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squire
Half-elven
Dec 12 2016, 12:54pm
Post #1 of 18
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**LotR Discussion: Appendix A.III, ‘Durin’s Folk’** - 1. “Knock, knock.” “Who’s there?” “A dragon or a Balrog!” “A dragon or a Balrog, again??”
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Welcome to this week’s installment (nearly the last one!) of the TORn Reading Room’s Sixth read-through discussion of The Lord of the Rings. We’ll be tramping stolidly through the darksome holes of Appendix A.III, “Durin’s Folk” … sorry, I mean we’ll be celebrating the craft and beauty of one of Tolkien’s most finely-wrought and exquisitely devised appendices.
As always, I can’t post too much of the text, so I’ll be providing a brief summary of each day’s reading. Then I’ll pose a few questions to get you thinking, and others counter-thinking, I hope. Then I get to sit back and enjoy the fantastic insights, new ways of reading the story, and of course, tasteful wit that makes these discussions so much fun.
Summary of pp. 352-353: From Durin the Deathless to the Destruction of Erebor
How Dwarves originated in Middle-earth is said to be a matter of ‘strange tales’, which we are not told because they ‘lie far back beyond our days’. We start with Durin, the ‘eldest of the Seven Fathers’ of the Dwarves, and ancestor of ‘all the kings of the Long-beards.’ He awoke from sleep when his people did and founded the kingdom of Khazad-dum, later known as the Mines of Moria. Though extremely long-lived (hence known as ‘the Deathless’), he died during the Elder Days; successors who resembled him were said to be his reincarnation, and were also named Durin. At the end of the First Age this great city in the Misty Mountains was further enriched and populated by Dwarven refugees from the ruined kingdoms in the Blue Mountains to the west.
The folk of Moria, being both strong and secure, survived the dominion of Sauron in Middle-earth throughout the Second Age. They remained wealthy, but in number ‘began to dwindle’. In the middle of the Third Age, when Durin VI reigned in Moria, the dwarves awakened or released a Balrog by mining too deeply in search of ever-rarer mithril. The demon had fled the destruction of Morgoth’s realm at the end of the First Age – thousands of years earlier. It killed the king and his heir; the surviving Dwarves of Khazad-dum ‘fled far away’.
Map I. Click here for larger image.
Thrain I, the grandson of Durin VI, led some of them to Erebor, the Lonely Mountain in the North. There he found the fabulous Arkenstone, and set up his Kingdom under the Mountain. But Thrain’s son, Thorin I, abandoned this place. He went further North to the Grey Mountains, where the majority of the folk of Durin had settled after the fall of Moria, in hopes of finding an even richer kingdom.
Map II. Click here for larger image.
The Grey Mountains, however, adjoined wastelands where dragons bred, and eventually these terrors attacked the Dwarven settlements and destroyed them. Durin’s Folk hit the road again. The younger son of the late King Dain I, Gror, headed for the Iron Hills to the south east; the older son and heir to the King, Thror, returned south to Erebor.
Map III. Click here for larger image.
The two branches were allied in trade and defense with each other, and also with the Northmen of the region. The two races together cleared the area of enemies, and general prosperity resulted. But again, the wealth of the King of the Dwarves attracted a dragon: Smaug, who attacked and ruined both the Kingdom under the Mountain and Dale, the neighboring town of Men. Thror, and his son Thrain II, escaped in secret and with a small company of survivors wandered South, homeless again.
Map IV. Click here for larger image.
Questions
The origins of the Dwarves are “strange” but are not part of this Tale … Appendix … Thingie. The reason given is that “these things lie far back beyond our days”.
A. “Our” assumes what about the narrative? Who is telling this story, and who does he, she, or they think is reading it?
Durin is “the eldest of the Seven Fathers” and “the ancestor of all the kinds of the Long-beards”.
B. What do these terms refer to – and how do you know, since you sure didn’t read it here?
Durin’s awakening, and founding of Khazad-dum aka the Mines of Moria, is said to be “renowned in song.”
C. Is this a direct reference to Gimli’s song in Moria, in The Lord of the Rings?
Parts of Gimli’s song are actually direct quotes from an ‘Elvish’ song, the Lay of Leithian, which describes the cavern-palace of King Thingol in the First Age.
D. Did the Dwarves ever compose their own songs or poetry about their “renowned” culture and legends, or did they rely on the Elves for all that stuff?
The Dwarves believe that the later kings they named “Durin” (i.e., Durin III who received a Ring of Power; Durin VI who was slain by the Balrog; Durin VII “and Last” according to the family tree in this appendix) were actual reincarnations of Durin I “the Deathless”.
E. How does that work? Does a new Durin have any memories of his ‘former life’ or ‘former lives’?
The Dwarves of Khazad-dum survived the Dominion of Sauron, and the destruction of their partners in craft the Elves of Eregion (Hollin), during the Second Age by essentially hunkering down within the caves.
F. How did they eat for two or three thousand years while “the gates of Moria were shut’?
Later in this appendix, we learn that Dwarves do not reproduce successfully without “secure dwellings” because of the imbalance between males and females. Yet during the Second Age in Moria, “deep and strong and filled with a people too numerous, etc.” – surely the ideal of a secure dwelling – we are told “its people began to dwindle.”
G. Why?
The Balrog. The text says ‘roused from sleep’ but the footnote adds the possibility ‘released from prison’ if it was already awake due to Sauron’s revival.
H. So how does that all work? Was there a passage that it followed to get down there, or did it burrow? In what sense, if any, would it be imprisoned? Did the Dwarves mine thousands of feet down using chisels and hammers? Did it kill in self-defense, or to eat? Was it sentient or bestial? And (yes! I insist!) does the phrase ‘flying from Thangorodrim’ confirm that it had wings?
Thrain I, fleeing from Moria, finds Erebor after (according to the Tale of Years in another appendix) eighteen years.
I. Why had no Dwarves prospected the Lonely Mountain before this?
211 years later, Thrain’s son Thorin I is king under the Mountain. He up and “removes” to the Grey Mountains where “most of Durin’s folk were now gathering.” The reason given is that the Grey Mountains “were rich and little explored”.
J. Why? To jump out of the story a bit, why do the royal Dwarves of Durin’s line leave the fabulous wealth of Erebor, whither (as we know from The Hobbit and will see in just another paragraph) they will be returning shortly so that the Smaug story can play out in its proper setting?
The dragons of the “wastes beyond” the Grey Mountains “became strong again and multiplied, and they made war on the Dwarves, and plundered their works.”
K. Are these dragons a ‘people’ of some kind, such that they can make war and act collectively?
The dragon that killed Dain I, spurring Durin’s Folk to relocate once again, was “a great cold-drake”.
L. Whaa? Explanations, comments, and analysis welcome here.
At this point, the line of Durin splits, with Thror as heir and king returning to the Lonely Mountain, but with Gror, the younger son, taking “many followers” to the Iron Hills – a place not previously mentioned or (presumably) colonized. This seems to set up the existence of Dain and his army in The Hobbit, and Dain’s becoming King of Erebor after Thorin dies at the end of that book. Yet we have seen that Durin’s Folk had previously split: when King Thrain I settled in Erebor after Moria’s destruction, “most of Durin’s folk were now gathering” in the Grey Mountains, with Thrain’s son only joining them several centuries later. Looking ahead, when Thror is evicted from Erebor by Smaug, he does not take up his rule over his close cousins in the Iron Hills, but chooses instead to wander aimlessly. And we saw in the beginning that the First Age Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegrost joined Durin’s folk in Khazad-dum, even though they were (presumably) from the lines of other “Fathers” of the Dwarves.
M. Is there any way (within the story) to make more sense of when, how, and why these various subsets of “Durin’s Folk” choose to separate or rejoin as a people under a king who is the heir of Durin?
Both Dwarf kingdoms prospered, and Erebor became rich by making both fine ornamental work and excellent weapons. So “there was great traffic of ore between them and their kin in the Iron Hills.”
N. Is this a reasonable description of a proto-medieval political economy? For instance: which ores are we talking about here? Is ore the kind of thing that one transported overland for hundreds of miles in the good old days?
The Men who lived in the lands between the Dwarves (roughly between the two rivers that originated in each highland and flowed south to the inland Sea of Rhun) profited as well, and “drove back all enemies from the East.”
O. Wouldn’t the Sea of Rhun area be an integral part of this system? Why no mention of The Hobbit’s Lakemen and their wars and empires at this point, or of the Elven kingdom in Mirkwood to the west, or the expanding empire of The Lord of the Rings’ Gondor to the south?
Smaug’s destruction of Erebor and what came after is, of course, well documented in The Hobbit. Here we are told that Thror and family wandered homelessly to the south – not to the west where Thorin will end up at the beginning of that adventure.
P. How did Durin’s Folk survive – i.e., eat, sleep, and live – during a “long and homeless wandering”?
Three times in this brief history, the Dwarves accumulate treasure and comfort. Three times a giant demon appears and effortlessly destroys most of them and steals all their treasure, forcing them to relocate and start over at creating a new fabulous kingdom and treasure hoard.
Q. Is this pattern meaningful? What effect does such a history have on a people’s attitude towards life, success, and the prospects of starting over?
squire online:
RR Discussions: The Valaquenta, A Shortcut to Mushrooms, and Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit
Lights! Action! Discuss on the Movie board!: 'A Journey in the Dark'. and 'Designing The Two Towers'.
Archive: All the TORn Reading Room Book Discussions (including the 1st BotR Discussion!) and Footerama: "Tolkien would have LOVED it!"
Dr. Squire introduces the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: A Reader's Diary
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hanne
Lorien
Dec 12 2016, 4:30pm
Post #2 of 18
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Thank you so much for adding them. That's the most adorable Smaug ever!
Looking at maps does bring up questions, as you say. I wonder two things: first why it took 18 years to walk from Moria to Erebor. That's a long time to be lost in the forest. Maybe Bilbo's adventure wasn't the first time Thranduil had dwarven "guests"?
And second, it's a good thing dragons don't seem to travel much. Smaug's descent on Erebor seems to be the only example we have of those northerly dragons making any sort of sortie at all. Perhaps "cold-drake" means they can only live in very cold climates!
Also was interested in your question about transporting ore around.
N. Is this a reasonable description of a proto-medieval political economy? For instance: which ores are we talking about here? Is ore the kind of thing that one transported overland for hundreds of miles in the good old days?
This made me think of tin, which archaeologists are certain travelled the length of continents in the Bronze Age. The wikipedia article points out that tin is a relatively rare element, but essentially for bronze-making. It gives examples of tin from west Britain being exported to Greece and tin from Tajikistan travelling the Silk Road to the middle east. There's also a line about the Romans exporting British tin to Somalia and India.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Dec 12 2016, 5:49pm
Post #3 of 18
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"great traffic of ore" A typo?
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I agree, it doesn't seem to make sense. Metal ores are bulky and heavy, and other bulky regents are needed too (wood or charcoal or coal). It wouldn't seem to make any sense to transport ore a long way for processing, which in any case is a skilled business, requiring specialised equipment. It would make more sense to smelt as near as you could to the site of your mine, and then transport either finished goods or metal ingots for fashioning elsewhere. Either would be less bulky ad have greater added value.
It couldn't perhaps be a typo (should read 'there was great traffic of yore between them and their kin in the Iron Hills'?
~~~~~~
The Sixth read-through of LOTR continues until Christmas. All chapters now have volunteer leaders. Schedule here; http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=916172#916172
A wonderful list of links to previous chapters in the LOTR read-through (and to previous read-throughs) is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Dec 12 2016, 6:17pm
Post #4 of 18
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The Wanderings of the Longbeards
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Looking at maps does bring up questions, as you say. I wonder two things: first why it took 18 years to walk from Moria to Erebor. That's a long time to be lost in the forest. Maybe Bilbo's adventure wasn't the first time Thranduil had dwarven "guests"?
After Smaug occupied Erebor in 2770 Thror brought his followers south to Dunland, perhaps with a notion to establish a new settlement in the southern part of the range. Years later Thror passed his Dwarven Ring to his son Thrain; the old Dwarf left his folk and traveled north with a single companion. In 2790 Thror was slain by Azog in Moria, kicking off the War of the Dwarves and Orcs from 2793 to 2799. Thrain led the remainder of his followers to the Ered Luin in 2802.
And second, it's a good thing dragons don't seem to travel much. Smaug's descent on Erebor seems to be the only example we have of those northerly dragons making any sort of sortie at all. Perhaps "cold-drake" means they can only live in very cold climates!
Actually, attacks from dragons are what drove the Dwarves out of the Grey Mountains in 2590, when Thror returned his folk to Erebor while his brother Gror started a new colony in the Iron Hills.
Cold-drakes were apparently one of three basic varieties of dragon. The first dragons were the Uruloki (fire serpents) such as Glaurung that were wingless. Then there were the winged Fire-drakes such as Smaug, and the Cold-drakes that didn't breathe flames. Some Cold-drakes had wings, but others were wingless.
"He who lies artistically, treads closer to the truth than ever he knows." -- Favorite proverb of the wizard Ningauble of the Seven Eyes
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Dec 12 2016, 6:22pm
Post #5 of 18
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'tasteful wit'? Well I'll try. At least I'll try to go beyond the spoonerism ('wasteful twit')
Just how deathless is Durin
As far as we know from out elvish Silmarillion sources, Durin and his kin have not been seen hanging out at the Halls of Mandos in between reincarnations. So literal recycling of the soul seems inconsistent with that - but who knows, maybe the dwarves have their own halls or other arrangements? And possibly we lack information precisely because our sources are elvish, and the pointy-eared know-it-alls don't know as much as they think, or have a simplistic duality of mortal mortals and immortal elves, which the dwarves like to simile at, secretly?
It also strikes me that we have very many examples in real-life of misunderstandings between groups about doctrine and beliefs. And yet more examples of deliberate or semi-deliberate libels. Maybe the dwarves beliefs about Durin have been poorly understood or translated by our informants.
Why keep moving on?
Interesting point about the dwarves repeatedly going off to found new colonies, even when the usual real-life pressures (over- population, too many younger sons) don't seem to apply. Nor do the colonies seem to always make great efforts to stay in touch - we've sometimes wondered why there isn't more effort from Third-Age Erebor to find out what became of Balin's attempt to recapture Moria. My best guess is that the dwarves are a feudsome lot, and discontent and grudges often cause a group to break off, and then not to be missed (or at least not missed as far as anyone is willing to admit publicly).
Not dragons again!
Poor dwarves, they do seem doomed to build it all up only to have it knocked down in a trice by some horrid monster.
Are they cursed?
Is gold cursed (I think there might be some idea about this in Morgoth's Ring, which I have not read?)
Are they, as successful artisans and business-people, always likely to attract the attention of the jealous or covetous? Is there some graph one could draw where their wealth escapes their power to keep hold of it in a hostile world?
Dwarf numbers, and Moria under siege
Beats me where they got their food if Moria was under close siege for a long time. Maybe numbers fell because they were getting hungry?
Normally you'd expect a mining and artisanal community to trade for the food it needed but didn't have time or land to grow. I suppose underground mines (lit by cunning shafts or something) are possible, or maybe there were dwarven farms somewhere.
Middle-earth warfare seems an odd mixture of medieval and more modern. In medieval times I believe it was very difficult to keep a fortress closely surrounded for a long time - the attackers suffered from lack of supplies and from disease, and needed to go home for agricultural duties. so maybe there were periodic breaks during which Moria could resupply
~~~~~~
The Sixth read-through of LOTR continues until Christmas. All chapters now have volunteer leaders. Schedule here; http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=916172#916172
A wonderful list of links to previous chapters in the LOTR read-through (and to previous read-throughs) is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Dec 12 2016, 7:08pm
Post #6 of 18
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I'd like to know what any zoologists or geneticists in the Room think about it.
For most animals, preferring not to reproduce isn't all that viable a strategy. You'd expect that any 'Horny' mutation that arose would have a massive evolutionary advantage, and the population would change to be dominated by dwarves more interested in having children.
Modern people can, of course be more like dwarves - both men and women can choose not to have children because of lack of suitable partners, or because they prefer to concentrate on some other thing in life, exactly as Tolkien describes. But I think that this requires a lot of unusual things about our cultures, such as financial or public arrangements for care of the elderly, and inventions such as birth control.
Probably one should not push this too far - maybe Tolkien wanted to think of a way that dwarves might not be numerous, and didn't see the need to think it through very far. Similarly, we've previously discussed how his elves have perhaps an odd societal organisation for a people where childbearing and child-rearing would take a very small proportion of an arbitrarily long life.
~~~~~~
The Sixth read-through of LOTR continues until Christmas. All chapters now have volunteer leaders. Schedule here; http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=916172#916172
A wonderful list of links to previous chapters in the LOTR read-through (and to previous read-throughs) is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
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InTheChair
Rohan
Dec 12 2016, 8:21pm
Post #7 of 18
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What is the dwarven names of the Iron Hill and the Red River?
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A. “Our” assumes what about the narrative? Who is telling this story, and who does he, she, or they think is reading it?
Must be based on sources that were available in Gondor or Imladris. The first thing one notices about the dwarves in the Thrid age is that after Dagorlad, there are no tales at all about them för almost 2000 years. Then once the Balrog it set loose, for the next thousand years it is one disaster after another, as if they hid away from their troubles as long as they could, and then the powers that be let them have it all in one big shower of scorching hails.
D. Did the Dwarves ever compose their own songs or poetry about their “renowned” culture and legends, or did they rely on the Elves for all that stuff?
What Gimli sang I feel sure was originally a dwarvish song, one that the elves had at some time translated to elvish, and later the elvish version translated into westron. What we get is the english representation of the westron version.
E. How does that work? Does a new Durin have any memories of his ‘former life’ or ‘former lives’?
Don't know, but they seem to need some method of determining just who is the next representation of Durin.
H. ... does the phrase ‘flying from Thangorodrim’ confirm that it had wings?
Didn't have wings, it had shadows. So no!
K. Are these dragons a ‘people’ of some kind, such that they can make war and act collectively?
They could have acted collectively if some greater power, maybe Sauron if he was strong enoug, manipulated them. I suspect they usually wouldn't though, there can never have been very many of them, and each one by itself large enough to cause considerable damage to a dwarf colony. Also with they way of evil ,one tends to suspect they hated and mistrusted each other as much as the dwarves.
L. Whaa? Explanations, comments, and analysis welcome here.
Since cold-drakes don't breathe fire, one assumes it was an exceptionally large and armoured, and clever dragon. Wonder what became of it? Was it killed or did it sleep soundly on its pile of collected treasure until the world came to an end?
M. ... when Thror is evicted from Erebor by Smaug, he does not take up his rule over his close cousins in the Iron Hills, but chooses instead to wander aimlessly.
That is a little strange, unless he feared the Dragon would follow him an lay waste to the Iron Hills as well, but I'm not sure if the explanation is given.
N. Is this a reasonable description of a proto-medieval political economy? For instance: which ores are we talking about here?
Read somewhere that the Carnen, Red River got its name because it had its sources among great iron deposits, so Iron would seem a probably commodity in the ore trade. Especially if it was rare in Erebor.
O. Wouldn’t the Sea of Rhun area be an integral part of this system?
Most likely yes. It might be difficult to ship ore past the high falls of the River Running, but the Iron might be shipped down the Carnen to the shores of Rhun. For the land route bewteen the Dwarven kingdoms they would have had to rely on wagons and the general sturdiness of Dwarves.
(This post was edited by InTheChair on Dec 12 2016, 8:25pm)
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enanito
Rohan
Dec 12 2016, 10:06pm
Post #8 of 18
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North, South, or through Mirkwood?
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Do we get any idea of the course the dwarves took when traveling from Moria to Erebor? I always thought they would have traveled up the Anduin (actually staying close to the mountains in their comfort zone), until they would be able to pass Mirkwood on the north. This would keep them constantly around mountains, and being people who loved rock and stone, they could take their time traveling.
But that's just my mental image.
I guess they could traverse Mirkwood. Any reason why they might take a southern route?
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enanito
Rohan
Dec 12 2016, 10:18pm
Post #9 of 18
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What did "flying" mean to Tolkien?
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We can read about how Ungoliant fled from the North down to Mordor, assuredly her flight was not aided by wings. But we also can read about Elwing having actual wings of white and silver-grey.
Is their any reference to a being who is able to travel from one place to another, without wings, yet without traveling physically on the ground? Just wondering if "air travel" is the exclusive domain of our winged friends, or if there's examples of somebody making it from one place to another without making the long weary walk?
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enanito
Rohan
Dec 12 2016, 10:22pm
Post #10 of 18
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J. Why? To jump out of the story a bit, why do the royal Dwarves of Durin’s line leave the fabulous wealth of Erebor
Could it be that as awesome as Erebor was, it remained a solitary mountain without any range nearby? The dwarves seem attracted to places where there's "elbow room", and a single mountain doesn't seem to hold the same allure. So I'm not that surprised that they might want to leave Erebor for the chance to discover new places.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Dec 13 2016, 1:14am
Post #11 of 18
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Do we get any idea of the course the dwarves took when traveling from Moria to Erebor? I always thought they would have traveled up the Anduin (actually staying close to the mountains in their comfort zone), until they would be able to pass Mirkwood on the north. This would keep them constantly around mountains, and being people who loved rock and stone, they could take their time traveling.
But that's just my mental image.
I guess they could traverse Mirkwood. Any reason why they might take a southern route?
I very much doubt that the Dwarves would have passed through Mirkwood. The Dwarf-road probably was not constructed until after the founding of Erebor. It seems that Durin's Folk most likely fled north towards the Grey Mountains searching for a place to resettle before Thrain I brought his folk to the Lonely Mountain. The Grey Mountains were not well explored but many of the Longbeards remained there, which is why Thorin I left Erebor to establish a new hall in the range.
"He who lies artistically, treads closer to the truth than ever he knows." -- Favorite proverb of the wizard Ningauble of the Seven Eyes
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Dec 13 2016, 1:19am
Post #12 of 18
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Many of Durin's Folk did not follow Thrain I to Erebor, but remained in the Grey Mountains after being driven out of Moria. The Grey Mountains had not been well explored and Thorin I seems to have wanted to both gather the Longbeards together and establish a hall of his own.
"He who lies artistically, treads closer to the truth than ever he knows." -- Favorite proverb of the wizard Ningauble of the Seven Eyes
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InTheChair
Rohan
Dec 13 2016, 7:08pm
Post #13 of 18
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It's also possible it would have taken them several years to leave Khazad-Dûm which was a large Dwarver kingdom, and even a Balrog, beeing only one, could not have driven them all out in an afternoon. The date 1981 should probably be taken as the death of the king, and the start of the exodus, but there's no telling how many years passed before the last Dwarves left the place.
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Dec 13 2016, 7:45pm
Post #14 of 18
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We don't need to suppose any such thing, we can just take Tolkien at his word. The Balrog was disturbed in 1980 and slew Durin VI. The following year Nain I was killed and the remaining Longbeards were driven out of Moria.
"He who lies artistically, treads closer to the truth than ever he knows." -- Favorite proverb of the wizard Ningauble of the Seven Eyes
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hanne
Lorien
Dec 14 2016, 11:04pm
Post #15 of 18
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Elegant solution!
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hanne
Lorien
Dec 14 2016, 11:12pm
Post #16 of 18
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In the appendix we just read about Numenor:
Sauron was indeed caught in the wreck of Numenor, so that the bodily form in which he had long walked perished; but he fled back to Middle-earth, a spirit of hatred borne upon a dark wind.
In the Silmarillon:
But the spirit of Luthien fell down into darkness, and at last it fled, and her body lay like a flower...but Luthien came to the halls of Mandos...
Thereafter Melian...vanished out of Middle-earth, and passed to the land of the Valar beyond the western Sea...
(though I suppose the latter is not inconsistent with her walking all the way, including over the Helcaraxe. Or your boat gets through if you are a Maia.)
That's all I can think of!
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hanne
Lorien
Dec 14 2016, 11:14pm
Post #17 of 18
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Three times in this brief history, the Dwarves accumulate treasure and comfort. Three times a giant demon appears and effortlessly destroys most of them and steals all their treasure, forcing them to relocate and start over at creating a new fabulous kingdom and treasure hoard.
Q. Is this pattern meaningful? What effect does such a history have on a people’s attitude towards life, success, and the prospects of starting over?
This is a most interesting question. It does seem to be Tolkien's archetypal Dwarf story, along with the one about making a fabulous object that sparks a war. Tolkien has this tension between too much industrialization, which is Bad, and certain objects of ingenuity, such as the palantirs or mithril armour, which are usually good, though sometimes (such as the rings) sources of problems. He also says "subcreation" (anyone other than God creating something) is generally good but walks a fine line in that if you forget the "sub" part of it you get all proud and set yourself up for a fall.
In the Silmarillon, the story of the origin of the dwarves is intimately tied to this tension. Aule makes them (good) but was too impatient to wait for Eru's better invention (bad) but then admitted Eru was better (good) and all was well. So it's almost as if Aule's creations keep playing out that narrative - making beautiful things in appreciation of Eru is cool (for example, as in the work in the Glittering Caves envisioned by Gimli) but inherently risky in that whenever the dwarves overreach and get too rich there is a correction ex machina.
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Hamfast Gamgee
Tol Eressea
Dec 18 2016, 10:34am
Post #18 of 18
(3246 views)
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Cram! You'll be amazed at how long Cram stays edible! Though edible is probably all you can say about it, thousands of years in storage does not improve it's flavour any, Or if we believe Terry Prachett's discworld Dwarves, Rat! And I suppose that there where lots of rats in Moria. As long as they had some ketchup. Ever eaten Rat without ketchup?
Another possibly is that the gates of Moria been shut should not perhaps be taken too literally. There probably where other ways out of Moria, tunnels to Lorien, perhaps various doors with various magical ways of opening. Heck who knows, it is the second age, vagueness is the way of it then.
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