" 'Now friends,' said
Haldir, 'you have entered the Naith of
Lórien, or the Gore, as you would say...' "
The Fellowship of the Ring II 6
Lothlórien
The Sindarin word naith literally meant 'spear-point', but over time it came to be used by the Elves for all manner of sharp or spear-like objects. Most famously, it was used to describe the approximately wedge-shaped land between the rivers Celebrant and Anduin, where the heartlands of Lórien lay.1 Caras Galadhon, the City of the Trees, was found within this narrow land.
Tolkien translates Naith into English using the word 'Gore', a very close equivalent. Just like naith, 'gore' can describe any of a wide range of narrow or pointed items, though it is now so rarely used in that sense that many readers find it almost as obscure as its Elvish equivalent.
Notes
1 |
None of the extant maps of Lórien could realistically be said to match this description. The standard maps from The Lord of the Rings show the Celebrant flowing into the Anduin at approximately a right angle, making the land of Lórien approximately rectangular in shape. From the descriptions Tolkien gives, though, we have to assume that he imagined the rivers meeting at a rather narrower angle than the maps show. |
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- Updated 25 April 2020
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