Whence dwimmerlaik?

[Morthoron]

I had mentioned I would get back to this. And so I have.

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

Somewhere in my head I have the idea that -dene means 'wood', which means Wormtongue calls Lorien 'the forest of illusions'. It makes you wonder exactly what went on along the borders that kept mortal travellers out of the forest...

Originally Posted by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh

A dene is a wooded valley, so 'vale of sorcery'' or something like it would also be apt. I'm at a loss to see how else someone not familiar with the place could understand it. Its people are ageless and deathless, time passes there at an unpredictable and seemingly arbitrary rate and it contains species of flora not found anywhere else in the known world.

Taken in context with Eomer's earlier inference: ‘Then there is a Lady in the Golden Wood, as old tales tell!’ he said. ‘Few escape her nets, they say. These are strange days! But if you have her favour, then you also are net-weavers and sorcerers, maybe....’ Tolkien is using a folklore motif that goes back to the Epic of Gilgamesh, that of the "perilous wood" (or "enchanted forest" if you prefer a more Disneyish turn of a phrase).

Although it is only implied in the words of Eomer and Wormtongue, there could well have been a "girdle" encircling Lothlorien, as was employed by Galadriel's mentor Melian in Doriath. It is possible, given that the Elvish Rings of Galadriel and Elrond have a power that preserves, and may well protect their enclosures (Elrond could even control the flood of the Bruinen). Something in the collective consciousness of the Rohirrim, reflected in their ancient legends, harkens back to something particularly nasty happening to travelers caught in the clutches of the "Golden Wood".

That at least seems to be the implication Tolkien wishes to infer on behalf of the Rohirrim, and he used just such magical nets and net-weaving in Mirkwood in The Hobbit (the disappearing Elven feast), and more pointedly in the story of Eöl:

And it came to pass that he saw Aredhel Ar-Feiniel as she strayed among the tall trees near the borders of Nan-Elmoth, a gleam of white in a dim land. Very fair she seemed to him, and he desired her; and he set his enchantments about her so that she could not find the ways out, but drew ever nearer to his dwelling in the depths of the woods. --"Of Maeglin", The Silmarillion

Francis Gentry commented that "in the Norse tradition 'crossing the Black Forest' came to signify penetrating the barriers between one world and another," and although Tolkien took that idea and instilled it in his 'Mirkwood':

I speak now from memory: its ancientness seems indicated by its appearance in very early German (11th c.?) as mirkiwidu although the *merkw- stem 'dark' is not otherwise found in German at all (only in O[ld] E[nglish], O[ld] S[axon], and O[ld] N[orse]), and the stem *widu- > witu was in German (I think) limited to the sense of 'timber,' not very common, and did not survive into mod[ern] G[erman]. In O[ld] E[nglish] mirce only survives in poetry, and in the sense 'dark', or rather 'gloomy', only in Beowulf [line] 1405 ofer myrcan mor: elsewhere only with the sense 'murky' > wicked, hellish. It was never, I think, a mere 'colour' word: 'black', and was from the beginning weighted with the sense of 'gloom'. -- Letter 289 to Michael George Tolkien

we can see that Galadriel's domain is not a "mirkiwidu"; however, the distinct timelessness in Lothlorien and its unchanging flora, at variance with the Brownlands and resistant even to the change of seasons (and noted by the Hobbits that they lost all sense of time), could be considered a crossing from the daylight world of the waking Rohirrim to the twilight realm of Faery.

It is not quite a leap to consider that mortals traveling at unawares into the Golden Wood become ensnared and do not come back alive (although it is more likely a case of Elvish archers hidden in their telain than snares of deception); however there are any number of legends, from Rip Van Winkle (borrowed from Greek story of Epimenides), wherein a man is enchanted and wakes again as an old man, or any number of English and Irish legends of men and maidens running afoul of faery circles and never returning, or returning as old men (the Irish legend of Niahm and Oisin, or St. Patrick and Oisin, for instance).

I suppose one would have to consider what penalty would be levied by Galadriel if a mortal came unbidden into Lothlorien. Certainly not a by your leave situation.