Winter of T.A. 2758–2759, although Wulf captured Edoras, killing Helm's son and heir. Helm's nephew Fréalaf recaptured Edoras at the end of the Long Winter and killed Wulf personally, and the Dunlendings were then driven out of Rohan.

Guarding the Gap of Rohan was the fortress of Isengard, where a hereditary guard watched for Gondor. However, by the time of the Steward of Gondor Beren, these guards had mixed with Dunlendings, and it had become hostile to Gondor. To remedy this situation, Beren gave Saruman the keys to Orthanc to guard Isengard for Gondor.

Saruman used the historical hostility against outlanders to tempt the Dunlendings into supporting him during the War of the Ring.

After the battle at Helm's Deep, the Rohirrim allowed the surviving Dunlendings to return to their homes. The Rohirrim required that all hostilities cease and that the Dunlendings again retreat behind the Isen.