Sea of Núrnen

On the map Núrnen is the only large body of water inside Mordor, set well south and east of Mount Doom in the region called Nurn. The mountains on Mordor's southern side are lower and further apart here, so the country is less barren than Gorgoroth and can be worked. It is also far enough from Mount Doom that the ash falls thin.

Sauron needed that ground. An army of the size he kept could not be fed from ash and slag, and the fields of Nurn around the inland sea produced the grain that supplied the garrisons at the Morannon, in Udûn and on the plateau. The people who worked them were slaves brought from Harad, Khand and Rhûn.

Gondor's charts show little else in that quarter of the Black Land, since almost no man of the north traveled so far inside the mountains and came back to describe it. What was known came from escaped thralls and from the Rangers who watched the southern roads out of Mordor.

After Sauron fell, King Elessar freed them and granted them the land around the Sea of Núrnen as their own, one of the first acts of his reign. The fields went on being tilled, but for the people who tilled them.

Events at this place

1. TA 3019, March 16 · The Lord of the Rings

   The fields of Nurn worked by slaves

   By the War of the Ring the farmland around the inland sea supplied Sauron's armies, tilled by slaves from the lands of his allies.

2. TA 3019, May 2 · The Lord of the Rings

   The slaves freed

   King Elessar released the slaves of Nurn and gave them the country around the Sea of Núrnen to hold for themselves.

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