# Gardens of Dorwinion??



## reem (Jan 30, 2003)

there is this passage on page 166:
"But this wine, it would seem, was the heady vintage of the great gardens of Dorwinion...".
this is when the Wood-elf buttler and the chief or gaurds get drunk and bilbo start his escape plan for the dwarves (the barrel incident).
where is this Dorwinion, and what can you tell me about it?
reem


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## Heathertoes (Jan 30, 2003)

If you look at a map of middle-earth, Dorwinion is just north-west of the sea of Rhun, although I don't think it's marked. I'm pretty sure it's never mentioned again.


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## Jon (Feb 18, 2003)

its the realm of the dorwinions, easternmost of the northmen. i imagine it to be a bit like yugoslavia or bulgaria or romania (in an olde worlde sense, of course)


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## Ardamir the Blessed (Feb 17, 2004)

*Location of Dorwinion*

Dorwinion can be seen in this map by Pauline Baynes.


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## Ithrynluin (Feb 17, 2004)

I think it's a bit strange that there would be trade (assuming that's how they obtained the wine?) between the Elves of Mirkwood (perhaps through the Dale men as mediators) and the people of Dorwinion, since the latter are probably Easterlings who are unfriendly to the Western world. Hmm...


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## jallan (Feb 17, 2004)

In _The Lays of Beleriand_ (HoME 3), “The Lay of the Children of Húrin”, Commentary on the _Prologue_ and _Part I ‘Túrin’s Fostering’_ in a footnote to a comment on the wine from Dor-winion which appears in that work, Christopher Tolkien notes:


> _Dorwinion_ is marked on the decorated map by Pauline Baynes, as a region on the North-western shores of the Sea of Rhûn. It must be presumed that this, like other names on that map, was communicated to her by my father (see _Unfinished Tales_ p. 261, footnote), but its placing seems surprising.


I think Christopher Tolkien’s puzzlement is because one might expect an excellent wine-growing area to be farther south. But his puzzlement also indicates he knows nothing more about it than its mention in _The Hobbit_ and its appearance on the Pauline Baynes map.

In any case, even if those who made the wine were not particularly friendly to the folk of Esgaroth, hostility between people often does not stand in the way of trade when there is a profit to be made. Also, at the time of _The Hobbit_ Sauron was still dwelling in Dol Guldur under the alias of _the Necromancer_ and there need then have been no great hostility between the folk of Esgaroth and whatever Easterlings were nearby.


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## reem (Feb 18, 2004)

Does this mean that Dor-winion was populated by the Easterlings?



> Also, at the time of The Hobbit Sauron was still dwelling in Dol Guldur under the alias of the Necromancer and there need then have been no great hostility between the folk of Esgaroth and whatever Easterlings were nearby.



I thought there was an ancient fued between the Eaterlings and those of the West dating back to the First Age! Surely Sauron only served to heated up the problem, but it was always there  
reem


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## Eriol (Feb 18, 2004)

reem said:


> Does this mean that Dor-winion was populated by the Easterlings?
> 
> 
> 
> ...




The folk of Dale and Esgaroth would not have been considered "of the West"; they were probably (there are those who know more about this) relatives of the Rohirrim, "Men of the Twilight" according to Faramir's words in LotR. The hatred of the Easterlings was directed to the Númenóreans and their colonies.

Also, trade conquers most feuds . If they profited by trading with the people of Esgaroth and Dale they would probably have forgotten about any feuds before Sauron appeared to inflame them again.


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## Ardamir the Blessed (Feb 18, 2004)

I don't think the people of Dorwinion were Easterlings. Those came from beyond the Sea of Rhûn. Why do people assume that they were Men? They might have even been Elves, since the people of the Dorwinion in _The Lays of Beleriand_ are probably Elves, and JRRT seems to have borrowed much from the material there and _The Book of Lost Tales_ for _The Hobbit_. Also, the ones who brought the wine of Dorwinion to the Northern lands in _The Lays_ were Dwarves.

In the _Quenta Silmarillion_ of 1937 there is also a Dorwinion in Tol Eressëa. Dorwinion means 'land of wine'; perhaps it was just a common name for a land that provided wine.


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## jallan (Feb 19, 2004)

Reem posted:


> I thought there was an ancient fued between the Eaterlings and those of the West dating back to the First Age! Surely Sauron only served to heated up the problem, but it was always there.


Quite so, for the most part.

But in Europe one finds a long-standing conflict between England and France, including the hundred years war. But French wines were still welcome in England when they could be obtained.

Ardarmir the Blessed posted:


> Dorwinion means 'land of wine'; perhaps it was just a common name for a land that provided wine.


I don’ believe that meaning can be proved. It seems too transparent that _win_ should mean in English ‘wine’. Tolkien’s borrowing from real languages into Elvish are usually far more obscure than that. 

But I agree that the use of the name for three different wine-growing regions makes the meaning you suggest a probable one.


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## Arthur_Vandelay (Apr 18, 2004)

I found this link to be particularly helpful: the essay is about Bladorthin but it includes quite a bit of material on Dorwinion.


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## Maerbenn (May 30, 2004)

jallan said:


> Ardamir the Blessed said:
> 
> 
> > Dorwinion means 'land of wine'; perhaps it was just a common name for a land that provided wine.
> ...


This was posted by *Cian* on another message board:


> According to David Salo, if the name _Dorwinion_ is thought of as an Ilkorin form (the status of Ilkorin is suspect regarding the 'mature' legends) it is perhaps Dor + -winion (*gwinion) 'Land of *gwinin' -- cf. Dor-thonion 'Land of *thonin' ('pines'). *Gwinin may be hypothetically from a root WIN-, whose similarity to English 'wine' Latin 'vinum' Welsh gwin (David adds) is _'unlikely to be coincidental'_ -- yielding the interpretation 'wines' or '(grape-) vines'.
> 
> David further comments that Dorwinion could also perhaps be interpreted as Sindarin, with a meaning like 'winy land' or 'viny land' - if we could assume Sindarin also had the word *_gwin_.


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## Arvedui (Apr 13, 2005)

I was just reading through _HoME V - The Lost Road_, when I discovered this, written last in the _Commentary on the conclution of the Quenta Silmarillion_:


> § 33: The Quays of Avallon. At this time Avallon was a name of Tol Eressëa: 'The Lonely Isle, which was renamed Avallon,' FN II §1
> *The meads of Dorwinion must be in Tol Eressëa*. The name has previously occured as a land of wines in 'the burning South' in the _Lay of the Children of Húrin_, in the wine of Dorwinion in the Hobbit, and as marked on the map made by Pauline Baynes; see III. 26, which needs to be corrected by addition of a reference to this passage.


 So what does that mean? Is Dorwinion really in Tol Eressëa? It would definately seem that this is how Christopher Tolkien concluded from the text his father wrote.


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## Ardamir the Blessed (Apr 13, 2005)

There are three Dorwinions mentioned - one in Eastern Rhovanion, one in Southern Beleriand and one in Tol Eressëa. It may be that Tolkien wanted a conception of a land that provided wine for each of the three regions: Third Age North-Western Middle-earth, Beleriand and the Undying Lands.

The people of Dorwinion in Tol Eressëa were definitely Elves, and probably also in Dorwinion in Beleriand. Therefore it would be quite natural if there were Elves in Dorwinion in Rhovanion too.


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## baragund (Apr 13, 2005)

That's a head scratcher Arvedui, especially since The Hobbit and Quenta Silmarillion were both written within a couple of years of each other so it would be difficult to make the argument that Tolkien's thinking of the name changed all that much between the two works.

I wonder if Tolkien was thinking that "Dorwinion" is a kind of generic term for a wine producing region. I don't know my way around the etymologies too well but it may be worth checking.

edit: As I was mowing the lawn this evening, it struck me that perhaps Tolkien did not make the Dorwinion reference in The Hobbit until the 2nd edition. If that is the case then perhaps his thinking evolved from when he wrote the Lay of the Children of Hurin to when he wrote the Quenta Silmarillion to when he wrote the 2nd edition of The Hobbit.


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## Ardamir the Blessed (Apr 14, 2005)

I checked _The Annotated Hobbit_ - The reference to Dorwinion exists in *all* editions of _The Hobbit_.


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## baragund (Apr 14, 2005)

Rats! So much for that hypothesis...


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