Mordor

Mordor was roughly rectangular in shape, with the longer sides on the north and south. Three sides were defended by mountain ranges: the Ered Lithui ("Ash Mountains") on the north, and the Ephel Dúath on the west and south. The lengths of these ranges are estimated to be 498 miles, 283 miles and 501 miles respectively,[1] which gives Mordor's area as roughly 140,000 square miles (362,600 km²).

To the west lay the narrow land of Ithilien, a province of Gondor; to the northwest, the Dead Marshes and Dagorlad; to the north, Wilderland; to the northeast and east, Rhûn; to the southeast, Khand; and to the south, Harad.

In the northwest, the pass of Cirith Gorgor led into the enclosed plain of Udûn. Sauron built the Black Gate of Mordor (the Morannon) across the pass, adding to earlier fortifications: the Towers of the Teeth, guard towers which had been built by Gondor to keep a watch on this entrance. The passage through the inner side of Udûn into the interior of Mordor was guarded by another gate, the Isenmouthe. Outside the Morannon lay the Dagorlad or Battle Plain, and the Dead Marshes.

The Ephel Dúath ("Fence of Shadow") defended Mordor on the west and south. The main pass was guarded by Minas Morgul, a city built by Gondor as Minas Ithil. The fortress Durthang lay in the northern Ephel Dúath above Udûn. A higher, more difficult pass, Cirith Ungol, lay just to the north of the Morgul pass. Its top was guarded by a tower, built by Gondor. The route traversed Torech Ungol, the lair of the giant spider Shelob.

Inside the Ephel Dúath ran a lower parallel ridge, the Morgai, separated by a narrow valley, a "dying land not yet dead" with "low scrubby trees", "coarse grey grass-tussocks", "withered mosses", "great writhing, tangled brambles",[lower-alpha 1] and thickets of briars with long, stabbing thorns.[3]

The interior of Mordor was composed of three large regions. The core of Sauron's realm was in the northwest: the arid plateau of Gorgoroth, with the active volcano Mount Doom located in the middle. Sauron's main fortress Barad-dûr was on the north side of Gorgoroth, at the end of a spur of the Ash Mountains. Gorgoroth was volcanic and inhospitable to life, but home to Mordor's mines, forges, and garrisons. Núrn, the southern part of Mordor, was less arid and more fertile; Sauron's slaves farmed this region to support his armies, and streams fed the salt Sea of Núrnen. To the east of Gorgoroth lay the dry plain of Lithlad.

In The Atlas of Middle-earth, Karen Wynn Fonstad assumed that the lands of Mordor, Khand, and Rhûn lay where the inland Sea of Helcar had been, and that the Sea of Rhûn and Sea of Núrnen were its remnants. This was based on a First Age world-map drawn by Tolkien in the Ambarkanta, where the Inland Sea of Helcar occupied a large area of Middle-earth between the Ered Luin and Orocarni, its western end being close to the head of the Great Gulf (later the Mouths of Anduin).[4] The atlas was however published before The Peoples of Middle-earth, in which the Sea of Rhûn and Mordor exist already in the First Age.

Sauron settled in Mordor in the Second Age of Middle-earth, and it remained the pivot of his evil contemplations. He built his great stronghold Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower, near the volcano Mount Doom (Orodruin), and became known as the Dark Lord of Mordor. He discovered how the Rings of Power were made from the Elves of Eregion in Eriador, and secretly forged the One Ring in Orodruin. He then set about conquering Middle-earth, launching an attack upon the Elves of Eregion, but was repelled by the Men of Númenor.

Over a thousand years later, the Númenóreans under Ar-Pharazôn sailed to Middle-earth to challenge Sauron's claim to be "King of Men". Sauron let them capture him and take him back to Númenor, where he caused its destruction. He at once returned to Mordor as a spirit and resumed his rule.

Sauron's rule was interrupted again when his efforts to overthrow the surviving Men of Númenor and the Elves failed. The army of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men advanced on Mordor; in a great battle on the Dagorlad ("Battle Plain"), Sauron's forces were destroyed and the Black Gate was stormed. Barad-dûr was then besieged; after seven years, Sauron broke out and was defeated on the slopes of Orodruin. Sauron fled into Rhûn, and Barad-dûr was levelled. Gondor built fortresses at the entrances to Mordor to prevent his return, maintaining the "Watchful Peace" for over a thousand years. The Great Plague in Gondor caused the fortifications guarding Mordor to be abandoned, and Mordor again filled with evil things. The Ringwraiths took advantage of Gondor's defeat to re-enter Mordor, conquered Minas Ithil, and took over the fortresses. At the time of Bilbo Baggins's quest in The Hobbit, Sauron returned into Mordor from Dol Guldur, feigning defeat, but readying for war.

In the War of the Ring, Sauron attempted to storm Minas Tirith, the capital of Gondor, but was defeated by Gondor and Rohan in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. The victors sent an army to the Black Gate to distract Sauron from the Ring. During the Battle of the Morannon, the One Ring was destroyed in Mount Doom, along with Sauron's power, Barad-dur, and the morale of his armies. This ultimate defeat of Sauron ended the Third Age. Gorgoroth, became empty as its Orcs fled or were killed. The land of Núrn was given to Sauron's freed slaves.

Tolkien's descriptions of the Dead Marshes and the grim Morgai have been compared to the Beowulf poet's account of Grendel's dangerous moors.[6] 1908 illustration by J. R. Skelton

Tolkien, a scholar of Old English, was an expert on Beowulf, calling it one of his "most valued sources" for Middle-earth.[T 4] The medievalists Stuart D. Lee and Elizabeth Solopova compare Tolkien's account of Mordor and the neighbouring landscapes to the monster Grendel's wilderness in Beowulf.[6] In particular, they compare Frodo and Sam's crossing of the Dead Marshes and what Gollum called its "tricksy lights", with Beowulf's "fire on the water"; and their traversal of the parched Morgai, full of rocks and vicious thorns, with Grendel's dangerous moors.[6] Lee and Solopova write that the Beowulf description both emphasises the coming horror, "play[ing] on ideas of desolation, wintry landscapes and the supernatural",[6] and like Tolkien giving realistic descriptions of nature. At the same time, they write, both the Beowulf poet and Tolkien incorporate "an element of fantasy": Grendel's moor is both full of water and a "craggy headland .. inhabited by supernatural evil",[6] while Tolkien fills the landscapes in and around Mordor with "similar ambiguity and sense of unease".[6]

Mines, ironworks, smoke, and spoil heaps: the Black Country, near Tolkien's childhood home, has been suggested as an influence on his vision of Mordor.[7]

An art exhibition entitled "The Making of Mordor" at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery (2014) claims that the steelworks and blast furnaces of the West Midlands inspired Tolkien's vision of, and his name Mordor. This industrialized area has long been known as "the Black Country".[7] Philip Womack, writing in The Independent, likens Tolkien's move from rural Warwickshire to urban Birmingham as "exile from a rural idyll to Mordor-like forges and fires",[8] The critic Chris Baratta notes the contrasting environments of the well-tended leafy Shire, the home of the hobbits, and "the industrial wastelands of Isengard and Mordor."[9] Baratta comments that Tolkien clearly intended the reader to "identify with some of the problems of environmental destruction, rampant industrial invasion, and the corrupting and damaging effects these have on mankind."[9]

Tolkien stated that his trench warfare experience with his regiment, the Lancashire Fusiliers, on the Western Front influenced his account of the landscape around Mordor.[10]

The New York Times on the other hand related the grim land of Mordor to Tolkien's personal experience in the trenches of the Western Front in the First World War.[11] Jane Ciabattari, writing on the BBC culture website, calls the hobbits' struggle to take the ring to Mordor "a cracked mirror reflection of the young soldiers caught in the blasted landscape and slaughter of trench warfare on the Western Front."[10] In Womack's view the 2019 biopic Tolkien explicitly connects Mordor to trench warfare: "riders become bloody knights; smoke billows and turns into the form of dark kings."[8] In one of his letters in 1960, Tolkien himself wrote that "The Dead Marshes [just north of Mordor] and the approaches to the Morannon [an entrance to Mordor] owe something to northern France after the Battle of the Somme".[10]

Tolkien was reported in the science fiction fanzine Niekas to have "caught a glimpse of Mount Doom"[12] when sailing past the volcano of Stromboli off Sicily.[13][12]

The critic Lykke Guanio-Uluru sees Mordor as specifically evil, marked by Sauron: a land that is "dying, struggling for life, though not yet dead",[14] evil being able to disfigure life but not to destroy it completely. It is contrasted, writes Guanio-Uluru, with the beauty of Lothlorien, and marked by negative adjectives like "harsh, twisted, bitter, struggling, low, coarse, withered, tangled, stabbing, sullen, shrivelled, grating, rattling, sad".[14]

This list identifies each item's location in Tolkien's writings.