Eryn Lasgalen

Map of Eryn Lasgalen, showing the divisions established by Celeborn and Thranduil after the War of the Ring

A later name given to the broad forest that had been known as 'Mirkwood' during most of the Third Age. This forest had not always been the dark and shadowed place that it became; in earlier times it had been Eryn Galen, Greenwood the Great, a place of green and light, and home to Silvan Elves.

In about the year III 1050, Sauron (in his guise as the Necromancer) chose a hill in the south of the forest as his new stronghold. From that dark place of Dol Guldur, a Shadow spread through the trees and drove the Elves away far northward. This darkening gave the old Greenwood a new name; it came to be called 'Mirkwood', and would lie under Shadow for some two thousand years until the Third Age reached its end.

After Sauron was defeated in the War of the Ring, the people of Lórien threw down Dol Guldur and cleansed the forest. With the Shadow driven out, the Elves met on the New Year under its boughs. There Celeborn and Thranduil chose a new name for the forest, Eryn Lasgalen, the 'Wood of Greenleaves', that recalled its ancient name of Eryn Galen.

At that time the wood was divided into three parts, with Thranduil retaining the northern forest as his Woodland Realm, while Celeborn took the southern parts as the new land of East Lórien, and the central woodlands were set aside for the Woodmen and Beornings who dwelt in middle regions of the wood of Eryn Lasgalen.