The Umbar of the East: Dorwinion

 Dorwinion is a funny little outlier in Middle-Earth.   With the stories focused on the Northwest of Middle-Earth, we get some reasonable detail about the realms there, and next to nothing about the realms of Rhun and Harad - the East and South.  And then, there's this country.

It appears in only two locations in Tolkien's legendarium while alive - a brief description in The Hobbit and a location that Tolkien personally indicated on Pauline Bayne's map of Middle-Earth.

In The Hobbit, the location is described as the source of a favored wine, grown in hillside vineyards, and also home to cattle and oxen; the trade goes from the Elvenking's realm down to Esgaroth, and on the River Running southwards.  And that's all there is, really - an inhabited land in a realm where the habitations are few and far inbetween.  Is there anything that we can pull from the scant information about it to fuel some speculation?

It turns out that Dorwinion predates LOTR and The Hobbit as a name of a far-off land in the south where elves made fantastic wine, in The Lay of the Children of Hurin; he also used it, briefly, as a location in Tol Eressea in the pre-LOTR Quenta Silmarillion.  The usage in The Hobbit was likely, as references to Elrond and Gondolin, a happy recycling of name (albeit not in the same sense as the other two).

In his post-LOTR writings, he expounded upon the name itself - while it appears to be simply a portmanteau of Elvish and English - 'land of wine' - instead, he indicates that the name is actually 'Land of Gwinion' or 'young-land country'.  We'll get back to that.

Gondor at Its Height

Switching gears for a moment, I think readers of Tolkien sometimes find it hard (myself included) to think of Gondor as anything but as it appears in LOTR, but at its height it must have been heavily populated with a number of towns and provinces across its vast territories.  Appendix A indicates that Turambar defeated the Easterlings that had invaded Gondor in recent years - 'wild men out of the East' - and as a result 'won much territory eastwards', circa 550 TA.  By the maximum size of the realm during reign of Hyarmendacil, 500 years later, its reach in Wilderland is said to be to 'the southern eaves of Mirkwood... east to the inland Sea of Rhun".  Note that this is the land held by Gondor, not other realms swearing fealty, because it specifically mentions the Men of the Vales of Anduin and the kings of the Harad paying homage.  However, by 1240 TA, it is said that Gondor gave the Northmen 'wide lands beyond Anduin south of Greenwood the Great' to act as a bulkwark against Easterling invaders.  There appeared to be a number of different princes that would sometimes side with the Easterlings.  The most powerful, however, was the self-styled 'King of Rhovanion' who ruled the wide realm between Mirkwood and the River Running.

Here we have a interesting precedent to the existence of Rohan (which, probably not coincidentally, with the same people) where Gondor granted territory that it could not hold on its own to people considered allies, with territory that was independent (but with the intent of alliance).

Dorwinion, then, would probably be one of the other realms of the Northmen.  But let's look a bit closer at the territory.

Wilderland in the Third Age

Wilderland was always an interesting name for what was one of more populated areas at the time of LOTR - with a Sindarin name, Rhovanion, to boot.  It is doubtful that the Silvan elves, who had lived there from time immemorial, would have given such a name to their territory.  In fact, I would suggest that the name originated from Gondor as the name for their 'eastern territories' that later ended up applying to the entirety of the land east of the Misty Mountains and south of the Grey Mountains.

At the time of Gondor's earliest conquests, Mirkwood was still Greenwood the Great, with the Silvan elves living more towards the middle; the woods also extended to encompass the Lonely Mountain.  The dwarves had a major holding at the Iron Hills, with a significant road crossing plains and the River Running to cut through Greenwood, then a bridge over the Anduin, and splitting to head through a pass in the Misty Mountains and south to the vast underground city of Moria.  Dwarves were clearly the center of trade in the region, and the later proximity of the Northman kingdom of Rhovanion was probably an important role in their power.  In the essay Cirion and Eorl, it is noted that most of them lived in the eaves of Mirkwood, especially in the East Bight, and had no significant cities.  They suffered greatly in the Great Plague, and the Wainriders occupied their lands, which they never regained; the remnants formed the Eotheod, the forerunners of Rohan.

As far as Gondor is concerned, it is noted in the same essay that a road eastward from Morannon extended as far as a point north of Barad Dur, which seems a significant investment to go nowhere.  We also have Vorondil, Steward at the end of the reign of kings in Gondor, who hunted the "Kine of Araw" in the fields near the Sea of Rhun.  Then, we have the victory by Romendacil II, who defeated a large army of Easterlings (and Northmen allies, apparently) between Rhovanion and the Sea of Rhun... which seems rather to the north of an invasion route of Gondor, but rather close to the position of Dorwinion.

How did this one realm survive the bitter onslaught?  Could it have been an elven realm after all, or even of the Wainriders?  Or something else?  Here's where we get into the realm of high speculation

A Legendary Land

The Sea of Rhun is of significance in the First Age as it was crossed not only by the migrating elves, but eons later by the early humans; at one point, they dwelled in the woods on the northeast and the mountains of the southwest.  Dorwinion's lands in their brief description seems to be bountiful, with almost legendary qualities.  Even more important, though, is the name.  For one, it's in Sindarin; again, likely a name given by Gondor.  When 'Rhovanion' is also an elvish name, the Northmen kingdom seems to have taken the name from an existing one for 'Wilderland'.  Secondly, the 'Land of Youth', as the name is translated by Tolkien, seems to harken to the Celtic legends about Tir na nOg, whose name means roughly the same thing.  One can see, here, why it was briefly added to Tol Eressea, as it also got the name "Avallone" at the time, drawn from another mythic realm of the British Isles.  What this would suggest, then, is that the name was given by Gondor to its fair vales upon its discovery, possibly in the (mistaken) belief that it marked the legendary birthplace of humanity, Hildorien; or maybe, as ancient tombs or other ruins might have indicated, just as an ancient home for humanity.  As such, it became a remote district of Gondor, much like Umbar; and when much of Wilderland was given to the Northmen, Gondor retained it as a distant outpost.  The land appears naturally defensible; to the south are high mountains, to the east the inland sea, and the River Running could only be crossed by boats at this area.  With its natural resources, and central location, it would be a major trade center; across the Sea of Rhun, up the River Running, or through land routes.  Over the years, it would've had more of a blend of people - Northmen, Easterlings, and might be on occasion controlled by hostile forces.  But one could see that, even with Gondor officially abandoning its territories east of Anduin (except Ithilien) after the Wainriders, Vorondil still felt comfortable enough to travel to the shores to hunt in the allied kingdom; and it remained a friendly trading partner with the other governments of Wilderland in the time of The Hobbit, which could only be if the realm was thriving.

Conclusion

So, in this winding speculation, I conclude the possibility that Dorwinion is, in fact, a former outlying province of Gondor, analogous to Umbar in being their high-water mark in the East; left on its own devices, it became one of the few stable powers of Wilderland (with the Silvan elves realm and the Iron Hills); and in the end, it may have been where Gondor reestablished itself in Rhun for the campaigns in the East that King Elessar led; a land of cattle and wine, where its chief city lies where a roaring river meets a storm-tossed sea, and strange sails and caravans from far away meet to trade with industrious dwarves and fat merchants of Esgaroth and Dale.