Hills of the Hunters

A range of hills that lay on the western banks of Narog, across the river from the western end of the Andram. They were known in Elvish as Taur-en-Faroth, which is literally 'forest of the hunters' and is often partially translated as the 'High Faroth', implying that the hills were at least partially wooded. On their eastern side, they fell down in a steep cliff to the river, and in that cliff lay an opening that led to caverns running beneath the Hills. At one time the Petty-dwarves were to be found in these caverns, and it was there that Finrod Felagund later founded his underground stronghold of Nargothrond.

It is nowhere explained who the 'Hunters' of the Hills might have been, though it seems almost sure that they would have been Sindar of Beleriand. The Hills' proximity to Nulukkizdîn, the old colony of the Petty-dwarves, raises a disturbing possibility: in chapter 21 of Quenta Silmarillion we're told that in ancient times '...the Elves of Beleriand knew not what [the Petty-dwarves] were, and they hunted them, and slew them...' It may be, then, that the Hills took their name from those Elves who hunted the Petty-dwarves living in the caverns beneath them.