Middle-earth Monday 44: Methedras

Welcome back to everyone’s favorite www.isleyunruh.com Monday feature! Middle-earth being the place of enchantment and wonder that it is, each month I will use my love of fictional cartography to transport you to another time and place. So why not take a moment to fill your head full of knowledge that will have no bearing at all on the real world?

This month I’ll take a look at the southernmost peak in the Misty Mountains.

Ahead and eastward they saw the windy uplands of the Wold of Rohan that they had already glimpsed many days ago from the Great River. North-westward stalked the dark forest of Fangorn; still ten leagues away stood its shadowy eaves, and its further slopes faded into the distant blue. Beyond there glimmered far away, as if floating on a grey cloud, the white head of tall Methedras, the last peak of the Misty Mountains. Out of the forest the Entwash flowed to meet them, its stream now swift and narrow, and its banks deep-cloven. The orc-trail turned from the downs towards it.

The Misty Mountains were the greatest mountain range on Middle-earth.   Cutting Middle-earth earth in half like a massive stony spine, the ice-capped peaks of the Misty Mountains were lost in the clouds of grey mist that blanketed their many hidden crags and hollows.  While the massive peaks of  Khazad-dûm (Caradhras, Celebdil and Fanuidhol) dominated the central section of the mountains, the mountain known as Methedras (“last horn”) towered over the southern end of the range.

Its lush and green foothills held the deep valley of the Nan Curunír (“wizard’s vale”) on the southern slopes, but they quickly swept up, through lush forests, past the origins of the rivers Isen and Onodló (Entwash), and on to the ice covered rocks of its highest point. Visible for leagues all around, Methedras cast a long shadow over the lands surrounding the southern reaches of the Misty Mountains.

In the latter half of the third age, as the corruption of Saruman grew, Dunlanders and other hill-folk shunned even the lower slopes of Methedras due to evil flocks of Crebain and other such creatures of darkness that had taken to dwelling on the slopes of the mountain not under the dominion of the Ents of Fangorn.  However, with the passing of Saruman and the cleansing of Isengard, the evil shadow that had begun to creep up the slopes of Methedras passed like rain on the mountain.