Gardens of Dorwinion??

[reem]

there is this passage on page 166:
"But this wine, it would seem, was the heady vintage of the great gardens of Dorwinion...".
this is when the Wood-elf buttler and the chief or gaurds get drunk and bilbo start his escape plan for the dwarves (the barrel incident).
where is this Dorwinion, and what can you tell me about it?
reem

 

[Heathertoes]

If you look at a map of middle-earth, Dorwinion is just north-west of the sea of Rhun, although I don't think it's marked. I'm pretty sure it's never mentioned again.

 

[Jon]

its the realm of the dorwinions, easternmost of the northmen. i imagine it to be a bit like yugoslavia or bulgaria or romania (in an olde worlde sense, of course)

 

[Ardamir the Blessed]

Location of Dorwinion

Dorwinion can be seen in this map by Pauline Baynes.

 

[Ithrynluin]

I think it's a bit strange that there would be trade (assuming that's how they obtained the wine?) between the Elves of Mirkwood (perhaps through the Dale men as mediators) and the people of Dorwinion, since the latter are probably Easterlings who are unfriendly to the Western world. Hmm...

 

[jallan]

In The Lays of Beleriand (HoME 3), “The Lay of the Children of Húrin”, Commentary on the Prologue and Part I ‘Túrin’s Fostering’ in a footnote to a comment on the wine from Dor-winion which appears in that work, Christopher Tolkien notes:

Dorwinion is marked on the decorated map by Pauline Baynes, as a region on the North-western shores of the Sea of Rhûn. It must be presumed that this, like other names on that map, was communicated to her by my father (see Unfinished Tales p. 261, footnote), but its placing seems surprising.

I think Christopher Tolkien’s puzzlement is because one might expect an excellent wine-growing area to be farther south. But his puzzlement also indicates he knows nothing more about it than its mention in The Hobbit and its appearance on the Pauline Baynes map.

In any case, even if those who made the wine were not particularly friendly to the folk of Esgaroth, hostility between people often does not stand in the way of trade when there is a profit to be made. Also, at the time of The Hobbit Sauron was still dwelling in Dol Guldur under the alias of the Necromancer and there need then have been no great hostility between the folk of Esgaroth and whatever Easterlings were nearby.

 

[reem]

Does this mean that Dor-winion was populated by the Easterlings?

Also, at the time of The Hobbit Sauron was still dwelling in Dol Guldur under the alias of the Necromancer and there need then have been no great hostility between the folk of Esgaroth and whatever Easterlings were nearby.

I thought there was an ancient fued between the Eaterlings and those of the West dating back to the First Age! Surely Sauron only served to heated up the problem, but it was always there
reem

 

[Eriol]

Does this mean that Dor-winion was populated by the Easterlings?



I thought there was an ancient fued between the Eaterlings and those of the West dating back to the First Age! Surely Sauron only served to heated up the problem, but it was always there
reem

The folk of Dale and Esgaroth would not have been considered "of the West"; they were probably (there are those who know more about this) relatives of the Rohirrim, "Men of the Twilight" according to Faramir's words in LotR. The hatred of the Easterlings was directed to the Númenóreans and their colonies.

Also, trade conquers most feuds . If they profited by trading with the people of Esgaroth and Dale they would probably have forgotten about any feuds before Sauron appeared to inflame them again.

 

[Ardamir the Blessed]

I don't think the people of Dorwinion were Easterlings. Those came from beyond the Sea of Rhûn. Why do people assume that they were Men? They might have even been Elves, since the people of the Dorwinion in The Lays of Beleriand are probably Elves, and JRRT seems to have borrowed much from the material there and The Book of Lost Tales for The Hobbit. Also, the ones who brought the wine of Dorwinion to the Northern lands in The Lays were Dwarves.

In the Quenta Silmarillion of 1937 there is also a Dorwinion in Tol Eressëa. Dorwinion means 'land of wine'; perhaps it was just a common name for a land that provided wine.

 

[jallan]

Reem posted:

I thought there was an ancient fued between the Eaterlings and those of the West dating back to the First Age! Surely Sauron only served to heated up the problem, but it was always there.

Quite so, for the most part.

But in Europe one finds a long-standing conflict between England and France, including the hundred years war. But French wines were still welcome in England when they could be obtained.

Ardarmir the Blessed posted:

Dorwinion means 'land of wine'; perhaps it was just a common name for a land that provided wine.

I don’ believe that meaning can be proved. It seems too transparent that win should mean in English ‘wine’. Tolkien’s borrowing from real languages into Elvish are usually far more obscure than that.

But I agree that the use of the name for three different wine-growing regions makes the meaning you suggest a probable one.

 

[Arthur_Vandelay]

I found this link to be particularly helpful: the essay is about Bladorthin but it includes quite a bit of material on Dorwinion.

 

[Maerbenn]

Dorwinion means 'land of wine'; perhaps it was just a common name for a land that provided wine.

I don’ believe that meaning can be proved. It seems too transparent that win should mean in English ‘wine’. Tolkien’s borrowing from real languages into Elvish are usually far more obscure than that.

But I agree that the use of the name for three different wine-growing regions makes the meaning you suggest a probable one.

This was posted by Cian on another message board:

According to David Salo, if the name Dorwinion is thought of as an Ilkorin form (the status of Ilkorin is suspect regarding the 'mature' legends) it is perhaps Dor + -winion (*gwinion) 'Land of *gwinin' -- cf. Dor-thonion 'Land of *thonin' ('pines'). *Gwinin may be hypothetically from a root WIN-, whose similarity to English 'wine' Latin 'vinum' Welsh gwin (David adds) is 'unlikely to be coincidental' -- yielding the interpretation 'wines' or '(grape-) vines'.

David further comments that Dorwinion could also perhaps be interpreted as Sindarin, with a meaning like 'winy land' or 'viny land' - if we could assume Sindarin also had the word *gwin.

 

[Arvedui]

I was just reading through HoME V - The Lost Road, when I discovered this, written last in the Commentary on the conclution of the Quenta Silmarillion:

§ 33: The Quays of Avallon. At this time Avallon was a name of Tol Eressëa: 'The Lonely Isle, which was renamed Avallon,' FN II §1
The meads of Dorwinion must be in Tol Eressëa. The name has previously occured as a land of wines in 'the burning South' in the Lay of the Children of Húrin, in the wine of Dorwinion in the Hobbit, and as marked on the map made by Pauline Baynes; see III. 26, which needs to be corrected by addition of a reference to this passage.

So what does that mean? Is Dorwinion really in Tol Eressëa? It would definately seem that this is how Christopher Tolkien concluded from the text his father wrote.

 

[Ardamir the Blessed]

There are three Dorwinions mentioned - one in Eastern Rhovanion, one in Southern Beleriand and one in Tol Eressëa. It may be that Tolkien wanted a conception of a land that provided wine for each of the three regions: Third Age North-Western Middle-earth, Beleriand and the Undying Lands.

The people of Dorwinion in Tol Eressëa were definitely Elves, and probably also in Dorwinion in Beleriand. Therefore it would be quite natural if there were Elves in Dorwinion in Rhovanion too.

 

[baragund]

That's a head scratcher Arvedui, especially since The Hobbit and Quenta Silmarillion were both written within a couple of years of each other so it would be difficult to make the argument that Tolkien's thinking of the name changed all that much between the two works.

I wonder if Tolkien was thinking that "Dorwinion" is a kind of generic term for a wine producing region. I don't know my way around the etymologies too well but it may be worth checking.

edit: As I was mowing the lawn this evening, it struck me that perhaps Tolkien did not make the Dorwinion reference in The Hobbit until the 2nd edition. If that is the case then perhaps his thinking evolved from when he wrote the Lay of the Children of Hurin to when he wrote the Quenta Silmarillion to when he wrote the 2nd edition of The Hobbit.

 

[Ardamir the Blessed]

I checked The Annotated Hobbit - The reference to Dorwinion exists in all editions of The Hobbit.

 

[baragund]

Rats! So much for that hypothesis...