"
in the Mounds of Mundburg under mould they lie
with their league-fellows, lords of Gondor."
From the "Song of the Mounds of Mundburg"
The Return of the King V 6
The Battle of the Pelennor Fields
The grave-mounds made for those who fell defending Minas Tirith during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Minas Tirith's name in the language of the Rohirrim was Mundburg (from Old English mundbeorg, 'guardian-fortress'), and so the graves became known as the Mounds of Mundburg among the people of Rohan. Exactly where the grave-mounds stood is open to question, though they likely lay on the very Fields of Pelennor where the battle had been fought.
The roll of the dead was a long one, including many lords of Gondor, but among the Rohirrim that lay in the Mounds were listed Déorwine, Dúnhere, Fastred, Grimbold, Guthláf, Harding, Herefara, Herubrand and Horn. Most famous of all the Rohirrim to fall in that battle was King Théoden himself, but he was not buried among the Mounds of Mundburg. Instead, his body was borne back to Edoras, and he was laid to rest among the Kings' mounds in the Barrowfield there.
Notes
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We're not told exactly where the mounds were located, but it would have been appropriate for the mounds to have been raised somewhere on the Pelennor Fields where their occupants had been slain in battle. Indeed, all of the land surrounding Minas Tirith was enclosed within the wall of the Rammas Echor and thus formed part of the Pelennor Fields, and in that sense the Mounds of Mundburg must have stood somewhere on the Pelennor. In the elegy for the slain entombed within the mounds, we have our sole reference to any kind of location: 'in Gondor by the Great River' (The Return of the King V 6, The Battle of the Pelennor Fields). Minas Tirith itself was some miles from the Great River. We might take this to mean that the mounds lay in the eastern part of the Pelennor, close to the river (though since this text comes from a poem said to have been written long after the event, it is perhaps best not to take its words absolutely literally).
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- Updated 15 March 2024
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