There remained, of course, the ancient tradition concerning the high king at Fornost, or Norbury as they called it, away north of the Shire. But there had been no king for nearly a thousand years, and even the ruins of Kings' Norbury were covered with grass. Yet the Hobbits still said of wild folk and wicked things (such as trolls) that they had not heard of the king.       The once-great city of Fornost faded with the collapse of the North-kingdom. This fall was hastened when the chief of the ringwraiths established himself as the Witch-King of Angmar to the north east, and began attacking the divided kingdom. At last, after the Battle of Fornost, a thousand years before the War of the Ring, Fornost was destroyed by the armies of the Witch-King and left in ruins.