
Between Lonely Bay and the Ered Rhívamar lay the cheerless and forbidding plateau known as the Stone Tundra. In the ancient days of Morgoth's realm this former granite plateau was known as Angband's Threshold, scoured by glaciers, standing high on the northern shoulders of the Iron Mountains. The plateau collapsed in the cataclysm that marked the end of the Elder Days; its foundations were destroyed, its surface sagged and broken, so that it nowhere rose more than a few hundred feet above the sea. Very little soil, and, aside from tundra lichens, very little plantlife was to be found here. Most of it appeared along the brooks that crossed the Gondalf from the mountains on their way to the sea. The surface of the plateau was heavily crevassed, its streams passing through long, narrow valleys gouged out by the ancient glaciers. Much of the cold, cracked, weathered stone was without path or road. Travelers, seeing only the endless barrier of the snowcapped mountains to the east, the ice-covered seas north and west, and the utter desolation of barren rock and stone at their feet, were prone to despair and hopelessness.
The Jäämiehet who dwelt on the Stone Tundra were an extremely hardy breed, and their fortitude of spirit was unmatched. They eked out a meager livelihood along the stony streams and tarns of the region. Their diet consisted primarily of fish and seals won from Lonely Bay, supplemented by the few edible plants along the streambeds and the ever-present snow hares. Jäämies settlements rarely numbered more than fifty inhabitants. Life on the Stone Tundra was harsh and pitiless, and wanderers in need of assistance could expect little more than food and water and the crudest of implements from these villages. In spring, the Jäämiehet made a yearly journey south through the mountains to trade at the Spring Festival (usually held along the shores of Sheltered Bay), and lost or injured individuals would have had to wait for this trek to return to friendlier climes. The Lossoth who wandered this crevassed plain hunted and dwelt mainly along the watercourses.