Dwarf (Middle-earth)

In the fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Dwarves are a race inhabiting Middle-earth, the central continent of Arda in an imagined mythological past. They are based on the dwarfs of Germanic myths who were small humanoids that lived in mountains, practising mining, metallurgy, blacksmithing and jewellery. Tolkien described them as tough, warlike, and lovers of stone and craftsmanship.

The origins of Tolkien's Dwarves can be traced to Norse mythology; Tolkien also mentioned a connection with Jewish history and language.
Dwarves appear in his books ''The Hobbit'' (1937), ''The Lord of the Rings'' (1954–55), and the posthumously published '' The Silmarillion'' (1977), '' Unfinished Tales'' (1980), and ''The History of Middle-earth'' series (1983–96), the last three edited by his son Christopher Tolkien.

Characteristics

The medievalist Charles Moseley described the dwarves of Tolkien's legendarium as "Old Norse" in their names, their feuds, and their revenges. In the appendix on "Durin's Folk" in ''The Lord of the Rings'', Tolkien describes dwarves as:

'' The J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia'' considers Tolkien's use of the adjective " thrawn", noting its similarity with ''Þráinn'', a noun meaning "obstinate person", and a name found in the Norse list of Dwarf-names, the ''Dvergatal'' in the ''Völuspá''. Tolkien took it for the name, Thráin, of two of Thorin Oakenshield's ancestors. It suggests this may have been a philological joke on Tolkien's part.

Dwarves were long-lived, with a lifespan of some 250 years. They breed slowly, for no more than a third of them are female, not all marry, and they have children only late in life. Tolkien names only one female, Dís, Thorin's sister. They are still considered children in their 20s, as Thorin was at age 24; and as "striplings" in their 30s. Despite his young age, Dáin Ironfoot was 32 when he killed Azog, the orc chieftain of Moria. They had children starting in their 90s.

The Dwarves are described as "the most redoubtable warriors of all the Speaking Peoples" – a warlike race who fought fiercely against their enemies, including other Dwarves. Highly skilled in the making of weapons and armour, their main weapon was the battle axe, but they also used bows, swords, shields and mattocks, and wore armour.

Sauron gave seven Rings of Power to Dwarf lords. The Rings caused them to be wrathful and greedy for gold, but they were not brought under Sauron's domination, nor did they gain longer life. Eventually all seven Rings were destroyed or reclaimed by Sauron. One of the rings was given to Durin III, and passed down to Thrór, who gave it to his son Thráin II, father of Thorin Oakenshield. Sauron captured Thráin and took the ring from him in the dungeons of Dol Guldur.

In-fiction origins

The Dwarves are portrayed in '' The Silmarillion'' as an ancient people who awake during the Years of the Trees, after the Elves at the start of the First Age, but before Men when the Sun and Moon are created. The Vala Aulë, impatient for the arising of the Children of Ilúvatar, creates the seven in secret, intending them to be his children to whom he could teach his crafts. He teaches them Khuzdul, a language he had devised for them. Ilúvatar, creator of Arda, is aware of the Dwarves' creation and sanctifies them. Because they had been made by a Vala, Dwarves lacked souls until granted them by Ilúvatar. Aulë sealed the seven Fathers of the Dwarves in stone chambers in far-flung regions of Middle-earth to await their awakening.

Each of the Seven Fathers founds one of the seven Dwarf clans. Durin I is the eldest, and the first of his kind to awake in Middle-earth. He awakens in Mount Gundabad, in the northern Misty Mountains, and founds the clan of Longbeards (Durin's Folk); they found the city of Khazad-dûm below the Misty Mountains, and later realms in the Grey Mountains and Erebor (the Lonely Mountain). Two others lie in sleep in the north of the '' Ered Luin'' (Blue Mountains), and they found the lines of the Broadbeams and the Firebeards. The remaining four clans, the Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks, and Stonefoots come from the East. After the end of the First Age, the Dwarves spoken of are almost exclusively of Durin's line.

A further division, the even shorter , appears in ''The Silmarillion'' and ''The Children of Húrin''. Moseley likens , the last known Petty-dwarf, to the similarly named Mime from the '' Nibelungenlied''.

Artefacts

Mining, masonry, and metalwork

As creations of Aulë, they are attracted to the substances of Arda. They mine and work precious metals throughout the mountains of Middle-earth. They are unrivalled in smithing, crafting, metalworking, and masonry, even among the Elves. The Dwarf-smith Telchar is the greatest in renown. They build immense halls under mountains for their cities. They build many famed halls including the Menegroth, Khazad-dûm, and Erebor. Among the many treasures they forge are the named weapons Narsil, the sword of Elendil, the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin and the necklace Nauglamír, the most prized treasure in Nargothrond and the most famed Dwarven work of the Elder Days. In ''The Hobbit'', Thorin gives Bilbo a Mithril coat of linked rings of mail.

Language and names

In Sindarin (Grey-elvish) the Dwarves are called ''Naugrim'' ("Stunted People"), ''Gonnhirrim'' ("Stone-lords"), and ''Dornhoth'' ("Thrawn Folk"), and ''Hadhodrim''. In Quenya they are the ''Casári''. The Dwarves call themselves ''Khazâd'' in their own language, Khuzdul. Khuzdul is created for them by Aulë, rather than being descended from an Elvish language, as most of the languages of Men are. They write it using Cirth runes, a writing system originally created by Elves in Beleriand to write Sindarin, and later more fully developed by Daeron, an Elf of Doriath. The Cirth runes are adapted by Dwarves for writing Khuzdul. The Dwarves keep their language secret and do not normally teach it to others, so they learn both Quenya and Sindarin to communicate with the Elves, especially the Noldor and Sindar. By the Third Age the Dwarves are estranged from the Elves and no longer routinely learn their language. Instead, they mostly use the Westron (Common Speech), a Mannish tongue, in communicating with other races.

Each Dwarf has two personal names, a secret, "inner" name in Khuzdul, which is used only among other Dwarves and is never revealed to outsiders, and a public, "outer" name for use with other races, taken from the language of the people amongst whom the Dwarf lives. For example, the Dwarves of Moria and the Lonely Mountain use outer names taken from the language of the Men of the north where they lived.

In reality, Tolkien took the names of 12 of the 13 dwarves – excluding Balin – that he used in ''The Hobbit'' from the Old Norse ''Völuspá'', long before the idea of Khuzdul arose. When he came to write ''The Lord of the Rings'', in order to explain why the Dwarves had Norse names, he created an elaborate fiction that many of the languages used in the book were "translated" into real-life languages for the benefit of the reader, roughly retaining the relationships of the languages among themselves. Thus, Westron was translated into English, the related but more archaic language of the Rohirrim was translated into Anglo-Saxon (Old English), and the even more distantly related language of Dale was translated into Norse. It is possible that the problem of explaining the Dwarves' Norse names was the origin of the entire structure of the Mannish languages in Middle-earth along with the fiction of "translation".

Calendar

Tolkien's only mention of the Dwarves' calendar is in ''The Hobbit'', regarding the "dwarves' New Year" ('' Durin's Day''), which occurs on the day of the last new moon of autumn. However, in his first drafts of the book, Durin's Day was the ''first'' new moon of autumn. After he had finished writing the book, Tolkien went back and changed all occurrences of the date to the last new moon, more in keeping with the real-world Celtic calendar, but overlooked one mention in Chapter IV, which still named the date as the first new moon.: "They had thought of coming to the secret door in the Lonely Mountain, perhaps that very next first moon of Autumn 'and perhaps it will be Durin's Day' they had said." Tolkien never noticed this inconsistency, and it was not corrected until the 1995 edition of the book. The astronomer Bradley E. Schaefer has analysed the astronomical determinants of Durin's Day. He concluded that – as with many real-world lunar calendars – the date of Durin's Day is observational, dependent on the first visible crescent moon.

Analysis

Norse myth

In Tolkien's '' The Book of Lost Tales'', the very few Dwarves who appear are portrayed as evil beings, employers of Orc mercenaries and in conflict with the Elves—who are the imagined "authors" of the myths, and are therefore biased against Dwarves. Tolkien was inspired by the dwarves of Norse myths and of later Germanic folklore (such as that of the Brothers Grimm), from whom his Dwarves take their characteristic affinity with mining, metalworking, and crafting.

Jewish history

In ''The Hobbit'', Dwarves are portrayed as occasionally comedic and bumbling, but largely as honourable, serious-minded, and proud. Tolkien was influenced by his own selective reading of medieval texts regarding Jewish people and their history. The dwarves' characteristics of being dispossessed of their homeland in Erebor, and living among other groups but retaining their own culture, are derived from the medieval image of Jews, while, according to the Tolkien scholar John D. Rateliff, their warlike nature stems from accounts in the Hebrew Bible

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