Just Where was Rhosgobel?

[Valandil]

Rhosgobel - the home of Radagast. Where was it? Precisely?

It seems to have been on the edge of Mirkwood, somewhere on the south of that great forest.

One Tolkien source I just read places it between the Carrock and the Old Forest Road, along the western edge and close to the southern edge. But that location is no place NEAR the southern edge.

Looking at Mirkwood Forest on the maps, I could reasonably guess any of four distinct locations - and that it might be in the proximity of any of these:
1. Directly across from where the Gladden flows into Anduin.
2. On the west side of the narrowest crossing of the Forest - directly across the south edge of Mirkwood's "East Bight".
3. At the point where Mirkwood projects its furthest west in the southern part - placing it extremely close to Dol Guldor.
4. At the southern-most tip of Mirkwood.

Which of these do you favor, and why? Or - what alternatives do you suggest, and why?

[Alcuin]

I don’t know exactly where Rhosgobel is. I thought I did; now I don’t.

I Googled to get a map. (I thought I was being clever.) That’s when the trouble started.


I re-used the map from Encyclopedia of Arda’s entry on Rhosgobel to build the maps in this post. The Carrock is circled. The little X near it is about where Beorn’s house is. Dol Guldur is near the bottom. That’s the Old Forest Road heading off to the east through Mirkwood. The River Gladden enters the Anduin from the west about halfway down the map, and the East Bight of Mirkwood (the “Narrows of the Forest”) is just across from it and the Gladden Fields, where Gollum found the Ring.

You can see that Encyclopedia of Arda has marked two positions. Most everyone else has only the northern position B marked.


http://www.zarkanya.net/Tolkien/pix/rhosgobel1.png


Encyclopedia of Arda does a very good job going through the details of comparing position A and position B. Essentially, the arguments revolve around whether Radagast’s home was along “the Southern borders of Mirkwood”, as Gandalf reminds Beorn of Radagast in The Hobbit, or “in the forest borders between the Carrock and the Old Road”, as written in a note to “The Istari” in Unfinished Tales. And as I said, every other website I checked has only the northern position, B marked; I think this is because Karen Wynn Fonstad did in Atlas of Middle-earth. (I believe I recall that Fonstad wanted to publish a second edition with corrections, additions, and amplifications, but the publishers didn’t want to “confuse” matters by printing a second edition. So there are errors in AoMe, and no one knows where they are.)

My initial reaction was that Rhosgobel is in “Southern … Mirkwood”, south of the Old Forest Road. Of your list, Valandil, my first choice would have been, 3. At the point where Mirkwood projects its furthest west in the southern part - placing it extremely close to Dol Guldor, because that’s what I remember thinking when I read first The Hobbit long, long ago (before Tolkien died); and my second choice would have been, 4. At [or near] the southern-most tip of Mirkwood. But then I read all these other opinions, and I’m not longer so certain.

However, I recall that Gandalf told Bilbo that Beorn “calls things like that carrocks, and this one is the Carrock because it is the only one near his home and he knows it well.” (“Queer Lodgings”) So there must be other carrocks in the Anduin, and in fact it looks as if there’s an even bigger one about 100 miles south of Beorn.

http://www.zarkanya.net/Tolkien/pix/rhosgobel2.png


Maybe it’s an island, maybe it’s a carrock: who knows? But if it’s a carrock, perhaps that’s the carrock to which Tolkien refers when he wrote that Rhosgobel was “in the forest borders between the Carrock and the Old Road”. It’s a lot more prominent that Beorn’s Carrock, at least on the map.

http://www.zarkanya.net/Tolkien/pix/rhosgobel3.png

To thoroughly confuse the situation, here are all the possibilities.

1. Directly across from where the Gladden flows into Anduin.
2. On the west side of the narrowest crossing of the Forest - directly across the south edge of Mirkwood's "East Bight".
3. At the point where Mirkwood projects its furthest west in the southern part - placing it extremely close to Dol Guldor.
4. At the southern-most tip of Mirkwood.

1. Encyclopedia of Arda’s preferred position.
2. Everybody else’s preferred position, at least on the web.
3. A possibility if Tolkien referred to more than one “Carrock”

http://www.zarkanya.net/Tolkien/pix/rhosgobel4.png

A last thing to consider. Radagast seems to be living in Rhosgobel when Gandalf was speaking to Beorn. By the time Elrond’s messengers arrived Rivendell, he seems to have been driven out; in any case, he wasn’t home. Do you suppose Sauron drove him out of his home after the White Council drove Sauron out of Mirkwood? Might they have used Rhosgobel as a base of operations, or at least a place from which to launch some of their work against Sauron? If they did, then Sauron would have good reason to try to force Radagast out. It would also explain why Radagast was so squirrelly about Nazgûl when he met Gandalf on Midsummer’s Day south of Bree:

[H]e looked about him, as if the hedges might have ears. “Nazgûl,” he whispered. “The Nine are abroad again. … They have taken the guise of riders in black.”

… And with that he mounted and would have ridden straight off.

(See this post on strange behavior of embedded images.)

[Nerwen]

Wow. Gotta get out my map of Middle-earth that I made as a junior project and put Rhosgobel on it. Thanks, Valandil and Alcuin

Susie

[Alcuin]

Originally Posted by Nerwen

Wow. Gotta get out my map of Middle-earth that I made as a junior project and put Rhosgobel on it.

Augh! We don’t know where it is. Tell us what you think, Nerwen: At least tell us where you mark it on your map.

[Valandil]

Earniel just pointed out the possibility that Radagast had more than one place to stay.

I'm going to extend that thought a little further. What if there was more than one "Rhosgobel"? Problem solved... Radagast had a Rhosgobel in EACH of those places.

Might even be equivalent to something else in the modern world. The President of the US has a tricked-out plane known as Air Force One. But in actuality, whatever airplane a sitting US President is on, is officially "Air Force One".

Maybe it's the same for Radagast. Whichever of his places he happens to be at - is Rhosgobel!