Henneth Annun Reseach Center

Places in Middle-earth

Gladden Fields

Type: Forests, Fields, Plains

Region: Rhovanion/Misty Mtns

Meaning: Sword grass; any plant with sword-shaped leaves, especially the European Iris fœtidissima. From Glaædene, an Anglo-Saxon word

Other Names Loeg Ningloron, meaning Pools of the Golden Water-flowers

Location: Along the shore where the Gladden river empties into the Anduin. This is about midway between the Old Forest Road in the north and Lórien in the south.

Description: The Gladden Fields (Loeg Ningloron). In the Elder Days, when the Silvan Elves first settled there, they were a lake formed in a deep depression into which the Anduin poured from the North down the swiftest part of its course, a long descent of some seventy miles, and there mingled with the torrent of the Gladden River (Sîr Ninglor) hastening from the Mountains. The lake had been wider west of Anduin, for the eastern side of the valley was steeper; but on the east it probably reached as far as the feet of the long slopes down from the Forest (then still wooded), its reedy borders being marked by the gentler slope, just below the path that Isildur was following. The lake had become a great marsh, through which the river wandered in a wilderness of islets, and wide beds of reed and rush, and armies of yellow iris that grew taller than a man and gave their name to all the region and to the river from the Mountains about whose lower course they grew most thickly. But the marsh had receded to the east, and from the foot of the lower slopes there were now wide flats, grown with grass and small rushes on which men would walk.
Unfinished Tales, Part 3, Ch I, The Disaster of the Gladden Fields, Note 13

Contributors: Lyllyn 7.11.03

Related Library Entries

Places Search

   

Full Text Search


Character Bios

Things

No related things

Go to Things