Question on the Origins of Mirkwood

[Akallabeth]

I am reading The Sil right now, and in "Of Beleriand and its Realms" I came across a reference to something resembling the Mirkwood of The Hobbit:

...Ungoliant had fled from the whips of the Balrogs, and there she dwelt awhile, filling the ravines with her deadly gloom, and there still, when she had passed away, her foul offspring lurked and wove their evil nets; and the thin waters that spilled from Ered Gorgoroth were defiled and perilous to drink, for the hearts of those that tasted them were filled with the shadows of madness and despair.

I was thinking that Ungoliant's offspring were the spiders in Mirkwood, and I likened the defouled waters to the river that Bombur fell into in The Hobbit.
Now, I am very bad with maps, so the map of Beleriand in my copy of The Sil looks nothing, to me, like my many maps of Middle Earth in the Third Age. Please enlighten me.

 

[Urambo Tauro]

The Ered Luin (Lindon) or Blue Mountains are a mountain range appearing on the eastern end of your map of Beleriand. This same mountain range appears on the western end of a standard third-age map of Middle-earth. Yes, the third-age Middle-earth map shows the sea where Beleriand ought to be. However, this will be explained later as you read the Silmarillion.

 

[Akallabeth]

Ahh, thank you very much. I shall continue my reading and so become less and less silly in my questions.

 

[Urambo Tauro]

It took me a while to figure out the whole Beleriand/Middle-earth thing myself. What helped me was finding a map of Arda.
Here is one. It is not very detailed, but it still gives you a good idea of where things are.

 

[Akallabeth]

Thank you so very much for the map link, Urambo Tauro. I am now thoroughly confusing myself and have decided to finish The Silmarillion before my head explodes.

 

[Eledhwen]

Mirk = enchanted or faerie; but its defilement by Sauron and the spiders gave it a connotation with 'murk'. There was a time when all the great forests were joined together, and both Bombadil and Fangorn's realms were larger.

 

[Akallabeth]

I do, I really really do love The Sil, Nóm.
And thank you to everyone for their wonderful and gracious answers to my questions. You've really helped me to understand what I'm reading.

 

[Eledhwen]

The poison water also reminded me of the Enchanted Stream. But the stream did give Bombur pleasant dreams, which doesn't seem like Ungoliant poison to me, but who knows?

The water seemed to have the same effect on Bombur as the Withywindle had on the Hobbits in the Old Forest. Maybe the enchantment is older even than the spiders - a remnant of the One Great Forest of old.

 

[Phantom]

I'm reading The Silmarillion right now, and was wondering if Ungoliant/the Mirkwood spiders were in any way related to Shelob? I'm glad I finally understand where Beleriand is now, I was wondering about that.

 

[Ithrynluin]

Hi Phantom.

Yes, Shelob is indeed a descendant of Ungoliant. And one of the greatest ones, at that.

 

[Voronwë]

"the last child of Ungoliant to trouble the unhappy world"

I think that map posted earlier is pretty flawed personally. Although I do not think there were any 'official' maps drawn, the information just doesnt seem right, such as the Inland Sea of Helcar and the Inland Sea of Rhûn both being on the map, yet pretty far apart. Does Tolkien not hint in one of his letters that the Inland Sea of Rhûn may have been a "vastly shrunken" Helcar? And Beleriand is definitely too far north...I dont remember Belegost being above Forochel

However, it does give a very general idea of things.

 

[Helm]

Yes the map does look wrong. I thought that Beleriand was the lands west of the blue mt., the northwest. It even say so in the index of UT under the entery Beleriand. I think that the spiders of Mirkwood are Shelob's children.

 

[Snaga]

The map is pretty but also fatally flawed. Given that it marks the Lamps on the same map as Minas Tirith, which never coexisted... you have to treat this with a pinch of salt.

You could try this one... but its not definitive:

http://www.tolkienonline.com/gallery/gallery_item.cfm?ID=458

 

[Voronwë]

Yeah that one seems quite substantially better

 

[Alcuin]

Greenwood the Great fell under the dominion of “The Necromancer” who settled on a promontory called Amon Lanc, or “Bald Hill,” about 1100 years into the Third Age. He constructed a fortress, and Amon Lanc came to be called Dol Guldur, “Sorcery Head (Hill).” “The Necromancer” was of course Sauron, and Greenwood the Great was called Mirkwood thereafter.

Interestingly enough, this was not the first forest so named because of Sauron’s nefarious machinations. In the First Age, Dorthonion, which was covered with a pine forest, was called Mirkwood after Sauron’s creatures began to haunt the place after the Fourth Battle, Dagor Bragollach. This was where Beren son of Barahir grew up, where he lived as an outlaw, and from whence he escaped over the Ered Gorgoroth (“Mountains of Terror”) into Doriath where he met Lúthien. The Ered Gorgoroth were infested with monster spiders, the offspring of Ungoliant. These were more like Shelob than the “attercops” Thorin & Co. encountered, terrifying though those were.

Both the ruined pine forest of Dorthonion and Greenwood the Great received the name Taur-nu-Fuin, “Forest under Nightshade,” which Tolkien writes in English as “Mirkwood.” Third Age Mirkwood was also known as Taur-e-Ndaedelos, "Forest of Great Fear." Legolas mentioned that the elves, who lived in the northern part of the forest, refused to go near Dol Guldur.

Sauron probably settled in that region to hunt for the One Ring, which had been lost in the Gladden Fields, about 125 miles away from Dol Guldur on the same side of the river as his enemy, Galadriel in Lórien.

In Letter 289, a letter to his grandson, Tolkien writes that he used the name of a real forest in what is now southern Germany as it was called in the early Middle Ages, mirkiwidu.

 

[Urambo Tauro]

It took me a while to figure out the whole Beleriand/Middle-earth thing myself. What helped me was finding a map of Arda.
Here is one. It is not very detailed, but it still gives you a good idea of where things are.

The link does not work anymore. Try searching Google images for "arda".