Forests of Middle Earth

[The Bear Hawk]

This is not comprehensive so feel free to add to it.


Drúadan Forest


Fangorn Forest


Mirkwood


Old Forest

[The Bear Hawk]

From Wikipedia

The Forest of Fangorn was at the south-eastern end of the Misty Mountains near the Gap of Rohan. The mountains formed the western border of Fangorn. At the end of the mountain range stood Saruman's stronghold of Isengard near the southwestern corner of the forest. To the east and south of Fangorn was the land of Rohan, and Lothlórien lay to the north and slightly east. Fangorn Forest stretched for many miles and held many paths.

Two significant rivers ran through the forest. To the north the Limlight flowed from the woods and then formed the northern border of Rohan. The river then merged into the larger Arduin. In the south, the Entwash spread deep into the forest arriving from Methedras, a mountainous region located near the Misty Mountains. The river then flowed through Rohan to the Arduin River. The valley of Derndingle was located to the south-west. There was a path where the Entwash passed into a region called Wellinghall with the home of Treebeard, the shepherd of the forest.

Fangorn Forest was said to be humid, and trunks and branches of many kinds of tree grew thick allowing little light to penetrate. Huorns also lived deep within in the forest, like Ents but more discreet. The Ents and Huorns drank from the river Entwash, and from it the Ents brewed their legendary drink, the Ent-draughts.

[The Bear Hawk]

From Wikipedia

Mirkwood is a name used for a great dark fictional forest in novels by Sir Walter Scott and William Morris in the 19th century, and by J. R. R. Tolkien in the 20th century. The critic Tom Shippey explains that the name evoked the excitement of the wildness of Europe's ancient North.

At least two distinct Middle-earth forests are named Mirkwood in Tolkien's legendarium. One is in the First Age, when the highlands of Dorthonion north of Beleriand became known as Mirkwood after falling under Morgoth's control. The more famous Mirkwood was in Wilderland, east of the river Arduin. It had acquired the name Mirkwood after it fell under the influence of the Necromancer; before that it had been known as Greenwood the Great. This Mirkwood features significantly in The Hobbit and in the film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

The term Mirkwood was used by Sir Walter Scott in his 1814 novel Waverley, and then by William Morris in his 1889 fantasy novel The House of the Wolfings, influenced by the forest Myrkviðr of Norse mythology. Forests play a major role in the invented history of Tolkien's Middle-earth and are important in the heroic quests of his characters. The forest device is used as a mysterious transition from one part of the story to another.

[The Bear Hawk]

From Wikipedia

In J. R. R. Tolkien’s fictional universe of Middle-earth, the Old Forest was a daunting and ancient woodland just beyond the eastern borders of the Shire. Its first and main appearance in print was in The Fellowship of the Ring, especially in the eponymous chapter VI, "The Old Forest".

The Old Forest lay near the centre of Eriador, a large region of north-west Middle-earth. It was one of the few survivors of the primordial forests which had covered much of Eriador before the Second Age. Indeed, it had once been but the northern edge of one immense forest which reached all the way to Fangorn forest, hundreds of miles to the south-east.

The vicinity of the Old Forest was the domain of three nature-spirits: Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, and Old Man Willow. The powers of these beings doubtless contributed to its survival when other forests were destroyed.

Old Man Willow, along with the Barrow-wight and Tom Bombadil himself, first appeared in Tolkien's narrative poem The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, where Old Man Willow trapped Bombadil himself briefly. Willow is portrayed as a sentient and evil willow tree with various powers including hypnosis and the ability to move his roots and trunk. Some characters of the story speculate that he may have been related to the Ents, or possibly the Huorns. However, unlike Ents or Huorns, he is portrayed more like a tree, with roots in the ground, and without the ability to move from place to place. Tom Bombadil had power over Old Man Willow, and checked the evil as much as he could, or was willing.

According to Tom Bombadil, at the dawn of time, long before even the Awakening of the Elves, trees were the only inhabitants of vast stretches of the world. Because the Elves awoke far in the East, it was still a considerable time before any other beings spread into the vast primeval forests of western Middle-earth. A handful of trees survived from this time until the present day, who are angered at the encroachment of Elves and Men and their dominion over the earth; trees who bitterly remember a time long ago when they were as Lords of vast regions of the world. Bombadil relates that of the corrupted trees of the Old Forest, "none were more dangerous than the Great Willow; his heart was rotten, but his strength was green; and he was cunning, and a master of winds, and his song and thought ran through the woods on both sides of the river. His grey thirsty spirit drew power out of the earth and spread like fine root-threads in the ground, and invisible twig-fingers in the air, till it had under its dominion nearly all the trees of the Forest from the Hedge to the Downs."

In the First Age, Tom Bombadil "was here before the river and the trees". In the Spring of Arda, plants emerge, possibly including Old Man Willow. In the Years of the Trees, Elves skirted the forest on their primeval migration to Beleriand and the West; they were observed by Bombadil. Dwarves constructed the Great East Road around the north of the forest.

By the time Sauron had been defeated and driven from Eriador, most of its old forests had already been destroyed, leaving remnants such as the Old Forest. (Other vestiges included Woody End in the Shire, Chetwood in Bree-land, and Eryn Vorn in Minhiriath.) The Old Forest was now "hostile to two legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries."

[The Bear Hawk]

Continued from Wikipedia

The Old Forest was about 1,000 square miles in area (some 2,600 km²). It was bordered on the east by the Barrow-downs, a hilly area dotted with ancient burial mounds. In the north it reached towards the Great East Road, and in the west and south it approached the Brandywine river. The Withywindle, a tributary of the Brandywine, ran through the heart of the forest, which covered most of the Withywindle's drainage basin.

This was also a 'catchment area' in another sense. The landscape, trees and bushes were aligned so that if any strangers attempted to traverse the forest, then they were funnelled towards the Withywindle, and into the clutches of Old Man Willow in particular. The valley of the Withywindle within the Old Forest was known as the Dingle.

The Old Forest was a type of woodland nowadays described as temperate broadleaf and mixed forest. The west and south of the forest was dominated by "oaks and ashes and other strange trees", which were generally replaced by pines and firs in the north. Beeches and alders were found here and there in the forest, and willows were dominant along the Withywindle.

Many of the trees were covered "with moss and slimy, shaggy growths". The understorey was congested with bushes and other undergrowth, including brambles. A variety of plants grew in the forest's occasional glades: grass, hemlocks, wood-parsley, fire-weed, nettles and thistles.

[The Bear Hawk]

Continued from Wikipedia

In one of his letters, Tolkien explained that "the Old Forest was hostile to two-legged creatures because of the memory of many injuries." Among these two-legged creatures were Hobbits.

When Gorhendad Oldbuck and his clan of Hobbits settled Buckland, they began to encroach upon the Old Forest, thus re-awakening its hostility to two-legged creatures that had first been aroused back in the Second Age. The settlers soon found themselves under threat from the forest. They felt that the trees of the Old Forest were in some manner 'awake', and were hostile. The trees swayed when there was no wind and whispered at night, and they daunted intruding hobbits by tripping them, dropping branches, and driving them deeper into the forest. Deep within the Old Forest was the Withywindle Valley, which was the root of all the terrors of the forest; it could be a dark, evil and malevolent place.

The Bucklanders therefore planted and maintained a great Hedge (also known as the High Hay) all the way along Buckland's eastern border, which ran right along the edge of the forest. This had occurred "many generations" before the War of the Ring.

However at length (but still "long ago" before the War of the Ring), the Bucklanders found that the Hedge was under "attack" by the forest. Trees began to plant themselves against the Hedge and lean over it. To counter this attack, the hobbits cleared a narrow strip of land on the outside of the Hedge, felling and burning many trees. They also cleared a space some way inside the forest; this later became known as the Bonfire Glade.

The ruling family of Buckland, the Brandybucks (heirs of Gorhendad Oldbuck), owned a private gate in the Hedge, through which they occasionally dared the threshold of the Old Forest. Some of these visits seem to have been casual jaunts ("when the fit takes them"), to satisfy the Brandybucks' inclinations as Fallohides, who were "lovers of trees and of woodlands." But other Brandybuck expeditions must have been more practical, just plain hobbit-sense, to maintain the cleared strip. It was still in existence during the War of the Ring. At least one non-Brandybuck hobbit was reputed to visit the Old Forest: namely Farmer Maggot.

The heir of the Brandybucks during the War of the Ring was Merry Brandybuck: a member of the Fellowship of the Ring. He had been into the Old Forest "several times", and he had a key to the gate. On Merry's advice, Frodo Baggins (the bearer of the One Ring) decided to attempt a traversal of the dreadful forest in order to evade the pursuit of Black Riders: the forest was considered the lesser of two evils.

[The Bear Hawk]

Continued from Wikipedia

Old Man Willow is a malign tree-spirit of great age in Tom Bombadil's Old Forest, appearing physically as a large willow tree beside the River Withywindle, but spreading his influence throughout the forest. He casts a spell on the hobbits, trapping two of them; they are rescued by Tom Bombadil. Bombadil explains that they tree was wholly evil, and had grown to control most of the Old Forest. Tolkien made a drawing of Old Man Willow, from an unpollarded tree by the river in Oxford, to support his writing. The evil tree has puzzled critics, as it does not fit with Tolkien's image as an environmentalist "tree-hugger"; others have noted that trees too are seen by Christians as affected by the Biblical Fall of Man

[hengest]

The Old Forest is a work of genius in my opinion. There is no other single thing that draws the reader into the magic of the story so much. If I ever ran or even wrote somrthing that was that engaging, I would be most pleased.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 25, 2021 1:38:05 GMT -5 hengest said:

The Old Forest is a work of genius in my opinion. There is no other single thing that draws the reader into the magic of the story so much. If I ever ran or even wrote somrthing that was that engaging, I would be most pleased.

I agree, it was genius, I loved that part of the story. Somehow I missed these threads and kudos to The Bear Hawk!