The Encyclopedia of Arda - an interactive guide to the world of J.R.R. Tolkien
Dates
Slain III 30191
Race
Division
Possibly of the Dúnedain2
Culture
Pronunciation
fo'rlong
Meaning
Unknown3
Titles

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About this entry:

  • Updated 6 December 2018
  • This entry is complete

Forlong

The old Lord of Lossarnach

The Lord of the lands of Lossarnach, the region to the immediate southwest of Minas Tirith, who was famed for his enormous girth (he was referred to as Forlong the Fat). Though he was an old man at the time of the War of the Ring, he rode with two hundred of his men to the aid of the City of Gondor, and lost his life in the Battle of the Pelennor Fields.


Notes

1

We have no date of birth for Forlong, but he is described as 'old and grey-bearded' at the time of the Battle of the Pelennor in III 3019 (The Return of the King V 1, Minas Tirith). This is not enormously informative, but it seems reasonable to say that he was born at least half a century before the War of the Ring (that is, very roughly the year III 2960). Depending on the extent of his Dúnedain ancestry (which would grant him a much longer lifespan) he might conceivably have been born decades earlier than this.

2

As Lord of Lossarnach, a region close to Minas Tirith and the heartland of Gondor, it would be natural to assume that Forlong was descended from the Dúnedain who founded the land. His name, however, comes from traditions that dated back to the time before the settlement of the Dúnedain, and might be taken to imply that he was descended, at least in part, from the original inhabitants of Gondor's lands.

3

Forlong's name is explicitly uninterpretable, coming from the pre-Númenórean tongue used during the Second Age in the lands that would later become Gondor. Before Tolkien used the name for this Lord of Lossarnach, he briefly considered it as one of the aliases of Gandalf in different parts of Middle-earth. At one point Gandalf's name in the south would have been Forlong, before that was amended to Fornold, and ultimately became the quite different Incánus in the published book. Nonetheless the name Forlong survived in the person of Forlong the Fat, Lord of Lossarnach.

Indexes:

About this entry:

  • Updated 6 December 2018
  • This entry is complete

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