The ‘Real’ Aglarond

‘There would be an endless pilgrimage of Dwarves, merely to gaze at them…None of Durin’s race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there…We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them.”

Gimli the Dwarf.

Aglarond. The Glittering Caves.

Here is a plan of the ‘real’ Aglarond made famous in the Lord of the Rings and the Rose Cottage dig.

During the battle of Helm’s Deep in the book The Two Towers, the Glittering Caves became a place of sanctuary for Theoden’s people as the forces of Saruman attacked the fortification built below the Hornburg.

The caverns were, ‘…vast and beautiful…[with] chamber after chamber…and still the winding paths lead on into the mountains’ heart’.

Gimli the Dwarf later set about trying to colonise the Glittering Caves.

The above map is taken from The Atlas of Tolkien’s Middle Earth by Karen Wynn Fonstad published by Harper Collins ISBN 026110277X.  In the book there are a number of cave and tunnel ‘surveys’ illustrating the various caverns and underground dwellings mentioned in the Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings including Nargothrond and Menegroth - ‘The Thousand Caves’, Thangorodrim and Thranduil’s Caverns.

I contacted Harper Collins to find out if it would be okay to quote this book in the BB telling them about Aglarond in Rose Cottage. They obviously mis-read my query and told me that permission to name parts of the cave after Lord of the Rings etc had to be sought from the Tolkien estate…Umm, law suits anyone?