Enedhwaith

Sindarin: Land of the Middle-folk

also spelt Enedwaith

Region of western coastal Middle-earth between the Greyflood and the Isen, and bounded on the east by the MistyMountains and the Gap of Rohan. Its eastern reaches, known as Dunland, were hilly and fertile; much of Enedhwaith consisted of lowlands which were subject to flooding.

Until the Númenoreans returned to Middle-earth in the SeA and plundered its shorelands for timber, Enedhwaith had been thickly forested. Folk related to the Haladin settled here in FirstAge, and remained thereafter, notwithstanding their strife with the Men of Westernesse in the SeA, and the cataclysmic War of the Elves and Sauron. In the east, the ancestors of the Dunlendings lived in the foothills of the MistyMountains, and were joined later on by Dunlendish folk moving into the westlands from the WhiteMountains. Some of these later moved north into Eriador. Along the coastlands there was said to have dwelt a primitve fishing and fowling people, akin perhaps to the Drúedain who lived across the river Isen in the DrúwaithIaur. But most of the folk of Enedhwaith shunned the Drúedain, and feared their poisoned arrows. And although Enedhwaith was technically the northernmost province of Gondor, few of the Dúnedain lived there.

The GreatPlague of 1636 in the ThirdAge devastated the region, and decimated what few remaining people lived there (which, apart from the fertile Dunland, was mostly wilderness). What became of the curious fisher-folk is not recorded, and only the Dunlendings in the east remained numerous. It is possible that the fisher-folk were replaced by Dunlendings, and maybe a few renegade Rohirrim, spreading once again across Enedhwaith in the third milennium: the Southrons who invaded Rohan with Wulf met Dunlendings where they landed at the mouth of the Isen (this is surmise). In any case, the lowlands would once again have been de-populated by the great floods of 2912.

At the end of the Third Age, apart from the Dunlendings, the only folk to be found in Enedhwaith, apart from the occasional traveller, were spies and agents of Saruman, commuting along the North-SouthRoad between Isengard and the Shire, bearing news and booty. After the WotR, the land was reclaimed by the Dúnedain.