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Places in Middle-earth

Cerin Amroth

Type: Mountains, Hills, Promontories

Region: Rhovanion/Misty Mtns

Meaning: mound of Amroth

Location: A small hill north of Caras Galadhon in the heart of Lothlórien, where Amroth, the last King of Lórien, dwelled in a talan.

Description:

'... [Behold] the trees of the Naith of Lórien...!'....

To the left stood a great mound, covered with a sward of grass as green as Springtime in the Elder Days. Upon it, as a double crown, grew two circles of trees: the outer had bark of snowy white, and were leafless but beautiful in their shapely nakedness; the inner were mallorn-trees of great height, still arrayed in pale gold. High amid the branches of a towering tree that stood in the centre of all there gleamed a white flet. At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars. Among them, nodding on slender stalks, were other flowers, white and palest green: they glimmered as a mist amid the rich hue of the grass....

'You are come to Cerin Amroth,' said Haldir. 'For this is the heart of the ancient realm as it was long ago, and here is the mound of Amroth, where in happier days his high house was built. Here ever bloom the winter flowers in the unfading grass: the yellow elanor, and the pale niphredil.'

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 2, Ch 6, Lothlórien

As [Frodo] stepped out at last upon the lofty platform [of the high flet in the circle of white trees], Haldir... turned him toward the South....

Frodo... saw, still at some distance, a hill of many mighty trees, or a city of green towers: which it was he could not tell.... Then he looked eastward and saw all the land of Lórien running down to the pale gleam of Anduin, the Great River.... Beyond the river the land appeared flat and empty, formless and vague, until far away it rose again like a wall, dark and drear....

'There lies the fastness of Southern Mirkwood,' said Haldir.... 'In the midst upon a stony height stands Dol Guldur, where long the hidden Enemy had his dwelling.'

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 2, Ch 6, Lothlórien


Notes
I came eventually and by slow degrees to write The Lord of the Rings to satisfy myself.... But now (when the work is no longer hot, immediate, or so personal) certain features of it, and especially certain places, still move me very powerfully. The heart remains in the description of Cerin Amroth....

The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Letter 165 to the Houghton Mifflin Co., 30 June 1955

Contributors: Lyllyn 7Jul03
Elena Tiriel 30Apr08

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