The Mountain

A shortened name for the Lonely Mountain, Erebor, beneath which the Dwarves made their Kingdom under the Mountain. The Mountain was a single peak rising northward of the Long Lake and looking over the surrounding lands (hence its name of the 'Lonely Mountain'). In a deep valley on its southern side traders and craftsmen among Men had made their own town, named Dale, and at the close of the Third Age, Dwarves and Men dwelt together in friendship and prosperity.

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The history of the Mountain had not always been so peaceful. Dwarves of Durin's Folk first came there in III 1999, a thousand years before the end of the Third Age, and Thráin I became the first King under the Mountain. Thráin's realm did not last for long, and his son Thorin I¹ chose to abandon the Mountain and instead rule Durin's Folk in the Grey Mountains to the west.

It was not until some three hundred years later that the Dwarves returned to the Mountain. Driven from the Grey Mountains by Dragons, King Thrór brought his people back to Erebor, and it was in his time that the Kingdom under the Mountain truly prospered. It was during this period, too, that the township of Dale was founded in the Mountain's great southern valley. Thrór enjoyed a long rule beneath the Mountain, but that rule came to a sudden and violent end when the Dragon Smaug descended on Erebor and drove out the Dwarves.

The survivors of Smaug's sack wandered unhappily across Middle-earth, meeting perils and tragedies along the way, and fighting the dreadful War of the Dwarves and the Orcs. Eventually Thrór's grandson Thorin Oakenshield, who had been a young Dwarf when Smaug drove his people from their home, became determined to reclaim the Mountain. There followed the Quest of Erebor that saw the Dragon defeated and Erebor reclaimed.

Thorin himself was slain in the Battle of Five Armies that brought his Quest to an end, and his heirs Fíli and Kíli were also lost in that battle. So Thorin's direct line had come to an end, and the new King under the Mountain was Thorin's cousin Dáin Ironfoot of the Iron Hills. It was under Dáin that the Kingdom under the Mountain returned to its former wealth and glory. The kingdom's peace was broken during the War of the Ring, when Sauron's forces besieged the Dwarves and their allies within the Mountain for a time, but the invaders were eventually defeated. Dáin was slain in that fighting, and was succeeded by his son Thorin III Stonehelm, who ruled the Mountain through the opening years of the Fourth Age.