It’s bugged me for years – there it sits on Tolkien’s map, way off in the corner, with the Sea of Nurnen in the middle of it. I know that it’s supposed to be the Bread Basket of Mordor, where Sauron grows the food for his minions, with a salty undrinkable body of water in the center. This makes Nurn seem like Israel around the Dead Sea. Or Utah around the Great Salt Lake.
But that just makes me wonder more Tolkien was awfully vague about it, but still had to put it on his map. Does the Mordor edition of Sports Illustrated have its anual swimsuit issue shot there? Do they have a thriving tourist industry where the Nazgul travel agents persuade Southrons to travel all the way across Gorgoroth (at high cost) just so they can swim in the water and wonder at the way they don’t sink, all the time being nibbled by brine shrimp, then attacked by brine flies when they come out, and pay ruinous costs to the BathHouses on the shore so they can wash away the crust of saly crystallizing out on their body hairs? Does Nurn have a SaltAire Palace? Does Nurn have a Mordor Miracle Pageant? Is Nurn “Mordor’s Dixie”?
Somewhere in LOTR it mentions caravans of food and supplies and troops coming in from the East and the South (Harad). The Haradrim fought on the side of Sauron.
Nurn was probably like the Aral sea before Stalin diverted away the rivers feeding it, for agricultural purposes: Relatively fresh water, lotsa fish, fertile land around the shores, and thriving communities which took advantage of those facts.
Also, what’s up with Rhun? (Sorry, don’t know how to do the hatted-u). Way out there in the East, no cities or anything… hell, no geographic features save a big river. Did Tolkien ever say what was east of Rhun? Did he offer any notes about their origins? Their culture? (I vaguely recall them being bad guys, but I could be wrong.) Their language?
It’s just sort of tantalizing. “Here’s the biggest non-oceanic body of water, sitting in the middle of nowhere, and I’m not going to say anything about it. Neener neener.”
Seriously – “Nurn” means “lament” in Sindarin. Online references like “the Encyclopedia of Arda” that are generally well-researched and accurate suggest that Nurn was inhabited by slaves of Sauron whose duty it was to provide food and supplies for Sauron’s armies. Nurnen, the great salt lake* in south central Nurn fed by four rivers, is translated as “Sad Water” (presumably -en as a “wetness” suffix rather than a ‘water’ root not othrwise attested AFAIK)
Things you learn while researching other things Dept.:
[ul][li]While Khand is one of those rare Tolkien coinages whose meaning is nowhere given or inferrable (supposedly it’s the Variags’ own term for their land), the Variags are themselves a borrowing/coinage in the Rohirric style: it is the Kievan-Rus adaptation of Old Norse Varangr, “Varangian”, the “land-Vikings” who raided and traditionally conquered Russia, and traditionally provided a mercenary honor guard for the Byzantine Emperors. Barrayaran Vor- is a direct derivation; the pejorative translation ‘thief’ is based on the historical root meaning of ‘raider’. Five ships of the Russian/Soviet Navy were sequentially named Variag.[/li][li]An alternate-universe novel called The Walls of the Universe was written by one Paul Melko. He does not, however, appear to have had Mairon Gorthu as his editor. ;)[/ul][/li]
But there is no known city near its shore which is HQ for the Church of Morgoth Bauglir of Latter-Day Orcs.
This raises an interesting question, similar to ones frequently asked with regard to real-world dictators on the Dope: What would life have been like for human subjects of Sauron? Slavery doesn’t sound pleasant - but there are gradations of slavery, as in everything else. (Not that it’s ever good - but I’d rather be a slave in Rome than in the American South, for example.) Did Sauron have human subjects who weren’t slave? And what of his human allies?
Well, I’m sure the King of Angma started out thinking they were allies in free association. Clearly he and Khamul ("the Black Rasterling who was in charge of Dol Guldur) had some freedom of action. And one suspects that the leaders of Umbar at least thought they were acting freely. It’s a good question.
Anyway, Sauron’s “allies” were, apparently, generally left to govern themselves, though clearly Big S was able to command their armies in some fashion. Slaves, overall, make bad fighting troops. In any event, Sauron was a master of lies, deception, and building up hatred, so it was easy enough for him, years ago, to encourage various folk (Easterlings, Variags, etc, etc) to attack Gondor at various times, and, once that’s done, it gets even easier to re-ignite old feuds. “Remember those upstart Sea-men that kicked your asses 500 years ago? I’m going to crush 'em. Want to get in on the action?”
Slaves, actually living in Mordor, can probably be expected to have been pretty bloody miserable. The place was certainly no Rome where you could expect to live a pretty decent life if you had an easygoing, important owner. I’d expect all slaves were “Property of Sauron” (Why bother with a middleman?) and overseen without any excess of kindness. If the minimal info we have is to be believed, they were mostly used in agriculture, which, one might infer, puts them a lot closer to conditions in the American South, except instead of a variety of plantation owners setting the rules individually and there also being an indigenous population of people who are pretty much like you and are NOT slaves, you are instead “owned” by a fallen angel spirit who rules the entire land with an iron fist and sets orcs on you as overseers. Unpleasant.
Were there “free men” under direct rulership of Mordor? Possible, but I doubt it. I got the impression that Men in Sauron’s service tended to come from “tributary states” instead.
