Narthalf, The Fire Tundra was a vast, open plain scoured by the winter gales and storms off Ekkaia and the Landless Land, which marked its northern boundary. To its east lay the Bay of Desolation and the forbidding Aeglir Arvethed; to the west, the Ered Rhívamar and Berg Cradle Bay. The tundra extended southward as far as Rast Losnaeth. The Fire Tundra was named after the steaming pit of Morgoth's Well that lay at its heart. The fumes and glow from the volcanic basin could be seen from miles away and were used as a landmark by those who wandered the region.
The sedge, grasses and herbs of the Fire Tundra were not particularly thick or lush in summer, yet its flat expanse supported numbers of elk, reindeer and musk ox, followed by numerous wolf packs (white wolves dominating the northern reaches of the tundra, Dire wolves and grey wolves roaming the south). White fox, snowy owls and tundra hawks took on summer grey colors and hunted lemmings and hares. Snow leopards from the Ered Rhívamar could be found along the western fringes of the tundra, while the dreaded death shrew was common among the rockier outlying foothills of the Aeglir Arvethed.
There was no better word to describe the Fire Tundra in winter than "cold." The elk and most of the reindeer migrated eastward around the Aeglir Arvethed and the southern Bleak Mountains to the Lakeland. Other mammals hibernated or lived under or on the snow. A frozen landscape remained, endlessly battered by bitterly cold winds and storms from the north. It was wandered by Trolls, a rare Giant or two, and scattered herds of barren-eround reindeer and musk ox.
Jäämies villages, seldom numbering over two hundred inhabitants, hugged the northern shores of Berg Cradle Bay. These Jäämiehet lived by whaling upon the bay and bartering with the Merimetsästäjät who dwelt there, and by hunting the Fire Tundra. Travelers could use their well-appointed settlements as base camps for expeditions into the tundra beyond; the villagers' knowledge of skills and equipment needed for journeys on the open plain was unmatched. During the frenzy of hunting, fishing and foraging in spring and summer, the Jäämiehet were usually unavailable as bearers, guides or mercenaries, and travelers had to pay a high price to lure a Jäämies away for such purposes.
During the summer months, the Jäämiehet and Merimetsästäjät established camps further inland for hunting the tundra herds. These camps were set up and abandoned quickly, since they had to losely follow the movement of the herds, and travelers could not expect to find them again after a space of more than two weeks. The hunters normally aided strangers in need, but had very little to spare—the summer hunt meant survival in winter, and they had to harvest as much meat from the reindeer and elk herds as possible before the great herds migrated out of the area.