Nowhere and Back Again: The Gladden Fields (Patreon)

• Name: The Gladden Fields

• Locations in New Line films: Fernside; Arrowtown

The Anduin flows through the heart of Middle-earth’s geography and its history. The Nandorin Elves live on its banks in the Vales of Anduin after breaking away from the Eldar on their Great March to Valinor. The Argonath hails the Fellowship of the Ring as they near Gondor. It’s on Anduin’s banks that Isildur loses the One Ring and Sméagol starts to become Gollum. The Great River of Middle-earth has meaning to all of its peoples. To take part in Wilderland’s history, characters have to row down the Anduin.

Maps of Third Age-era Middle-earth put the Misty Mountains, the Anduin, and Mirkwood at their epicenter. This is a heavily political geography that centers west-central Middle-earth — The Red Book of Westmarch has more to say about Eriador and Gondor than Harad and Rhûn. The Lord of the Rings is a translation of a found history, and adopts its historical and geographic perspectives. But more importantly, the geological improbability of a mountain range, river, and mega-forest existing in parallel is an aesthetic choice. Wilderland, like the rest of Middle-earth, is land designed as psychogeography. While an ordinary psychogeographer might stake out London or Prague and piece a story together from there, Tolkien’s lands provide their own stories.

On the western side of the Anduin, the Gladden River provides lots of stories. Specifically the Gladden Fields are a vital locale in The Lord of the Rings, albeit one featured heavily through flashbacks. Isildur’s assassination by orcs in the Gladden Fields establishes it as a historical landmark. Gondor’s line of kings collapses at that point, while the One Ring vanishes for  nearly two-and-a-half millennia. And like the Ring during that time, Gladden Fields becomes inconspicuous, having little to offer the world but “great beds of iris and flowering reeds.”

Even the Gladden Fields’ next major event historical event is weirdly miniscule. When the One Ring resurfaces (of its own volition), the area is occupied by the Stoors, a “neat and nimble” Hobbit people who “lingered long by the banks of the Great River Anduin,” and favor water more than other Hobbits. They’re a decidedly weird little group of halflings who otherwise have little to do with the history of Middle-earth.

So the Stoor Déagol’s discovery of the One Ring and Sméagol-Gollum’s murder of his cousin in the Anduin is an almost random tragedy of history. The “not made for this” nature of hobbits that makes Frodo and Sam right for the journey to Mount Doom consumes Déagol and Gollum. Yet Gollum’s wrongness for the story he’s caught in breaks him in the perfect ways, to the point he drives it. His wrongness for great stories ultimately destroys the Ring. It’s ordinary folk’s small acts of petulance and greed that drive history.

Even in its insignificance, the Gladden Fields becomes important to the Wise. Sauron and Saruman both scour the area for the One Ring long after Gollum sweeps it off into the Misty Mountains. By the time Middle-earth’s great men of history notice the small things, it’s too late to nab them. The Anduin in its greatness hides many secrets, not least the Gladden Fields. Beneath the stones, the beach, and beneath the beach, one little magic ring that changes everything.