Andram

A long and narrow geological feature of Beleriand, the Andram or 'Long Wall' was a line of hills that ran for about three hundred miles (or nearly five hundred kilometres) from west to east. At its western end, it rose in the hills of Taur-en-Faroth above Nargothrond, and from those hills on the banks of the river Narog, the Andram ran on eastwards, and a little southwards, until it approached the river Gelion on the eastern borders of Beleriand.

At the eastern end of the Andram was a height known as the Ramdal or Wall's End. Beyond the Ramdal the hills of the Andram fell away into the plain, although the land rose again briefly to form the height of Amon Ereb (which stood on the same line was the hills of the Andram, and seems to have had some connection to them).

The Andram divided the higher lands of northern Beleriand from the lowlands to the south, and this fall in the height of the land was seen most dramatically in its effects on the river Sirion. When the course of that great southward-flowing river came to the Long Wall, it carved a tunnel into the feet of the hills, into which the roaring Falls of Sirion carried its waters. The river emerged again at the southern feet of the Andram, rushing out through the Gates of Sirion.

The lowlands on the southern side of the Andram were notable for their forests. In the west, having emerged from its Gates, Sirion met Narog at a place named Nan-tathren, the Land of Willows, famed for the beauty of its riverside trees. Southward still lay the birchwoods of Nimbrethil in Arvernien, whose trees provided the timber for Eärendil's vessel Vingilot. Far more extensive than either of these was the wild Taur-im-Duinath, the Forest between the Rivers, which filled the eastern lowlands beneath the Andram, spreading for hundreds of miles throughout the wide lands between the courses of Sirion and Gelion.