Bar-erib

The individual elements of the name Bar-erib are relatively easy to translate, but the full meaning is a little more obscure. Bar is usually translated 'home', but is strictly any inhabited place, so 'camp' might be equally suitable here. Erib means 'lonely', but the significance of the word in this context is not completely clear. The name might mean no more than that this encampment was far removed from the main Camp of the Faithful on Amon Rûdh, or it might refer to the loneliness of the Men who inhabited that place. Indeed, both translations may be true to some extent, in that the Men of the camp were lonely because they were isolated from the chief settlement of Dor-Cúarthol.

We might even take it that Bar-erib was a notably lonely posting, as (for example) a watch-post occupied by a single guard. That would certainly help in the interpretation of the 'lonely' in its name, but Bar-erib is listed among the encampments and forts of the Land of Bow and Helm, and so it appears to have been rather more than an individual lookout post.

The exact location of Bar-erib is a matter of conjecture. All we're told is that it lay '...some leagues south of Amon Rûdh...' (Unfinished Tales Part One, II Narn i Hîn Húrin). 'Some leagues' is ambiguous, but it implies a distance of at least three leagues (about fourteen kilometres or nine miles) and probably somewhat more. As an outlying camp, we can reasonably assume that Bar-erib was rather more distant than this minimum value, and on the map shown here, we've assumed a distance of about seven leagues (thirty-four kilometres or twenty-one miles) though this figure is of course highly speculative.

The only other hint that we have is that the summit of Amon Rûdh was visible from Bar-erib. Even a relatively modest hill should be visible from seven leagues' distance, and indeed Bar-erib could have been rather more distant than this, and still have a view of the heights of the hill.