Húrin
Húrin Thalion; the Steadfast; the Lord of Dor-lómin
Name and Lineage
Húrin Thalion, “the Steadfast”, the elder of the two sons of Galdor of the House of Hador, lord of the marches of Dor-lómin; husband of Morwen, father of Túrin, Lalaith and Nienor; elder brother of Huor (whose son Tuor became Tuor of Gondolin).
The Nirnaeth Arnoediad
His fame and doom were made in the greatest battle of the age. At the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, when the union was betrayed and the host of the Noldor destroyed, Húrin and Huor stood alone with the rearguard upon the mound of the Fen of Serech, fighting until the top of the hill was ringed with the slain. Then the orcs took them; and Húrin was brought alive before Morgoth, who promised to free him for the “treason” — Huor had fallen.
The Curse of Morgoth
Morgoth then bound and tormented Húrin, demanding that he reveal the site of the hidden city of Gondolin; and when Húrin “mocked him”
— he cursed Húrin, Morwen and their children with the doom of Angband: “the shadow of my thought shall lie upon them… they shall be unfulfilled” — the “Curse of Morgoth” sits upon Túrin and all the children of Húrin, driving the doom-laden tale. And Morgoth, in his awful cruelty, set Húrin upon a high seat of stone in the valley of Angband, that he might watch the ruin of his kin across the years.
The Long Captivity and the Release
For twenty-eight years — for long years Húrin sat bound, and by Morgoth’s malice he saw (through his) the sorrows of his son from far; the tale of the Narn unfolds before him. At last, when the deed of his children was complete (Túrin’s fate had run), Morgoth loosed Húrin from his torment and sent him away broken; the wanderer came at last to the wreck of Nargothrond, stood upon the hill before the dragon-gate, and gathered the Nauglamír. Then he went toward Doriath and brought the news of his children’s deaths to the king: he cried aloud in Menegroth, and being beyond grief passed at last away into the west (the accounts differ in the details). Húrin, “the Steadfast”, the last free lord of the House of Hador, died broken in the wreck of the age — “the greatest of the Men of the Elder Days” (the Quenta’s epithet for his line).
Significance
Húrin is the Job of Middle-earth: the man whom Morgoth broke to prove that the gods’ children curse themselves — his defiance and his endurance set the standard of the Edain’s heroism, and the whole “Tale of the Children of Húrin” — Tolkien’s most tragic work — is told as its consequence. In the nirnaeth he is the last face of Men’s valour against the ancient terror.