Cracks of Doom

The Cracks of Doom were located in the Sammath Naur, the Chambers of Fire, a long cave with a high roof high up on the cone of Mount Doom on the plain of Gorgoroth in the land of Mordor.

From a dark entrance in the eastern side of Mount Doom, the door of the Sammath Naur, a long cave led inside until the great fissure of the Cracks of Doom cut across the floor and walls of the cave a short way from the door. A road led from the west gate of Barad-dûr, the Dark Tower of Sauron, to the door of the Sammath Naur.

Sauron forged the One Ring in the Cracks of Doom in c. Second Age 1600, and put so much of his own force into the Ring that the only way it could be destroyed would be to throw it back into the Cracks of Doom. Such an opportunity came in Second Age 3441 after the Battle of Dagorlad but Isildur kept the Ring for himself, against the counsel of Elrond and Cirdan.

It was decided in the Council of Elrond that the One Ring must be brought to the Cracks of Doom to be destroyed. Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee reached the Cracks of Doom on 25 March, Third Age 3019. It was there that Frodo decided to keep the Ring and put it on his finger and where Gollum bit off the finger with the Ring and fell with it into the fiery chasm destroying the Ring.

• Sammath Naur is a Sindarin name that translates to "Chambers of Fire". Sammath is the collective plural of the word sam believed to mean "room, chamber", cf. Quenya sambë. Note that in the earlier Etymologies the Noldorin reflex of sambë was given as tham. The latter word (naur) means "fire".

The name Cracks of Doom also sometimes just Crack of Doom is a wordplay on "cracke of Doome" (Macbeth; IV i 117) meaning the crack/peal of thunder or the sudden sound of the last trumpet that announces the Last Day. Here, Tolkien uses "crack" to mean "fissure". Tolkien stated that he suspected he derived the idea for this sense of the phrase from a book by Algernon Blackwood, which he had read many years prior.

Although Tolkien could no longer recall the name or specifics of the story, it has been suggested that the book in question is Blackwood's The Education of Uncle Paul, in which two children take the titular character to see "a tiny little crack between Yesterday and To-morrow", and slip through it.

2001-3: The Lord of the Rings (film series)

Elrond is seen leading Isildur to the Cracks of Doom and urging him to throw it into the fire. In the films it appears as a doorway with a long bridge that ends with a narrow cliff, with lava below. Gollum and Frodo fight at the Cracks of Doom before both falling (Frodo was rescued by Sam) while in the book Gollum falls by himself.

2017: The Lord of the Rings Online:

A flashback depicting the creation of The One Ring shows a great ring-forge of Sauron inside Sammath Naur. The location is not accessible to the player and is visited only once again, during a Session Play depicting the destruction of the Ring, in which the player controls Gollum.

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