Places in Middle-earth
Old Forest Road, The
Type: Roads, Lanes, Ways
Region: Rhovanion/Misty Mtns
Meaning:
Men-i-Naugrim: 'Way of the Dwarves'
Other Names
The Forest Road
Men-i-Naugrim
The Dwarf-road (also used for a First Age road in East Beleriand)
The Great Dwarf Road (mentioned only in HoME vol 12)
Location: The ancient road descending from the Pass of Imladris, crossing Anduin at the Old Ford, and traversing Mirkwood; built by Dwarves in the First or Second Age, the eastern parts were ruined by the end of the Third Age; the Great East-West Road is its continuation through the regions west of the Misty Mountains.
Description:
Table of Contents:Description
History
Description
By his advice they [Thorin Oakenshield's company] were no longer making for the main forest-road to the south of his land. Had they followed the pass, their path would have led them down the stream from the mountains that joined the great river miles south of the Carrock. At that point there was a deep ford ... and beyond that a track led to the skirts of the wood and to the entrance of the old forest road.
But Beorn had warned them that that way was now often used by the goblins, while the forest-road itself, he had heard, was overgrown and disused at the eastern end and led to impassable marshes where the paths had long been lost.
The Hobbit, Ch 7, Queer Lodgings
At the end of the Third Age, the Old Forest Road enters the western edge of Mirkwood south of Rhosgobel and the Mountains of Mirkwood, and ends in marshland where the Celduin (River Running) emerges from Mirkwood's eastern edge.
"Wilderland", The Atlas of Middle-Earth, Revised Edition, by Karen Wynn Fonstad, Section 4, Regional Maps
... though the power of Dol Guldur was supposed to come to an end at the Old Forest Road, its spies were many in the wood.
Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch 4, The Hunt for the Ring: Other Versions of the Story
History
It was a brief period in ... the Second Age, yet for many lives of Men the Longbeards controlled the Ered Mithrin, Erebor, and the Iron Hills, and all the east side of the Misty Mountains as far as the confines of Lórien; while the Men of the North dwelt in all the adjacent lands as far south as the Great Dwarf Road that cut through the Forest (the Old Forest Road was its ruinous remains in the Third Age) and then went North-east to the Iron Hills.
The Peoples of Middle-Earth, HoME Vol 12, Part 2, Ch 10, Of Dwarves and Men: Notes, Note 30
Men-i-Naugrim, the Dwarf Road, is the Old Forest Road described in The Hobbit, Chapter 7 [see above]. In the earlier draft of this section ... there is a note referring to "the ancient Forest Road that led down from the Pass of Imladris and crossed Anduin by a bridge (that had been enlarged and strengthened for the passage of the armies of the [Last] Alliance), and so over the eastern valley into the Greenwood..." In The Hobbit the Forest Road traversed the great river by the Old Ford, and there is no mention of there having once been a bridge at the crossing.
Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch 1, The Disaster of the Gladden Fields: Notes, Note 14
Contributors: Elena Tiriel 17Jan04, 31May04 28Sep04
