Arnor

The prologue of The Fellowship of the Ring records that the land of the Shire was once granted to the hobbits by a king at Fornost, and behind that line stands a vanished country. Arnor is the North Kingdom, realm of the Men of Westernesse in Eriador, sister to Gondor in the south. In its day it holds the lands from the mountains to the sea, with proud cities, watchtowers on the hills, and kings of the blood of Númenor. By the time of Bilbo Baggins nothing of that remains but ruins and names. Crumbling walls on the downs, the broken tower on Weathertop, and the barrows of forgotten kings mark where the North Kingdom stood, and the Rangers who walk the empty lands are all that is left of its people. Its full history waits in the appendices, but its shadow lies across every mile of the road east of the Shire.