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I'm looking for Tolkien's descriptions of Mordor, as written in the books (not interested in the movies). I've been looking online, but I mostly found generic scientific descriptions.

EDIT: I'm interested in the landscape, not necessarily in buildings, people or creatures.

I have so far:

"Mists curled and smoked from dark and noisome pools. The reek of them hung stifling in the still air. Far away, now almost due south, the mountain-walls of Mordor loomed, like a black bar of rugged clouds floating above a dangerous fog-bound sea."


"The remainder of that journey was a shadow of growing fear in which memory could find nothing to rest upon. For two more nights, they struggled on through the weary pathsless land. The air, as it seemed to them, grew harsh, and filled with a bitter reek that caught their breath and parched their mouths."


"The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomitted the filth of their entrails upon the lands about. High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light."

I think they are from The Two Towers. Also, they're out of context, so I'm not sure what are they exactly talking about.

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  • Mordor is quite a large region, care to be a bit more specific on what exactly your looking for? Especially since none of your quotes are from within Mordor itself. The first two are of the Dead Marshes and the third of the Desolation of the Morannon. From your quotes you seem to be more interested in just quotes of desolation as opposed to Mordor
    – Edlothiad
    Jan 25, 2020 at 12:47
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    @Eägoth Requests for lists are generally considered poor form on here, and this is a request for a list. They aren't always closed, but they often get downvoted.
    – Misha R
    Jan 25, 2020 at 20:23
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    @KorvinStarmast The purpose of this site is to get answers to questions without having to go to the library. However, If you have some ideas of which chapters in which books to look in, feel free to mention those.
    – Misha R
    Jan 26, 2020 at 2:24
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    @KorvinStarmast Yes, that's what the downvote text reads, and that's what the downvote is for. Let's try to stay away from additional snide comments to new members telling them to go to the library.
    – Misha R
    Jan 26, 2020 at 2:56
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    @KorvinStarmast I know about libraries, I have all the books, I have read them many times. I could take the descriptions from them, but (1) maybe someone already have them, (2) if I ask here, someone may benefit from this question in the future, (3) I need the descriptions in English, not my main language. You know, that's half of the purpose of sites like this. Maybe this isn't your place if you're not willing to help.
    – Eägoth
    Jan 26, 2020 at 11:40

2 Answers 2

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Chapter II of Book Six, The Land of Shadow, where Frodo and Sam are trekking across Mordor itself is probably your best bet. The text does make it clear that they only see the northern region of Mordor where the mines, forges and gathering armies are, though. Some examples from the chapter:

Upon its outward marges under the westward mountains Mordor was a dying land, but it was not yet dead. And here things still grew, harsh, twisted, bitter, struggling for life. In the glens of the Morgai on the other side of the valley low scrubby trees lurked and clung, coarse grey grass-tussocks fought with the stones, and withered mosses crawled on them; and everywhere great writhing, tangled brambles spawned. Some had long stabbing thorns, some hooked barbs that rent like knives. The sullen shrivelled leaves of a past year hung on them, grating and rattling in the sad airs, but their maggot-ridden buds were only just opening. Flies, dun or grey, or black, marked like orcs with a red eye-shaped blotch, buzzed and stung; and above the briar-thickets clouds of hungry midges danced and reeled.

And later

...after a morsel of food and a sip of water they went on up the ravine, until it ended in a sharp slope of screes and sliding stones. There the last living things gave up their struggle; the tops of the Morgai were grassless, bare, jagged, barren as a slate.

...

They came to a cleft between two dark crags, and passing through found themselves on the very edge of the last fence of Mordor. Below them, at the bottom of a fall of some fifteen hundred feet, lay the inner plain stretching away into a formless gloom beyond their sight. The wind of the world blew now from the West, and the great clouds were lifted high, floating away eastward; but still only a grey light came to the dreary fields of Gorgoroth. There smokes trailed on the ground and lurked in hollows, and fumes leaked from fissures in the earth.

...

Frodo and Sam gazed out in mingled loathing and wonder on this hateful land. Between them and the smoking mountain, and about it north and south, all seemed ruinous and dead, a desert burned and choked. They wondered how the Lord of this realm maintained and fed his slaves and his armies.

...

Neither he nor Frodo knew anything of the great slave-worked fields away south in this wide realm, beyond the fumes of the Mountain by the dark sad waters of Lake Núrnen...

Then there is some more description in the next chapter, Mount Doom.

As the light grew a little he saw to his surprise that what from a distance had seemed wide and featureless flats were in fact all broken and tumbled. Indeed the whole surface of the plains of Gorgoroth was pocked with great holes, as if, while it was still a waste of soft mud, it had been smitten with a shower of bolts and huge slingstones. The largest of these holes were rimmed with ridges of broken rock, and broad fissures ran out from them in all directions.

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From his Letters:

No. 135 -- I am at last after three weeks incessant labour of the most exacting and dreariest sort (college related work just finished)...and also (if I can) finding somewhere else to live and moving! This charming house has become uninhabitable --- unsleepable-in, unworkable-in,rocked, racked with noise, and drenched with fumes. Such is modern life. Mordor in our midst. And I regret to note that the billowing cloud recently pictured did not mark the fall of Barad Dûr, but was produced by its allies -- or at least by persons who have decided to use the Ring for their own (of course most excellent) purposes.

From the Unfinished Tales:

History of Galadriel & Celeborn -- But there was in Thranduil's heart a still deeper shadow. He had seen the horror of Mordor and could not forget it. If ever he looked south its memory dimmed the light of the Sun, and though he knew that it was now broken and deserted and under the vigilance of the Kings of Men, fear spoke in his heart that it was not conquered for ever: it would rise again.

Cirion & Eorl -- So it came to pass that the head of the army of Gondor had only drawn level with the Gates of Mordor (the Morannon) when a great dust borne on a wind from the East announced the oncoming of the enemy vangaurd. ... Ondoher was utterly unprepared to meet a charge of horsemen and chariots in great weight. With his Guard and his banner he had hastily taken up a position on a low knoll, but this was of no avail.

This is undoubtedly the same low knoll that Aragorn would stand on much later.

The Wainriders came on in little order, still exultant and singing songs of victory, seeing as yet no signs of any defenders to oppose them, until they found that the road into Gondor turned south into a narrow land of trees under the shadow of the dark Ephel Dúath, where an army could march, or ride, in good order only down a great highway. Before them it ran on through a deep cutting...

From Silmarillion:

Of the Rings of Power -- He came in secret, as has been told, to his ancient kingdom of Mordor beyond the Ephel Dúath, the Mountains of Shadow, and that country marched with Gondor upon the east. There above the valley of Gorgoroth was built his fortress vast and strong, Barad Dûr, the Dark Tower; and there was a fiery mountain in that land that the Elves named Orodruin. Indeed for that reason Suron had set there his dwelling long before, for he used the fire that welled there from the heart of the Earth in his sorceries and in his forging; and in the midst of the Land of Mordor he had fashioned the Ruling Ring.

Now Sauron prepared war against the Eldar and the Men of Westernesse, and the fires of the Mountain were wakened again. Wherefore seeing the smoke of Orodruin from afar, and perceiving that Sauron had returned, the Númenoreans named that mountain anew Amon Amarth, which is Mount Doom.

The Númenoreans indeed set a guard upon the land of Mordor, but none dared dwell there because of the terror of the memory of Sauron, and because of the Mountain of Fire that stood nigh to Barad Dúr; and the valley of Gorgoroth was filled with ash.

And of course, Mordor was not all dreary and ashy.

Book VI, The Land of Shadow -- Neither [Sam] nor Frodo knew anything of the great slave-worked fields away south in this wide realm, beyond the fumes of the Mountain by the dark sad waters of Lake Núrnen; nor of the great roads that ran away east and south to tributary lands...

...and the slaves of Mordor he released and gave to them all the lands about Lake Núrnen to be their own.

From the Map:

We can see that Mordor is divided into two great regions, hemmed in on three sides by high mountains.

  • In the northwestern corner is the Plateau of Gorgoroth. This is the ashy & noisome, working class province where all the Orc armies live and train.
  • In the south and east lies the broad breadbasket of Mordor, the great Plains of Núrnen. We can see that Lake Núrnen lies at the bottom of an endorheic basin. These are terminal or sink lakes where the water does not flow to the ocean, but rather the volume of water that flows in from its rivers balances against evaporation and seepage. We might also suspect that agriculture of the type practiced in Mordor, all machines and wheels and reeking mechanisms of various kinds, takes up quite a lot of water from the few rivers that traverse the Plain. Of the rivers of Núrnen, we know there are four and they are unnamed and they flow, two from the north and two from the south, and empty into the four quarters of the Lake. If it weren't for the nature of the labour scheme in Sauron's empire, this would probably be a nice quiet and lovely land in which to dwell.

Map kept at the Bodlein:

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