Places in Middle-earth
Snowbourn
Type: Rivers & Lakes
Region: Rohan
Location: A river arising near the Starkhorn peak in the White Mountains and flowing north through Harrowdale, passing by Edoras, and then east to its junction with the Entwash.
Description:
[A] leaping stream had run down from the high pass...; and now through a stony gate it flowed out and passed into a wider vale. The Riders followed it, and suddenly Harrowdale lay before them, loud with the noise of waters in the evening. There the white Snowbourn, joined by the lesser stream, went rushing, fuming on the stones, down to Edoras and the green hills and the plains. Away to the right at the head of the great dale the mighty Starkhorn loomed up above its vast buttresses swathed in cloud;... its jagged peak [was] clothed in everlasting snow....
The course of the Snowbourn, from Starkhorn peak to the Entwash.
The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 3, The Muster of Rohan
In the deepening dusk they came down into [Harrowdale]. Here the Snowbourn flowed near to the western walls of the dale, and soon the path led them to a ford where the shallow waters murmured loudly on the stones. The ford was guarded.
The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 3, The Muster of Rohan
On down the grey road they went beside the Snowbourn rushing on its stones; through the hamlets of Underharrow and Upbourn....
The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 3, The Muster of Rohan
The morning was bright..., when the travellers came to the stream. It ran down swiftly into the plain, and beyond the feet of the hills turned across their path in a wide bend, flowing away east to feed the Entwash far off.... [In] the wet meads and along the grassy borders of the stream grew many willow-trees..... Over the stream there was a ford between low banks much trampled by the passage of horses. The travellers passed over and came upon a wide rutted track leading towards the uplands....
Following the winding way up the green shoulders of the hills, they came... to the wide wind-swept walls and the gates of Edoras.
The Two Towers, LoTR Book 3, Ch 6, The King of the Golden Hall
On into the shadow they rode. In the willow-thickets where Snowbourn flowed into Entwash, twelve leagues 1 east of Edoras, they camped that night.
The Return of the King, LoTR Book 5, Ch 5, The Ride of the Rohirrim
Notes
1 A league is approximately three miles.
Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch 1, The Disaster of the Gladden Fields: Appendix, Númenórean Linear Measures
Contributors:
Lyllyn 14Sep03
Elena Tiriel 14Mar11
