Misty Mountains

It's not my pick, though.

My pick is the Misty Mountains, which are represented in this instance.

It's Matuketuki Valley in Otago, New Zealand.

I would like to go to there.

I just, I just like that shot, the first shot when in the prologue, you know, Gollum has gotten the ring and you just like, fuck a drone shot.

We're at a helicopter and we're like flying along and you see the mist coming down.

It could be nowhere else but the Misty Mountains.

Incredible.

With them he set out to his own lasting astonishment on a morning of April, it being then the year 1341 Shire Reckoning, on a quest of great treasure, the dwarf hordes of the kings under the mountain beneath Erebor and Dale, far off in the east.

the quest was successful and the dragon that guarded the horde was destroyed yet though before all was won the battle of five armies was fought and thorin was slain and many deeds of renown were done the matter would scarcely have concerned later history or earned more than a note in the long annals of the third age but for an accident by the way The party was assailed by orcs in a high pass of the Misty Mountains as they went towards Wilderland, and so it happened that Bilbo was lost for a while in the black orc mines deep under the mountains, and there, as he groped in vain in the dark, he put his hand on a ring lying on the floor of a tunnel.

He put it in his pocket.

It seemed then like mere luck.

Um, but you know, on one hand, it seems that Bilbo finds it perhaps because the ring wants to get away.

It wants to get out and somehow back to its master.

But the fact that Bilbo finds it specifically, so the ring wants someone to find it, to bring it out from under the misty mountains after all these centuries.

uh but the ring uh the ring's will is not the only will in play uh that there are perhaps other wills that are exerting influence on the whole situation and when bilbo finds it uh it's very much intentional because uh that that a hobbit should find it because a hobbit is not the same as perhaps a man or even an elf finding the ring Um, so, you know, I won't spend too much time kind of getting into the details of, uh, paragraphs one through seven here.

It told him that his chieftain Aragorn needed him in Rohan, so he gathered as many of his kinsmen as he could at short notice, that was about thirty, and seemingly went via Rivendell to pick up Elrohir and Aladan, Elrond's twin sons and friends of Aragorn, who were apparently keen to go to war, and set off south to Rohan.

They came across Aragorn in the company of Théoden, near Dol Baran, the southernmost hill of the Misty Mountains, on the 6th of March.

Théoden was heading back to Helm's Deep after the encounter with Saruman at Isengard.

This is that encounter.

He brought help over the mountains out of Lorien.

Rivendell sits outside Arnor, certainly Lothlorien does, but he fights for it anyway, bringing elves from the other side of the Misty Mountains.

The Stoors leave the Angle because of the wars and the dread of Angmar and apparently the weather, with some settling beside the Gladden, becoming a riverside people of fishers.

Deagle and Smeagol, of course, belong to that fishing people.

As well she might.

Sauron was just to the east in Dol Guldur, southern Mirkwood, until he relocated to Mordor, and just to the west were the Misty Mountains, filled with goblins and wargs and worse.

And Lorien itself was not a mighty fortress or particularly defendable position.

It was a forest.

I'm going to read the little blurb.

When the Lord of the Nazgul came north and founded the kingdom of Angmar, he claimed the mountain fortress of Karndum to be its capital in the northern reaches of the Misty Mountains.

To his service, he gathered all manner of orcs and evil men.

For some reason, none of the evil men actually came and fought in his army, ruling over his newly founded kingdom and became known as the Witch-King of Angmar.

So here's the first stretch up to the fall of Weathertop.

Eriador was of old the name of all the lands between the Misty Mountains and the Blue.

In the South it was bounded by the Greyflood and the Glanduin that flows into it above Tharbad.

At its greatest, Arnor included all Eriador except the regions beyond the Lune and the lands east of Greyflood and Loudwater, in which lay Rivendell and Hollin.

After Eärendur, owing to dissensions among his sons, their realm was divided into three: Arthedain, Rhudaur, and Cardolan.

Arthedain was in the north west and included the land between Brandywine and Lune, and also the land north of the Great Road as far as the Weather Hills.

Rhudaur was in the north east and lay between the Ettendales, the Weather Hills, and the Misty Mountains, but included also the angle between the Hoarwell and the Loudwater.

Cardolan was in the south, its bounds being the Brandywine, the Greyflood, and the Great Road.