Aglarond

Aglarond, "the Glittering Caves", was a vast and beautiful network of caverns behind Helm's Deep in the White Mountains of Rohan. Long known to the Rohirrim only as a refuge, it became famous after the War of the Ring as the site of a new Dwarf-colony founded by Gimli.

Description

Aglarond lay within the mountains behind the fortress of the Hornburg, at the head of the Deeping-coomb. Its caverns were of extraordinary beauty: halls and galleries of stone shaped by water over ages, gleaming with veins of mineral, crystal, and many colours that caught and threw back the light of torches. Gimli the Dwarf, who beheld them during the Battle of the Hornburg, described them in rapturous terms as rivalling the fairest works of his people.

History

The caves had served the people of Rohan as a place of refuge in times of war. During the Battle of the Hornburg at Helm's Deep, the defenders sheltered there against the host of Saruman.

After the War of the Ring, Gimli, drawn by the marvel of the place, led a company of Dwarves from Erebor south to settle there. They founded a colony in the Glittering Caves, and Gimli became the Lord of Aglarond. The Dwarves of this colony worked the stone with care and made the caverns a place of craft and wonder, and they wrought, among other things, new gates of mithril and steel for the city of Minas Tirith to replace those broken in the war.