Most of what we know about Dwarven culture and customs is derived from Tolkien’s writings concerning Durin’s Folk, the Longbeard Dwarves of Khazad-dum, Erebor, and the Iron Hills. Durin’s Folk were possibly the most outgoing of all the Dwarves, interacting with Elves, Men, and Hobbits to one degree or another. The Elves of Ered Luin (the Firebeards and Broadbeams) were also closely associated with Elves and probably interacted with Men in the Second and Third Ages as well as the Shire Hobbits in the Third Age, but they seem to have become relatively few in number after the First Age.
People view the Dwarves as secretive and somewhat xenophobic, but this is not completely accurate. Tolkien indeed said “they are a tough, thrawn race for the most part, secretive, laborious, retentive of the memory of injuries (and of benefits), lovers of stone, of gems, of things that take shape under the hands of of the craftsmen rather than things that live by their own life.” So, how secretive were they? Tolkien tells us that the Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost freely shared their knowledge with the Sindar in exchange for Melian’s teaching, and they also exchanged knowledge later with the Noldor. On the other hand, the Petty Dwarves were so reclusive and hostile to the Sindar they seemed like vicious animals which should be hunted.
The secretive nature of Dwarves is perceived to extend to their language, which they taught to few, but Tolkien doesn’t say they taught it to none (even though Gandalf makes such a statement before the West-gate of Moria in “A Journey in the Dark”, the author is often at odds with his own characters over matters of “fact”, of which he himself is the final arbiter). Some Elves did in fact study the Dwarf-tongue, and learned as much of it as they could, and as the Dwarves would teach (if there were indeed such limits). The most resourceful scholar Tolkien wrote about was Pengolod, a half-Noldo/half-Sinda Elf of Gondolin who joined the Lambengolmor, the Masters of Tongues, a school of loremasters founded by Feanor in Aman and who (apparently) joined in the rebellion of the Noldor even though Feanor had long since ceased to work with languages.
We know little of the history of the Lambengolmor. They studied Sindarin and probably some Nandorin and Avarin dialects in Beleriand, but much of their knowledge was lost when the Noldorin kingdoms began to fall. Those of the Lambengolmor who survived the destruction in the north eventually settled in Arvernien, and later moved on to the Isle of Balar with Cirdan and Gil-galad, or else they remained followers of the sons of Feanor. In the Second Age Pengolod settled in Eregion and it was probably there he (and possibly others) studied Khuzdul, the Dwarven language. Pengolod was the only loremaster of the Lambengolmor to survive the catastrophic War of the Elves and Sauron, and when the battles were finished he took ship from Mithlond and left Middle-earth forever, last of his kind to grace Middle-earth. With him departed much ancient knowledge which had not been committed to books.
Among the secrets Dwarves were not disposed to give out were their true, inner names, given in Khuzdul and used only among themselves. All the Dwarves of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings use Mannish names, according to their custom. At least, this was the custom among the Longbeard Dwarves from the Second Age onward, if not earlier. Other Dwarves, however, used Khuzdul names. The Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost went by names given in Khuzdul: Azaghal, lord of Belegost, Telchar of Nogrod, Gamil Zirak the Old, the master who taught Telchar.
The Dwarves of Ered Luin may have developed the most sophisticated civilization among their kind during the First Age because of their friendship with the Elves of Beleriand, whose civilization was the highest, most advanced culture in Middle-earth. Great wealth flowed through the Ered Luin, and these Dwarves did not look only to the west. They traded with many of the Men who settled in Eriador, as well as the Nandor and Avari who lived there. It is, however, perhaps a curious fact that the Edain (at least, the Marachians, the Third House of the Edain) retained some traditions of discord or strife with Dwarves from their westward migration. Tolkien doesn’t say what happened, but when Turin and his outlaws captured Mim the Petty-Dwarf, one of Turin’s men (himself a Marachian) said of himself, “Androg does not like Dwarves. His people brought few good tales of that race out of the East.”
Well, Androg’s folktales may or may not reflect actual relations between his people and the Dwarves. Such events lay many generations behind him (this conversation occurred around the year 484 of the Fourth Age, and his people had entered Beleriand in 314 — they had begun settling in Dor-lomin more than 100 years before Androg lived). We don’t know which Dwarves Androg’s people had trouble with, but they were probably Longbeards, Firebeards, or Broadbeams. No other Dwarven peoples appear to have lived near the Edain’s line of migration, which passed straight through Wilderland (Rhovanion) and the Vales of Anduin, where the Longbeards held sway, and over the Ered Luin.
After the Edain reached Beleriand relations between Dwarves and Men improved outside Beleriand, even if they remained icy in the west. The Folk of Bor, the only Easterlings to remain faithful to the Eldar in the Fifth Great Battle, the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, were a sedentary (farming) people who were only one of several tribes or clans to migrate to Eriador late in the 5th century. These peoples settled in the northern lands around the Hills of Evendim and they were friendly with the Dwarves. Bor’s folk actually passed northward around Ered Luin to enter the Eldarin lands, and they settled in the lands north of the hills where Maedhros’ people dwelt.
By the time Thangorodrim fell most but not all of Morgoth’s followers had been destroyed. The easternmost forces fled when Morgoth was defeated and they scattered throughout Middle-earth. Some of the Orcs apparently seized Mount Gundabad and infested the northern mountains of Wilderland. The Longbeard Dwarves were hard put to defend themselves against this onslought. They had already begun exchanging service for food with the Edainic men of Wilderland, but now they established an alliance with the Men whereby they were able to drive the Orcs out of the mountains. This unique alliance is documented only in The Peoples of Middle-earth, in the essay “Of Dwarves and Men”, which was written sometime after June 1969 (according to Christopher Tolkien).
Tolkien says the Longbeards, “though the proudest of the seven kindreds, were also the wisest and the most farseeing”. He goes on to say “Men held them in awe and were eager to learn from them; and the Longbeards were very willing to use Men for their own purposes.” These purposes were twofold: to provide the Dwarves with food and to assist them in their wars against the Orcs. The secretivity the Dwarves were known for had by this time been abandoned through necessity and a desire for commerce with other peoples both in Beleriand and in Rhovanion. But it appears that the secretiveness would eventually be restored.
The Longbeard Dwarves were the first to begin using “outer” names taken from the languages of nearby Men. Tolkien writes that the Dwarves were willing to teach their language to Men but Men found it difficult to learn, and yet all the Dwarves were unwilling to give out their true names to non-Dwarves. Hence, to facilitate the alliance the Longbeards learned the language of the Men of Wilderland (just as the Dwarves of Ered Luin learned Sindarin) and they took their “outer” names in this language. It was during the early Second Age that the Dwarves began accumulate a list of names which tradition eventually tied to their race alone. “Durin” is the translation Tolkien offers for the Mannish name which meant “king”, and it was more a title than a name which eventually did become a name. “Narvi” would be another example of the name-set drawn from the northern language (essentially a dialect of Adunaic, the language spoken by the Marachians).
With the aid of Men the Longbeards were able to re-establish control over those regions they considered to be theirs by right. This alliance helped pave the way for the eventual alliance between the Longbeards and the Elves of Eregion, but there appears to be one other prerequisite, the migration of the Belegostians to Khazad-dum. These Dwarves had not participated in the war between Nogrod and Doriath, and thus had no tradition of direct enmity with Elves (though Tolkien says memory of the war “poisoned relations of Elves and Dwarves in after ages” despite providing almost no evidence of such poisoned relations).
When mithril was discovered by the Longbeards the Noldor of Lindon took an interest in their resources, and many Noldor settled in the lands west of Khazad-dum, establishing the realm of Eregion. Their chief city was Ost-in-Edhil and they entered into a close friendship and alliance with the Longbeards that lasted a thousand years. At the end of that time the Longbeards were drawn into the War of the Elves and Sauron. They sought to help the beleaguered Eldar of Eregion, and many Elves (including Pengolod) escaped through Khazad-dum to the eastern realm of Lothlorien, but Durin IV’s army was driven back to the mountains by Sauron and the West-gate was closed against possible invasion. Matters did not go well in the east, either. Sauron sent armies of Orcs from Mordor and enticed eastern tribes of Men to invade Wilderland.
The Edainic peoples were overrun and pushed back to the mountains or deep into the woods (and this is probably when the Woodmen of Greenwood the Great first appeared). The Longbeards themselves lost control of Gundabad again, the Grey Mountains were infested with Orcs, and communication with the Iron Hills was cut off for a time. When Sauron was finally defeated Khazad-dum was largely an island amid an empty sea, its only friendly neighbor apparently Lothlorien. Elrond had established the refuge of Imladris in northern Eriador but though he was friendly to Dwarves in the Third Age there is no indication that he interacted with them much in the Second Age.
The Longbeards did not forsake their old friendship with the Elves, but as Tolkien says, it waned. By the end of the Second Age Durin V was willing and able to join the Host of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, so his people marched against Mordor. But afterward they seem not to have participated much in the great affairs of Middle-earth. For nearly two thousand years Khazad-dum continued to enjoy great prosperity. The Misty Mountains and Grey Mountains were undoubtedly untroubled by Orcs, Trolls, and Dragons for many centuries, and communication between Khazad-dum and other Dwarven communities was assured.
But when Sauron began to stir again after a thousand years had passed in the Third Age he seems to have pursued a policy of estranging his old enemies from one another. Wherever an opportunity presented itself he destroyed a nation, or took advantage of the downfall of an enemy. The Longbeard Dwarves entered a period of decline when they accidentally awoke a Balrog, apparently the last of Morgoth’s great demons of fire and shadow. The Balrog destroyed the civilization in Khazad-dum, killing two of its kings and many of its people. The survivors fled north and east but they never fully recovered their strength. Soon afterward Amroth, king of Lorien, led a migration of Elves south, and the awakening of a great (though unidentified) evil in the mountains as well as the departure of many of their folk seem to have inspired the Elves of Lorien to pass a law forbidding the entry of any Dwarf into their land.
Tolkien does not say exactly how the Dwarves dispersed. The Longbeard kings moved northeast to the Lonely Mountain. But some of the Dwarves living in the northern Misty Mountains or the Grey Mountains quarreled with Fram, a lord of the Eotheod, over the hoard of Scatha the Worm. The Dwarves eventually slew Fram after he refused to surrender the treasure. The Belegostians may have returned to their kin in the Ered Luin. But eventually the Longbeards colonized the Grey Mountains in great numbers, where they drew the attention of dragons and were driven south to Erebor again. This time one of the dragons, Smaug the Golden, followed them, and he seized Erebor in 2770. For the next 171 years the Longbeard Dwarves had no permanent home, except for a colony which survived in the Iron Hills and a few unnamed colonies in the northern mountains.
By the end of the Third Age the fortunes of three of the seven kindreds had fallen. Nogrod’s people were largely destroyed in the war with Doriath at the end of the Third Age. Most of Belegost’s people left the Ered Luin early in the Second Age because their city had been destroyed. Those Dwarves who remained in the Ered Luin appear to have been few but they retained control over a region of land between the Elves and the Men of northern Eriador. These Dwarves probably lived in a similar relationship with their neighbors to Khazad-dum’s great alliances, but they were few in number and not seriously threatened by Orcs or dragons, so they do not play any roles in the great wars of the Second Age. Tolkien implies they did not march with the Last Alliance, for he says few Dwarves fought on either side of that war.
The spread of the custom of taking outer names in Mannish languages from the Longbeards to other kindreds probably occurred in the Third Age, perhaps as late as after the fall of Khazad-dum. At that time the Longbeards would have begun wandering the lands and some doubtless settled among other Dwarves. If there was indeed a return of Belegostian-descended Dwarves to Ered Luin, they would have taken the custom with them if it had not preceded them already.
Tolkien says little about the four eastern kindreds. He suggest they (or at least the two easternmost) may have become “evil” in some fashion, but they did not support Sauron at the end of the Second Age. Sauron’s relations with the Dwarves are peculiar. Having failed to seduce the Elves with the Rings of Power he seized as many of the Elven Rings as he could during his war with the Elves and took them back to Mordor. There he perverted them in some fashion with the intention of using them to seize control over the great lords of other peoples. Sauron contrived to give seven Rings to the Dwarves, presumably one to each of the lords of the seven kindreds (although this is by no means certain). If that is the case, then Tolkien’s remark that tradition said each of the ancient Dwarf-hoards was founded on a ring would imply that the Belegostian lords never left Ered Luin. It seems unlikely they’d have their hoard in Khazad-dum.
The dispositions of the Seven Rings imply something about the Dwarves’ history. Sauron eventually decided to take back the Rings (sometime late in the Third Age) and he had to track them down. In the process he only acquired three of the Rings; dragons consumed the other four, according to Gandalf. Of the three Sauron took back, we know that one belonged to the Longbeard kings. This Ring he took from Thrain in 2845, “last of the Seven”. So to whom did the other two Rings belong, and when did Sauron acquire them?
Sauron appears not to have visited Eriador in the Third Age. He sent the Lord of the Nazgul north around the year 1300 to found the kingdom of Angmar, and this evil realm worked toward the eventual destruction of Arnor, the northern kingdom of the Dunedain. Angmar was situated in northeastern Eriador, far from Ered Luin but effectively in control of Gundabad. It may be that Gundabad, liberated in the Second Age, was taken by Angmar, or that perhaps it was abandoned by the Dwarves. Or it may be that Gundabad held out, though this seems unlikely.
Nonetheless, Angmar existed for nearly 700 years, and yet at no time was Angmar ever able to assail the Ered Luin. Nor is there any mention of dragons afflicting the Dwarves of Ered Luin throughout the Third Age. So, it seems unlikely that Sauron could have recovered the two Rings from the Dwarves of Ered Luin while the kingdom of Arnor existed. And yet, though Arnor fell in 1974, Amngmar itself was destroyed by Gondor, Lindon, and Rivendell the next year. The Lord of the Nazgul then fled south and was next heard from in the year 2002, when the Nazgul seized the Gondorian city of Minas Ithil. Sauron himself fled east in 2063 when Gandalf entered Dol Guldur to try and determine who the Necromancer really was, and Sauron didn’t return to the west until 2460.
It is therefore probably that Sauron made no attempt to recover the Rings of the western Dwarves before 2460. Within a hundred years Sauron began colonizing the Misty Mountains with Orcs and dragons began reappearing in the north and attacking the Dwarves. The Longbeard Dwarves fled to Erebor or the Iron Hills. It may be that dragons also began afflicting the four eastern houses, and that within the next couple of centuries all the great eastern Dwarf realms suffered a fate similar to that of Erebor. This would explain the obscure references in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to the misfortunes of the Dwarves, especially where dragons were concerned.
If he were alarmed about the loss of the four Rings in the east, Sauron may have seized an opportunity to seize the western Rings in the 28th century. Orcs began invading Eriador around 2740 and by the year 2758 Sauron was ready to launch a massive stroke against Gondor, Rohan, and apparently even Eriador. This was the year the Long Winter began, and Orcs were able to raid as far west as the Shire. It is conceivable that the Dwarves of Ered Luin suffered greatly like other peoples at this time, and their kings may have been drawn out and seized by Orcs. Although purely speculative the timeframe for Sauron’s Ring-seizing activities is thus limited to about a century. Tolkien does not say when Sauron took back the Rings of the Nazgul but he probably only received these Rings after his power was more secure, which would have been after the end of the Watchful Peace.
His objectives achieved, or his resources exhausted, Sauron appears to have disregarded Eriador after the Long Winter. There were no more massive incursions of evil things in the northwest and by 2845 he had recovered as many of the Rings of Power as he could have. The misfortunes of the Dwarves were thus coming to their end, and their fortunes (at least those of the Longbeards) began rising again.
I should point out that Sauron may have had another opportunity to seize two of the Dwarven Rings: the War of the Dwarves and Orcs, fought from 2793 to 2799. All seven kindreds mustered armies for the war of vengeance against the Orcs of the Misty Mountains. Although Tolkien doesn’t say any of the lords other than Thrain (Durin’s Heir, king of the Longbeards) participated directly in the war, it is not impossible that at least two did lead forces to Thrain’s aid, and they could have been captured or slain and their bodies taken. If so, Sauron could have recovered the Rings in this fashion.
Despite their decline in the western lands Dwarves continued to travel across Eriador and doubtless through Wilderland, journeying between Ered Luin and Erebor, or Ered Luin and the Iron Mountains, and perhaps travelling further to the eastern lands of the Dwarves. The purposes of these journeys are seldom stated. When Thorin and Thrain settled in the Ered Luin after the War of the Dwarves and Orcs many of the Longbeards heard about their new home and went to join them, so there must have been a steady though small stream of traffic westward.
In “The Quest for Erebor” (Unfinished Tale) Christopher Tolkien collated fragments of texts his father had written in attempts to explain (mostly through Gandalf) how the expedition of Thorin and Company to Erebor was arranged in 2941. In the course of one discussion Gandalf admonishes Gloin for thinking too little of the Shire folk because the Dwarves never sold them any weapons. One may infer from this remark that the Dwarves were indeed selling weapons to someone, but Tolkien doesn’t indicate to whom. Perhaps the Elves needed weapons, but they should have been capable of making their own. It seems more likely the Dwarves would have supplied the Dunedain of Eriador with weapons. The Rangers seem an unusually well-equipped core of soldiers to be wholle sustained by a “wandering folk”. If the Dunedain needed to turn to anyone for supplying crafted items the Dwarves seem a logical choice.
But as Eriador’s population centers declined throughout the late Third Age it would become more and more difficult for the Dwarves to make a profitable living. The Dunedian continued to dwindle. While Thrain and his small company lived in Dunland they probably traded with the people of Tharbad, but Tharbad was abandoned in 2912 after the Fell Winter resulted in severe flooding. The peoples’ reluctance to rebuild their town implies there was simply too little economic reason to do so. Bree also went into a period of decline, possibly around the same time, though it seems to have depended more on the traffic of the east-west road than on traffic coming up from the south.
Markets for Dwarven crafts thus were in short supply by the last century of the Third Age: the Shire, the Buckland, Bree, and a few scattered Dunedian. Possibly some Elves also traded with them. The restoration of the Kingdom under the Mountain in Erebor in 2941 meant that the colony of Longbeards probably departed soon afterwards to join Dain II in the east. This would have reduced competition for trade, but Sauron’s subsequent return to Mordor in 2951 and the eventual westward migration of many Dwarves must have strained the Dwarves’ economy considerably. Who were these Dwarves, travelling from troubled eastern lands? They don’t seem to be Longbeards, who had a strong kingdom in Erebor and still probably held the Iron Hills in force. It seems more likely they were from the eastern kindreds, whose lands may have been ravaged or threatened by great wars in preparation for Sauron’s assaults on the west. Hence, at the end of the Third Age there may have come an influx of eastern Dwarves who might help rejuvenate the Ered Luin.
The victory over Sauron within a few years led to the restoration of the Kingdom of Arnor and the expansion of the Shire. The Dwarves of Ered Luin must eventually have benefitted from the influx of colonists from the south, from the extension of Rohan’s authority over Dunland, and from the growth of the Shire. It may be that when Durin VII eventually resettled Khazad-dum early in the Fourth Age the Dwarves of Ered Luin also experienced a sort of renaissance, their last bloom before the final, sad diminishment and disappearance of their race.
Be sure to read Part One of “Them Dwarves, Them Dwarves”.
This article was originally published on November 26, 1999.
