11

While the Witch-king established Angmar and battled the 3 kingdoms of Arnor, what were the other 8 Nazgûl doing? Were they helping him or did they have other tasks? It seems like they could have been a great help, being super scary and all.

3
  • 6
    I'm gonna guess... LAN party.
    – Valorum
    Commented Jun 18, 2018 at 23:51
  • Perhaps scaring people in the other theaters of the war? The war was fought on 6 major fronts. scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/161326/… Divide 9 nazgul among 6 major theaters of war and you only have 1.5 creepy undead critters per theater.
    – RichS
    Commented Jun 19, 2018 at 6:38
  • 1
    @RichS you seem to be talking about a different war.
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Jun 19, 2018 at 6:53

1 Answer 1

6

There doesn't seem to be much information about this. There are two relevant entries in "The Tale of Years":

  • TA1300: ... The Nazgûl reappear. The Chief of these comes north to Angmar.
  • TA1980: The Witch-king comes to Mordor and there gathers the Nazgûl.

The war between Arthedain and Angmar is described in some detail in The Lord of the Rings, Appendix A, parts (iii) and (iv), but I can't see any mention of the other eight Nazgûl. Therefore I think we can conclude that they were not involved here. We might speculate that they were active elsewhere, stirring up other enemies of the West (e.g. the Wainriders, who began their attacks on Gondor in TA1851). The entry for Nazgûl in The Complete Guide to Middle-earth (usually a reliable source) says that:

The other eight remained in the East until about 1640, when they secretly entered Mordor and began to prepare that realm for Sauron...

This makes sense (the Great Plague struck in TA1636, weakening the watch on Mordor), but I can't find canon evidence to support it.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.