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Places in Middle-earth

Folde, The

Type: Kingdoms, Realms, Lands

Region: Rohan

Meaning: earth, land, country

Location: The central geographical region of Rohan, between the Westfold and the Eastfold; runs along the White Mountains around Edoras and eastward to Aldburg.

Description:

The Folde was the centre of the kingdom, in which the royal house and its kin had their dwellings; its boundary eastward was roughly a line south-west from the junction of the Snowbourn and Entwash to the mountains; the Eastfold was the land from that line east to the Fenmark 1 between Entwash and the mountains; the Westfold was the similar land along the mountains as far as the River Isen. The defensive centre of the Folde and Eastfold was at Edoras; of Westfold at Helm's Deep.

"Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
from A Tolkien Compass, compiled by Jared Lobdell
Chicago: Open Court Pub Co, June 1975

Before them stood the mountains of the South: white-tipped and streaked with black. The grass-lands rolled against the hills that clustered at their feet, and flowed up into many valleys still dim and dark, untouched by the light of dawn, winding their way into the heart of the great mountains. Immediately before the travellers the widest of these glens opened like a long gulf among the hills. Far inward they glimpsed a tumbled mountain-mass with one tall peak; at the mouth of the vale there stood like sentinel a lonely height. About its feet there flowed, as a thread of silver, the stream that issued from the dale; upon its brow they caught, still far away, a glint in the rising sun, a glimmer of gold....

'I see a white stream that comes down from the snows,' [Legolas] said. 'Where it issues from the shadow of the vale a green hill rises upon the east. A dike and mighty wall and thorny fence encircle it. Within there rise the roofs of houses; and in the midst, set upon a green terrace, there stands aloft a great hall'....

'Edoras those courts are called,' said Gandalf, 'and Meduseld is that golden hall.'....

The morning was bright and clear about them,... when the travellers came to the stream. It ran down swiftly into the plain, and beyond the feet of the hills turned across their path in a wide bend, flowing away east to feed the Entwash far off in its reed-choked beds. The land was green: in the wet meads and along the grassy borders of the stream grew many willow-trees.... Over the stream there was a ford between low banks much trampled by the passage of horses. The travellers passed over and came upon a wide rutted track leading towards the uplands.

At the foot of the walled hill the way ran under the shadow of many mounds, high and green....

Following the winding way up the green shoulders of the hills, they came at last to the wide wind-swept walls and the gates of Edoras.

The Two Towers, LoTR Book 3, Ch 8, The Road to Isengard


Etymology
This is Old English folde (Old Norse fold) 'earth, land, country', not connected either with the English verb fold, or with (sheep)fold.

"Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien
from A Tolkien Compass, compiled by Jared Lobdell
Chicago: Open Court Pub Co, June 1975


Notes
1Called Fenmarch in the canon texts.

Contributors: Elena Tiriel 22Dec04, 19Jan05, 30Oct07

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