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Dates
Tuor may have acquired the axe as early as I 491;1 it was apparently lost in the Downfall of Númenor in II 3319
Race
Division
Family
Pronunciation
dra'mborleg
Meaning
Other names

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About this entry:

  • Updated 27 June 2012
  • This entry is complete

Dramborleg

The great Axe of Tuor

Tuor the father of Eärendil was said to favour a great axe over a sword, and he called his axe Dramborleg, which means 'Thudder-Sharp' in the language of the Gondolindrim. Tuor must have fought with it in the Fall of Gondolin, but it escaped the downfall of that city, and his descendants took it to Númenor as an heirloom. It survived through most of the Second Age, but was destroyed in the Downfall of Númenor near that Age's end.


Notes

1

We don't know exactly when Tuor acquired Dramborleg, but by the age of sixteen he was said to be able to wield an axe, the traditional weapon of the Sindar who fostered him, and of his own father Huor. After his capture by Lorgan he was held as a thrall for three years, but in I 491 he managed to escape: '...he turned suddenly on his guards and slew them with an axe, and fled into the hills.' (Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin in Unfinished Tales). It's tempting to see this axe as the origin of Dramborleg, but in context it seems more likely to have been a simple wood axe than a weapon, and it is never mentioned again. Perhaps more plausibly, he would have taken his great battle-axe from the armouries of Gondolin, which would date it after his coming to that city in I 495.

Indexes:

About this entry:

  • Updated 27 June 2012
  • This entry is complete

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