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As a land, the Northland has little history. Created to be like the rest of the world, with large trees as homes for the elves, it was once home of one of the Two Trees which gave light to the world. However, it was the first place that Melkor targeted when he tried to destroy the creation of the Valar. Where there had first been a beautiful lake rose dark and forbidding mountains, the Mystic Mountains. The trees withered and died, leaving the landscape nothing but barren rock. The Tree that lived there was destroyed, leaving the world in darkness until the creation of the sun. For centuries, its only inhabitants were a few desperate elves who struggled to survive, and failed.

As Melkor created more evil creatures in his attempt to destroy the Firstborn of the Valar, the Elves, the Northland became a battleground. For five thousand years, the war raged, and what little life was left was destroyed. Dragons scorched the ground, morgawr broke down what trees still stood, and trolls feasted on the corpses of the dead.

When the fighting ended, the Northland was a wasteland.

Still, despite the harsh inhabitability of the land, life once more was brought forth: Aule, Vala of the earth, jealous of Ilúvatar, the Creator, brought forth from the clay the race of Dwarfs: the Ruddy People, the People of the Ground. Yet hardy as the race was, even they found it too difficult to live in the Northland, and they headed south, to the Eastland.

At the end of the First Age, a fortress was built: Altak-Bet Ainúl, the fortress of the Druids, directly on the border of the Northland and Eastland. There, the wisest minds of each of the races came together to study magic in an attempt to bring the races to live in peace together. But in their efforts to be fair and allow each of the races a chance to prove themselves, they caused their own destruction by admitting a morgawr into their ranks. The fortress vanished from the land, sent by the last remaining druid into a state of limbo, until twenty five thousand years later, when three Elves brought it back to the land.

In all of this time, nothing of note took place in the Northland, until the beginning of the Fourth Age, after the Second Great War, when the Dwarfs, defeated by the Elves, were banished from the Eastland and exiled into the Northland, where they now have a small settlement that is closely watched by the Elves. For nearly a century, they spearheaded a slave trade, buying and using Elven children as slaves, but in 101 of the Fourth Age, the rulers of all the elven nations of the Four Lands worked together to eradicate those responsible, ending the trade once and for all.

The dwarfs are under the military rule of the elves, of all three elven nations. As such, they can only obey and have no government of their own.

Though the dwarfs are well aware of their creation by Aulë, they are also aware of their status as half-creatures, soulless and illegitimate. Bitter because of this, because of the knowledge that they do not belong in the world in which they live, they refuse to acknowledge their creator, and have no religious ceremonies.

Because the dwarfs were created by a Vala rather than Ilúvatar, they have never had the ability to use magic. Positively, magic has no effect on them, either.