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Map Middle-earth

Plain · Rhovanion

Brown Lands

Dead country on the east bank of Anduin, said to have been the gardens of the Entwives

Appears in
The Lord of the Rings
Region
Rhovanion
Brown Lands on the map of Middle-earth

The Brown Lands lie on the east bank of the Great River, south of Mirkwood and Dol Guldur and north of the gray hills of Emyn Muil, facing the Wold of Rohan across the water. The Fellowship saw them for days from the boats: long dreary slopes with no tree or bush, the ground looking scorched.

Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin that the Entwives crossed the Anduin and made gardens in the lands that are now the Brown Lands, growing grain and orchards and teaching Men to farm. When the Ents went to look for them after long years apart, they found only a waste. He says the region was burned in war in the Second Age, and that the Entwives were never found again.

Nothing lived there in the War of the Ring. On the map it works as a gap: the Anduin runs for many miles with hostile emptiness on one side and the empty Wold on the other, with no settlement between Lothlorien and the hills above Rauros.

Events at this place

  1. TA 3019, February 18 · The Lord of the Rings

    The Fellowship passes the Brown Lands

    Rowing south from Lothlorien in February, the Company saw the bare eastern shore for days before reaching the Emyn Muil.

Frequently asked questions

Where are the Brown Lands?

On the eastern bank of the Anduin between southern Mirkwood and the Emyn Muil, across the river from the Wold of Rohan.

Were the Brown Lands the gardens of the Entwives?

Treebeard says so. He tells Merry and Pippin the Entwives tended gardens there until the land was laid waste in war, and they were never found again.