MORDOR

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Wastelands of Mordor

One does not simply walk into Mordor. Its Black Gates are guarded by more than just Orcs. There is evil there that does not sleep, and the Great Eye is ever watchful. It is a barren wasteland, riddled with fire and ash and dust, the very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly.”

-Boromir
Map of Middle Earth
Map of Mordor

Mordor was a black, volcanic plain located in the southeast of Middle-earth to the East of Gondor, Ithilien and the great river Anduin. Mordor was chosen by Sauron to be his realm because of the mountain ranges surrounding it on three sides, creating a natural fortress against his enemies. 

Mordor was protected from three sides by large mountain ranges, arranged roughly in a rectangular manner: the Ash Mountains (‘Ered Lithui’) in the north, and Ephel Dúath in the west and south. In the northwest corner of Mordor, the deep valley of Udûn was one of the few entrances for large armies, and that is where Sauron built the Black Gate of Mordor. In front of the Black Gate lay the Dagorlad or the Battle Plain. Sauron’s main fortress of Barad-dûr was at the foothills of Ered Lithui. To the southwest of Barad-dûr lay the arid plateau of Gorgoroth and Mount Doom; to the east lay the plain of Lithlad. Mordor’s geography was excellent for defense against enemies attacking on all fronts, for nearly un-scalable mountains defended Mordor on three sides, while the broken, jagged land of Gorgoroth and Núrn would greatly impede any army that managed to break through. 

Mordor’s dry and blasted geography would also be extremely unfriendly to any army bivouacked on the plains, forcing a withdrawal within days (unless they have stores sufficient for months). The only other path for armies to cross into Mordor from the west, over the Ephel Duath was the Pass of Cirith Ungol. Anarion originally built the city of Minas Ithil to guard this pass from evil things attempting to re-enter Mordor, but in the Third Age the population of the city waned and was conquered by the Nazgûl. It became the home of the Ringwraiths and was renamed Minas Morgul, and was thereafter a great stronghold of evil, ever at war with Gondor to the west, until the end of the War of the Ring. To escape the vigilance of Morgul, to enter Mordor one would still have to get past the lair of Shelob, and the Tower of Cirith Ungol– a feat only Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee (led by Gollum) ever accomplished- though not without being waylaid by the great fearsome spider Shelob, and Frodo being taken prisoner to the Tower of Cirith Ungol. 

The southern part of Mordor called Núrn was slightly more fertile, and moist enough to carry the inland Sea of Núrnen. Nurn was made somewhat fertile because the ash blown from Mount Doom left its soil nutrient-rich, thus allowing dry-land farming. 

To the west of Mordor was the narrow land of Ithilien with the city of Osgiliath and the great river Anduin, while directly East of it was Rhûn, and to the southeast, Khand. 

The east of Mordor is by far the least mentioned of any of Mordor’s geographic notes and descriptions. One might assume that the easiest route to Mount Doom would be for the Fellowship to journey through the ‘unguarded’ section of the east, where no mountains guard; however, we are told in the Fellowship of the Ring that the area was heavily defended by a line of border forts facing Sauron’s allies in Rhûn. In theory, these forts have no use, because to get there they would have to pass along the western edge of Rhûn, and Sauron’s strongest allies, the Easterlings, abode there. Also, it would have been difficult to pass unnoticed, because the many roads running from Mordor into Rhûn were always being marched along by Easterlings entering Mordor or patrolling the roads and borders. 

FIRST IMPRESSION

…here neither spring nor summer would ever come again. Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light.

The lasting monument to the dark labour of its slaves that should endure when all their purposes were made void; a land defiled, diseased beyond all healing unless the Great Seas should enter in and wash it with oblivion. “I feel sick,” said Sam. Frodo did not speak.

-Sam

A land to the point that it is diseased beyond all healing and so that nothing lived, not even the rotten growths that feed on rottenness. But even worse than this, the land is not merely dead, it is choked with ash, covered in the vomited entrails of mountains, fire-blasted and poison-stained, it is an environment so destructive as to make Sam sick and leave Frodo incapable of any speech whatsoever. Mordor is not just lifeless: it is also very hostile.

POST-INDUSTRIALIZATION

“Neither Sam nor Frodo knew anything of the great slave-worked fields away south in this wide realm, beyond the fumes of the Mountain…Here in the northward regions were the mines and forges, and the musterings of long-planned war.”

This passage tells us that if we don’t see any “mines and forges” in Mordor, this is likely because the land has been barren for so long that the maintenance of such agro-industrial infrastructure would be pointless, precisely because there is nothing left to industrialize.

Consequently, we can confirm the notion that it is because Sauron and his servants have instrumentalized, mistreated, and abused the land that it has fallen to its current state beyond all healing. Mordor is the final stage towards which Saruman’s Isengard and, by extension, Fangorn Forest is gradually progressing.

REFERENCES

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