The White Council’s brief respite
The conclusion is that the White Council’s assault of TA 2941 only delivers a temporary respite from the Shadow. As it says in the Silmarillion, “and Mirkwood for a brief while (emphasis mine) was made wholesome again”.
Sauron’s minions are not permanently driven out. They are not even driven away for that long: only 10 years later, three Nazgûl return to Dol Guldur at their master’s behest and “reoccupy” the fortress.
Several decades later during the War of the Ring, Haldir speaks of Dol Guldur to Frodo.
“‘There lies the fastness of Southern Mirkwood,’ said Haldir. ‘It is clad in a forest of dark fir, where the trees strive one against another and their branches rot and wither. In the midst upon a stony height stands Dol Guldur, where long the hidden Enemy had his dwelling. We fear that now it is inhabited again, and with power sevenfold. A black cloud lies often over it of late.'” The Lord of the Rings, Lothlórien.
Whatever the White Council destroyed has not only been rebuilt, but reinforced.
Built on sorcerous powers?
My conclusion is that some residual power embedded in Dol Guldur during its construction prevented the White Council from doing its work completely.
We can immediately eliminate the Ring from our calculations. Unlike Barad-dûr, Dol Guldur can in no way be underpinned with its power. Dol Guldur wasn’t founded until 1050 or 1100 of the Third Age — more than a thousand years after Sauron lost the Ring to Isildur.
This is evident in the respective fates of each:
Once the Ring is itself destroyed, the underpinnings of Barad-dûr are gone and the whole edifice collapses in on itself.
Dol Guldur, because it is not constructed in the same way, survives a little longer until Galadriel finally puts an end to it.
What are the other possibilities then?
* Sauron. The Dark Lord invests a power other than the Ring’s power into Dol Guldur. Sauron needed no Ring to corrupt Felagund’s tower on Tol Sirion during the First Age and transform it into Tol-in-Gaurhoth. He might have done the same again in creating Dol Guldur. But would this imbued power survive Sauron’s demise?
* The Nazgûl. Perhaps they used their own sorcery to establish Dol Guldur’s strength. The Ringwraiths do seem to generally precede Sauron’s return. They certainly pave the way for his return to Mordor. I suspect this is more likely, but their leader, the Witch King, is destroyed at the Pelennor Fields, and the others do not survive their master. In this aspect it features the same problem as above.
Who was in charge?
Neither of seem to provide a complete solution. What of some other long-lived sorcerous lieutenant, then?
If you’re thinking that no human lieutenant — even a Black Numenorean — could be so long lived as to have been involved in the original construction of Dol Guldur, you’re right. Dol Guldur is almost 2,000 years old.
Even our standard for Black Numenoreans, the Mouth of Sauron, only entered the service of Mordor “when the dark tower first rose again”. His age is, at best, around the same as Aragorn. That’s probably being optimistic too.
Even Mouth of Sauron was almost certainly too young to have been in charge of laying the foundation stones of Dol Guldur’s second incarnation (after the White Council assault), let alone its first one all those years ago. It’s out of the question.
Still, we do know the Mouth of Sauron became a powerful and feared sorceror in his own right. Dol Guldur might have been left in the command of a renegade like the Mouth of Sauron. That Minas Morgul had its own probably non-Nazgûl lieutenant (Gothmog) provides limited support for this.
And this, combined with Lúthien’s illustration that this sorcerous mastery can be yielded or ceded, might present one possible solution to our puzzle.
Although it’s almost unimaginable that Sauron would cede any of his power voluntarily, the Nazgûl would at the order of their master. Tolkien notes that they are “quite incapable of acting against his will”.
One possible scenario
So, I suggest this scenario:
The Nazgûl establish Dol Guldur in the early Third age, using their sorcery to create a stronghold for Sauron and pave the way for his return.
Almost two thousand years later the White Council drives Sauron from Dol Guldur. They are only able to superficially demolish the fortress because its sorcerous nature resists their efforts.
When Dol Guldur is re-occupied in 2951, Sauron sends three Nazgûl. He places Khamûl the Easterling in command of the fortress and its strength is rebuilt. This much is fact as it is recorded in Unfinished Tales.
During the War of the Ring, the Witch King is destroyed at Pelennor Fields. It’s a grievous blow against Sauron. At his bidding, Khamûl yields the mastery of Dol Guldur to its Black Numenorean lieutenant in order to become the new Black Captain. He then joins his fellow Ringwraiths at the Morannon to watch the approach of Aragorn’s army.
After the overthrow of Sauron and the destruction of the Ring, Celeborn destroys the host of Dol Guldur and Galadriel wrests the mastery of the tower from its commander and razes it once and for all.
For sure, there are some leaps of logic here. So let’s consider whether there are more prosaic reasons why the White Council might have left Dol Guldur able to be rebuilt.
* Phyrric victory. Phyrrus, the Greek king of Epirus won some legendary battles against the Romans, but suffered extraordinary losses at the same time and was unable to capitalise on his advantage. But there’s no indication this was the case for the White Council — Sauron effectively abandoned Dol Guldur, giving way before the advance of the Council’s forces.
* Treachery. We know that Saruman at this point was working to obtain the Ring for himself. A smart (read Machiavellian) Saruman would do just enough to drive Sauron away from the Gladden Fields, but not so much as to tip the balance too far in the White Council’s favour. Thus Saruman might subtly impede the destruction of Dol Guldur. It’s a good alternate explanation if all this magic is too much for you.
Demosthenes has been an incredibly nerdy staff member at TheOneRing.net since 2001. The views (and wacky theories) in this article are his own, and do not necessarily represent those of other TORn staff.
