Council of the Wise · Seat 6

The Seat of Beleriand

The drowned lands

Beleriand was the land in the far west of Middle-earth where the great tales of the First Age took place: Doriath and Gondolin, Beren and Lúthien, the wars against Morgoth. It was where Sindarin grew up. At the end of that age, in the War of Wrath, Beleriand was broken and drowned beneath the sea. Only a fragment survived, Lindon, west of the Blue Mountains, where the Grey Havens stand. By the time of The Lord of the Rings, Beleriand lives on only in memory and song. Treebeard still remembers walking in "the willow-meads of Tasarinan" and the elm-woods of Ossiriand. Elrond, who remembers it himself, tells the Council: "I have seen three ages in the West of the world, and many defeats, and many fruitless victories." This seat honours remembering faithfully what was lost. Many of the Sindarin words we have survive in only a handful of lines, and this seat guards them: checking each word against the sources and never letting guesswork pass for Tolkien's own.

Sources: The Silmarillion, Of Beleriand and its Realms and Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath; The Lord of the Rings, Treebeard and The Council of Elrond.