Ard-galen, later becoming Anfauglith, was the wide green plain that lay north of the highlands of Dorthonion and south of Morgoth's fortressof Angband in the Iron Mountains, in the First Age. It was well known in the First Age before Morgoth turned it into a dusty plain resembling a desert north of Beleriand.

HistoryEdit

In the first days after the rising of the Sun, Ard-galen was a green plain with rich grass, reaching from Hithlum and the Ered Wethrin (Mountains of Shadow) in the west to the Blue Mountains (Ered Luin) in the east, and rising into highlands of Dorthonion in the south. But the plain was laid waste by rivers of flame and poisonous gases in the Dagor Bragollach (Battle of Sudden Flame) and renamed Anfauglith ("Gasping Dust").

The battle of Nirnaeth Arnoediad (Battle of Unnumbered Tears) was fought in the plain, and the dead piled up in a hill in the midst of the plain, named Haudh-en-Ndengin, the Hill of Slain, by the elves, and Haudh-en-Nirnaeth, the Hill of Tears, and grass grew again upon the hill and nowhere else in Anfauglith.

Like the other lands around it, Anfauglith sank beneath the waves after the War of Wrath at the end of the First Age.

EtymologyEdit

Ard-galen is a Sindarin word meaning 'Green Region'.

ReferencesEdit

• The Silmarillion: Of the Ruin of Beleriand and the Fall of Fingolfin
• The Atlas of Middle-earth pg. 14 & 15

External linkEdit

• Ard-galen at Tolkien Gateway