The Complete Tolkien Companion (101 page)

Note:
the word
umbar
is said to mean ‘fate' in the Quenya tongue as mentioned above, yet in the Red Book we are told that the name is of pre-Númenorean (i.e. Mannish) origin.
2
It is, of course, not impossible that both statements are correct, i.e. that they are two distinct names.

Umbardacil
‘Victor-of-Umbar' (Q.) – The royal title taken by King Telumehtar, twenty-eighth King of Gondor, after his great victory over the Corsairs of Umbar in the year 1810 Third Age.

Undeeps
– Two places in the course of the Anduin where the river flowed over stony but shallow ground, and could be forded or at least crossed. They were at the two great westwards bends of Anduin, between the Wold of Rohan and the Brown Lands.

Underharrow
– A village in Rohan, nestling under the mountains beside the river Snowbourn in Harrowdale.

Underhill
– A family of Hobbits of the Shire, with a distant branch in Staddle (in the Bree-land). This was the name chosen by Frodo Baggins as a travelling-name before he set out from the Shire in 1418 Shire Reckoning (he was incognito at the time).

Undertowers
– The ‘manor-hole' of the Fairbairn family, descendants of Master Samwise, who settled the Westmarch early in the Fourth Age and built their home into the east-facing slopes of the Tower Hills (the
Emyn Beraid
).

Underworld
– An approximate translation of
Utumno,
‘the Pit' (Q.; Sind.
Udûn
).

Undómë
‘Star-opening' (Q.) – The High-elven name for eventide; the Grey-elves' equivalent was
aduial
(called
Evendim
by the Hobbits).

Undómiel
‘Evenstar' (Q.) – The royal title borne by the Elf-maiden Arwen, daughter of Elrond Half-elven.

Undying Lands
– One of the many names given in the long traditions of Elves and Men to Aman, the Blessed Realm in the Ancient (True) West of Arda, set aside after the passing of the Spring of Arda as a home for the Valar and Maiar; and afterwards shared with those of the Quendi (Elves) who completed the Great Journey and so came to the last shores far back in the Elder Days.

It has been said that the Undying Lands are an abode of immortals; time as we know it does not pass there, and the waning of days in the world outside is not felt by those fortunate enough to dwell with the Valar in everlasting earthly bliss. At the Creation, and for long after, Aman was indeed part of the ‘circles of the world', and could be reached by a long and arduous voyage across the Great Sea of the West. However, only the Valar were at first permitted to come there. This rule was later altered to include the Quendi, and later still to embrace a very few mortals, who had earned such a grace in some way during their mortal lives in Middle-earth. For the Quendi the Valar allotted a portion of Aman, the eastern shorelands surrounding the Great Bay; this was called, by the Elves,
Eldamar,
‘Elvenhome'. Beyond the tall Mountains in the West of the Elves' land lay the greater portion of Aman: the Land of the Valar and Maiar, called
Valinórë.
The Mountains which divided Aman from north to south were named
Pelóri,
the Mountains of Defence; they were raised as a barrier to Melkor (Morgoth), for the Valar had not forgotten that Aman had not been the first dwelling of their race in Arda. North of Eldamar stretched the wilderness of Araman, beyond which lay the misty waste of Oiomúrë – and beyond that the Grinding Ice, the Helcaraxë, in ancient times a physical link between Aman and Middle-earth, though a perilous one. To the south of Eldamar lay another cold wilderness, the region known as Avathar, a narrow shut-in land where the Valar and the Eldar did not go.

Tol Eressëa, the ‘Lonely-isle', was not originally part of the Undying Lands. It stood from earliest times in the middle of the Sea, a great island shaped like a monstrous ship, with a high prow looking westward. By the agency of the Valar this island was detached from the sea-bed and moved across the waves into the East; and then West. By this means the great hosts of the Vanyar and the Noldor were transported from Middle-earth to Aman (in those days the craft of shipbuilding was unknown to the Elves). Later the island returned to the Bay of Balar and again passed back across the Sea to the West, bearing this time the last of the Eldar destined to arrive in the Undying Lands while the Trees still shone, the Teleri led by Olwë. At the request of these last-comers, the island was brought to a halt at the mouth of the Bay of Eldamar, and put down new roots, and never moved again. (A fragment – its easternmost region – had broken asunder, and still stood off the coasts of Middle-earth; this was the Isle of Balar.)

The Vanyar dwelled at first in Tirion, the fair city built by themselves and the Noldor in the mouth of the Pass of Calacirya, through the Mountains, from which flooded the Blessed Light of the Trees. But afterwards they removed and went further west, through the Calacirya, and dwelled evermore in Valinor itself. The Noldor continued to dwell in Tirion, and only abandoned it to return to Middle-earth – to their undying regret. The Teleri at first dwelled on Tol Eressëa, in the haven of Avallónë, but later came ashore to Aman and made a new haven and city for themselves at Alqualondë, north of Tirion. But the chief city of Aman was Valimar, or Valmar, the city of the Valar and Maiar, where stood also the Ring of Doom, or council-place of the Aratar – and, in ancient days, the fabled Two Trees upon their green mound. But the Lord of Arda, Manwë, and his spouse Varda, the Lady of the Stars, dwelled in a lofty palace on top of the highest of the Pelóri, from where they were – and still are – able to gaze out over Arda and mark all that passes therein, even though the Undying Lands themselves no longer constitute part of the physical world. As all know, in a later time the folly of the Númenoreans led to an actual assault upon Aman; and with the realisation that their last sanctuary had proved, after all, violable, the Valar invoked Ilúvatar (The Creator), who altered the material nature of Arda and removed Aman and Eressëa to another plane of existence, a plane which overlooks ours yet is not part of it. Thereafter the Undying Lands could only be reached by those specifically appointed to make the Journey.

Note:
in this connection, it has become almost de
rigueur
to draw attention to the exceedingly ancient, Mannish tradition concerning a vanished (but not unreachable) Paradise in the Mystic or Ancient West of the World. Indeed, an early meaning of the word Paradise itself refers to a kind of ‘Half-way-house' between Middle-earth and Over-heaven, peopled by great Beatitudes who are Agents of The Creator; a home for those who deserve a blissful after-life but whose actual spiritual nature does not permit their entry to the Halls of Ilúvatar while Arda lasts. (The ‘Garden of the Hesperides' and the ‘Garden of Eden' are, in many traditions, similar places of bliss.) This myth is particularly strong among the Celts, the most westerly of all the ancient peoples of the Old World.
Hy Braseal
and
Tir na nOg
are but two of their names for the Undying Lands. Celtic mariners have actually sought for these lands in historical times.

See also
AVALLÓNË
.

Ungoliant
– The first and greatest of the Spider-race; a foul and dangerous monster, hideous to look upon, a worker of much evil and the begetter of many evil offspring. She was in origin an entity of the Outer Darkness, called into being at the Beginning of Arda, and thus the first of the Great Demons to invade the World, which she afterwards polluted. After the fall of Utumno she dwelt in Avathar, in the far, freezing south of Aman, where the Valar did not go; and she hungered after Light, devouring it as lesser spiders devour insect-prey. Here Melkor came to her, for he had fled but lately from Valinor, unmasked for the last time as irredeemably evil; and already he had a design for the discomfiture and grief of those he had made his enemies – the destruction of the Trees. Ungoliant, lured by his promise of a great and glorious assuaging of her hunger, joined him in this wicked action; and the Trees were poisoned by her venom, and died. Together with Melkor, she then fled to Middle-earth, now swollen to huge size by her feasting yet still (for such was her nature) with hunger undiminished. And when Melkor, who by now was in fear of her, withheld the last – and to him, most precious – item of booty from the sack of Formenos, she attacked him (
see
LAMMOTH
), and he barely escaped her fury. But he was delivered from her by others of his servants, and Ungoliant was herself put in great fear. She fled south, and made her dreadful nests thereafter in the dark glens and ravines of the mountains which were the southern wall of Dorthonion, in the North of Beleriand – afterwards called
Ered Gorgoroth,
the ‘Mountains of Terror'. Here she mated with lesser beasts of Middle-earth. Her offspring were evil like herself, though of less stature (one of these was
SHELOB THE GREAT
). Her fate has not been recorded; and unless in the end she starved to death in some desert place or was finally destroyed by a greater agency, she lives still in some hideous and forgotten cavern under the world.

Ungwe
– The Quenya or High-elven word for ‘spider's web', but more properly the title of Tengwa number 8, which stood for the sound of (hard)
g
(or
gw
) in languages which required such a consonant.

Union of Maedhros
– The name given by Maedhros the eldest son of Fëanor of the Noldor to the grand alliance devised by him in the years following the Dagor Bragollach; an alliance, as he purposed, by which the Eldar and the Edain – and any others who would join them – were to be welded into one huge and irresistible force which, cleverly handled, would be large enough to annihilate the last armies of Angband to the least Orc. But although grandly named, this alliance, to which not all proved willing to adhere (and not all of those who did proved faithful), was shakily founded, and despite early successes of a minor (though fatally encouraging) nature, came to nothing – and worse than nothing – in the end. The result of the Union of Maedhros was the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, and the final defeat of the Elves in the Wars of Beleriand. No further alliances were ever contemplated, until the Host of the West came from over the Sea to put an end to the evil reign of Morgoth, and to deliver Middle-earth.

Unque
– The Quenya or High-elven word for ‘a hollow'; also the title of Tengwa number 16, which represented the sound
gh
(or
ghw
) in those languages which required it.

Upbourn
– The name of a small village or hamlet in Rohan, which stood beside the river Snowbourn at the mouth of the Harrowdale valley.

Úre
– The Quenya or High-elven word for ‘heat'; also the title of Tengwa number 36, which represented the sound of consonantal
w
in most languages. It was one of the ‘additional' letters in the Fëanorian Alphabet.