Dark Lands

The northwestwern parts of the Dark Lands of Middle-earth at the time of the War of the Ring

From the Númenórean perspective during the Second Age, even before the rise of Sauron, the largely unexplored lands eastward of the Sea were a dark and forbidding place. Those wild lands were largely inhabited by dangerous and uncivilised peoples (apart, of course, from those lands where the Elves were still to be found). In Númenor, then, the term 'Dark Lands' came to be used as a reference to faraway Middle-earth beyond the Great Sea, a distant and little-known place visited only by explorers and adventurers.