The proto-geography of the Third Age

[William Cloud Hicklin]

I don't remember the 'later note' you mentioned in which Nogrod is identified with Moria and placed in the Misty Mountains (it's been too long since I've read HoMe VI-IX). Where exactly is it found?

War of the Jewels, p. 201. Pencilled emendations to the old QS manuscript, so that above "Nogrod, the Dwarfmine" is written "Dwarrowdelf;" and then in the margin

Dwarrowdelf Nogrod was afar off in the East in the Mountains of Mist; and Belegost was in Eredlindon south of Beleriand.

And, marked for insertion after "Belegost, the Great Fortress,"

Greatest of these was Khazaddum that was after called in the days of its darkness Moria, and it was far off in the east in the Mountains of Mist; but Gabilgathol was on [the] east side of Eredlindon and within reach of the Elves.

(Khazaddum was already the Dwarvish name of Nogrod in QS as written).

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However, my second suggestion is still intact - that the two mountain ranges were already distinct by the beginning of LotR and that he decided in the 'third phase' to place Nogrod in the Misty Mountains rather than the Blue.

Well, the notion I suppose arises in part from the fact that, when the name first arises in the LR papers, Moria is not envisioned as the route through the mountains; rather, the Co. crosses the mountains by a pass, travels south, and then encounters Moria.

This is perhaps ameliorated by the fact that in the same note the adventures are sequenced Red Pass-Fangorn Forest*-Moria; and it's entirely possible that Tolkien saw Moria as being in the Black > White Mountains, perhaps a distant precusor of the Paths of the Dead.

But if so then why give Moria the established name of Nogrod (Khazad-dum, translated Dwarfmine and Dwarrowdelf), and at least for a time identify the two? Whereas it gives Occam a better shave if Khazad-dum/Moria/Nogrod, for a moment at least, was located in Nogrod's traditional position.

*Fangorn in these August 1939 notes (the beginning of the Third Phase) was seen as lying about the confluence of the Redway (> Silverlode) and the Great River; i.e. conceptually the later position of Lorien.