The Grinding Ice In the far north of Arda there was a strait between the ‘western world’ and the coast of Middle-earth, and in one of the accounts of the ‘Grinding Ice’ it is described thus: Through these narrows the chill waters of the Encircling Sea [See Outer Seas] and the waves of the Great Sea of the West flow together, and there are vast mists of deathly cold, and the sea-streams are filled with clashing hills of ice and the grinding of ice submerged. This strait was named Helkaraksë.
