Dunlendings
From the One Wiki to Rule Them All, the Lord of the Rings Encyclopedia.
Dunlendings were the people of Dunland.
Dunlending Wildmen are a savage race of Men who are possessed with having their vengeance on the people of Rohan who, according to Saruman, drove them into the mountains. In The Two Towers, Saruman uses their anger as a manipulation and convinces them to destroy the land of Rohan during the War of the Ring. He sends them across Rohan, burning and looting the land.
Cavemen-like barbarians, the Dunlending Wildmen come from the land of Dunland. When destroying Rohan, they are led by a Dunlending named Wulf.
[edit] History
In the years of the Second Age before the Numenoreans settled in Middle-earth, primitive hillmen inhabited the lands west and south of the Misty Mountains, as far down as the valleys surrounding the White Mountains. Uncultured and superstitious, they were wary of the tall men who came out of the west, and came to fear and hate them. They were hunted and persecuted in such numbers that they had dwindled by the start of the Third Age. At this time they had come to congregate in the valleys of the White Mountains and the grassy plains of Dunland, which lay west of the Misty Mountains between Moria and Isengard; a few went north, and became the ancestors of the Men of Bree. Dunland then became the area most populated by these men, who came to be called Dunlendings.
When Eorl and his people were granted Calenardhon --- Rohan, as it would later be known --- in TA 2510, they drove the Wild Men from their new lands, earning their bitter hatred and enmity. The Wild Men were also driven from the Ered Nimrais by the Men of Gondor. During the next five hundred years these swarthy, dark-haired savages made frequent attacks upon the outlying settlements of Rohan, exacting revenge upon the usurpers, whom they called "straw-heads" because of the high number of blond warriors among them. As a consequence, Rohan maintained patrols and garrisons to the west of the Fords of Isen to try to limit the number of raids, although these patrols had virtually disappeared under Wormtongue's stewardship, to the point where Saruman's forces could make incursions almost at will.
Yet not everybody took against the Wild Men. At some point near the end of the thirtieth century of the Third Age, Saruman made contact with them and swayed them to his side by playing on their resentment and hatred of those who had taken what was theirs. Saruman welcomed to Orthanc a large warband of these Dunlendings, led by a tribal chief named Wulf. Saruman evidently convinced them that they could reclaim what had been taken, and during the early part of TA 3019, a fearsome raiding force comprising Dunlendings, Orcs and Uruk-hai left Isengard and began ravaging the western settlements of Rohan. Previous attacks by Orcs and Uruk-hai had killed many Rohirrim at the Fords of Isen, so there were no warriors to defend against the surprise attack. Many people of Rohan were killed in these attacks, but the raiders never made it across the country to Edoras; it is fair to assume that they encountered one or more eoreds, companies of mounted warriors, who would have been patrolling the interior.
After the defeat of Isengard at the Battle of the Hornburg, the Rohirrim spared the surviving Dunlendings and used them as workmen to repair the broken walls of the Hornburg. After the War of the Ring, most Dunlendings went to live in Rohan, but some stayed as herdsmen and farmers. The drop of population in Dunland made it become green and peaceful, almost like the Shire.
[edit] Culture
The Wild Men, or Dunlendings, were hill-folk, used to living in harsh conditions with little to protect them from the elements. As a result, they were a tough, hardy people, big and powerful, with long, unkempt hair and beards. Their primitive level of technology meant that their weapons were crude, all derived from a club. Any weapon that had an element of metal to it would have been taken from a Rohan settlement or given to them by Saruman. There appears to have been no weapon of choice. The Wild Men had no sophisticated fighting style. They did not wear armor; their only clothing was the skins and furs they had cut from the carcasses of hunted beasts. As the men of Middle-earth prospered and became sophisticated, their primitive cousins dwindled, receding into the shadows until they had become little more than a memory, a fireside tale to delight and terrify adults and children alike.
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