Places in Middle-earth
Brown Lands, The
Type: Mountains, Hills, Promontories
Region: Other Middle-earth
Location: A hilly region on the east side of the Anduin, starting near where the River Limlight joins the Anduin some way south of Lórien. It is roughly midway between Lórien and the Argonath. The Brown Lands are a continuation of The Wold which is on the west side of the Anduin.
Description: On the eastern bank to their left they saw long formless slopes stretching up and away toward the sky; brown and withered they looked, as if fire had passed over them, leaving no living blade of green: an unfriendly waste without even a broken tree or a bold stone to relieve the emptiness. They had come to the Brown Lands that lay, vast and desolate, between Southern Mirkwood and the hills of the Emyn Muil. What pestilence or war or evil deed of the Enemy had so blasted all that region even Aragorn could not tell.
The Brown Lands rose into bleak wolds, over which flowed a chill air from the East. On the other side the meads had become rolling downs of withered grass amidst a land of fen and tussock.
FotR, Book II, Ch 9, The Great River
Then when the Darkness came in the North, the Entwives crossed the Great River, and made new gardens, and tilled new fields, and we saw them more seldom. After the Darkness was overthrown the land of the Entwives blossomed richly, and their fields were full of corn.
Many men learned the crafts of the Entwives and honoured them greatly; but we were only a legend to them, a secret in the heart of the forest. Yet here we still are, while all the gardens of the Entwives are wasted: Men call them the Brown Lands now.
TTT, Book III, Ch 4, Treebeard
Contributors: Lyllyn 6.16.03
