The Complete Tolkien Companion (26 page)

Durin VI
– From 1731–1980 Third Age, King of Moria. He ruled at the time of the final great exploratory delving under Barazinbar (Caradhras) for the mother mithril-lode. In these excavations, miners accidentally released the
BALROG
which slew Durin – and, the following year, his son Náin I. The Dwarves of Durin's Line then fled from Moria into exile.

Durin's Bane
– The
BALROG
of Moria.

Durin's Bridge
– Between the First and Second Halls of Old Moria lay a great abyss, so deep that none of Durin's Folk was ever able to sound its depths. Spanning it was a slender bridge of stone which could only be crossed in single file, built during the First Age as a defence against any enemy that might penetrate far enough into Moria to capture the Great Gates and First Hall. It was broken by Gandalf in his single combat with the Balrog.

Durin's Crown
– The name given by the Dwarves to the halo of seven stars seen by Durin the Deathless as he gazed for the first time into the Mirrormere.

Durin's Day
– The Dwarves' New Year's Day; the first day of the last new crescent of autumn, when Moon and Sun appeared in the sky simultaneously.

Durin's Folk
– The most ancient and (at one time) most numerous and powerful of the Seven Houses of the Dwarves was that founded by Durin the Deathless. Dwarves of this House were known to the Elves as the Longbeards, for their beards – always symbolic of age and wisdom among Dwarves – were longer than any competing growths, invariably forked, and worn thrust into the belt.

Though their vast ancestral halls of Khazâd-dûm (Moria) held out for an Age or more against would-be dispossessors, in the end this greatest of all Dwarf-strongholds was taken from Durin's Folk, in 1981 Third Age, and they became a wandering people. From Moria they came to the North, to Erebor (where Thráin I founded a new Dwarf-kingdom ‘under the Mountain'); to the Ered Mithrin (Grey Mountains), from whence they were later driven by attacks from depredatory Dragons; and to the Iron Hills, where a cadet branch of the Line established itself in comparative security. Yet Erebor was also taken from them, when the great Dragon Smaug drove the Dwarves out in the year 2770; and for a time many of the Heirs of Durin wandered in Eriador in exile and (relative) poverty. Although they later recovered much of what had been lost to the Dragon, their race was much depleted, and the Dwarves of Durin's Line were never to regain their old glories. And the lost realm of Moria remained forbidden to them while the Third Age lasted.

Durin's Stone
– An ancient, weathered pillar on the greensward near Lake Kheled-zâram (the Mirrormere) in the vale of Azanulbizar. It marked the place where Durin the Deathless first looked into the lake and saw, reflected around his head in the cool waters, a crown of seven stars shining as a symbol of royalty.

Durin's Tower
– A chamber and ledge on the pinnacle of the Silvertine, where the Endless Stair reached the upper airs after a climb of many thousand unbroken steps.

Durthang
‘Dark-oppression' (Sind.) – At the beginning of the Third Age, after the first overthrow of Sauron, the victorious people of Gondor resolved that no evil creature should re-enter the neighbouring land of Mordor. They therefore built several strong fortresses inside the Black Land to control any movement in or out of that country. One of the most important of these was the castle of Durthang, high upon the rock-wall overlooking the Isenmouthe and the pass from Gorgoroth to Udûn behind the Black Gate. As Gondor's power waned, around the middle of the Third Age, the castle – like all other Mordor-keeps – was taken by the Nazgûl, and became an orc-hold.

Dwalin
– One of the twelve Dwarves who accompanied Thorin Oakenshield on the Quest of the Lonely Mountain. After the recovery of Thorin's inheritance, he remained in Erebor, content to live in peace – unlike his brother
BALIN
, who led a misguided expedition to recover the ancient Dwarf-realm of Moria.

Dwarrowdelf
– The translated Westron name (orig.
Phurunargian
) which meant ‘Dwarf-delving' and was applied by Men to the great underground city of Moria.

Dwarves
– The Children of Aulë the Smith of the Valar, of all ‘speaking-peoples' the only race not created by the direct will of God – though He intervened in the hour of their Making, adopted them, amended their design and commanded that their Seven Fathers remain asleep until after the appearance in Middle-earth of the Elves, whom He had long before purposed should be the first to walk the world. Later the Seven Fathers awoke for the second time, and went abroad, and commenced the works of their hands; and after a time spent in these labours, like all peoples they wandered ever westward, until they crossed the Blue Mountains into Beleriand, and there encountered the Elves – and so entered the records of the Ages.

They called themselves
Khazâd,
but the Elves called them
Naugrim,
the Stunted People, and
Nogothrim,
which means ‘Dwarf-folk', and
Gonnhirrim,
‘Stonemasters'; and other names besides. But there was seldom great love between Elves and Dwarves – as so often between natural and adopted children – and as the First Age wore away, and the tragedies of that time unfolded, enmities arose between the races, the memory of which lingered into later days and was never entirely eradicated.

Of the three Elder Races – Elves, Dwarves and Men – it was undoubtedly the Dwarves who exhibited the greatest love for the lands of Middle-earth and the treasures to be found there. For the Elves were, from the beginning, destined to find their long home on further shores, away from Middle-earth to the West. And although Men loved the creations of the world after their own fashion, they continually aspired to greater things, desiring to be like the Elves. Not so the Dwarves. Their love of possession for its own sake was balanced by the delight they took in ever more majestic and skilful feats of craftsmanship. From their beginnings they throve, the miner's chisel and smith's forge bringing them riches, power and great influence over the affairs of the Elder Days.

Of their origins the Dwarves told little to strangers; the small amount which is recorded in the Red Book comes from the tales of Men of Dale, who dwelt near them for many years and had commerce with them. The first of their race to enter the lands of the Elves in the west were the
Noegyth Nibin,
the ‘Petty-Dwarves', who mined and delved in Beleriand long before the coming of the Noldor from the deeps of the Sea. It was this people who excavated the caves of Narog – in their own tongue
Nulukkizdin
– but they were fugitives from their own people, and the Sindar did not love them; and there was persecution of this people by the Elves of the woods; which only ceased when more Dwarves, of the true race of the Khazâd, came into Beleriand in later years.

These second-comers were altogether a more impressive people; indeed, long before their crossing of the Ered Luin into Beleriand, they had already created for themselves many vast and populous cities in the east of Middle-earth, the most ancient of which was Moria, but the most westerly of which were the twin cities of Nogrod and Belegost, delved in the eastern side of the Blue Mountains.

The Dwarves of these cities had much to do with the Elves during the First Age, both good and evil. They fought on occasion with the Eldar against Morgoth (
see
AZAGHÂL
), and traded with Caranthir's people, and made roads into Beleriand, and delved the halls of Thingol, and performed many works of craft and smithwork on behalf of the Eldar – yet somehow there was never the same kind of abiding affection between the peoples which is the most cherished memory of Elves and Men. And on occasion the Dwarves marched against the Eldar, being seduced from their good sense by their lust for riches or their desire for vengeance. It was Dwarves of Nogrod who murdered King Thingol Greycloak of Doriath, and Dwarves of that same city who sacked Menegroth and stole the Nauglamir, made long before by their own forefathers; and it was a Dwarf who betrayed Túrin Turambar.

To the south-east, on the far side of the Misty Mountains, there stood the Gates of a city already of vast dimensions and legendary repute: Khazâd-dûm, the ancestral Halls of Durin, eldest and most royal of all the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves. The Golden Age of Moria lay still in the future but even in the First Age it was already the greatest of all Dwarvish accomplishments. The almost endless dolven Halls, Deeps, Levels, roads, chambers and pits were lit with glittering crystal lamps; the walls, cut with marvellous skill from the living rock with scarcely a chiselmark, shone with banners, helms, shields, proud spears of steel and corslets of silver set with gems. Far below, in the Deeps, patient miners worked with pick and basket, while masons above busily extended old roads or carved new, lofty chambers to the glory of Durin's name. At the great Eastern Gate, mail-clad guards watched over the Vale of Azanulbizar and the lovely lake of Kheled-zâram.

Such was the splendour of Moria in those days. Its power was too great to overcome and it remained inviolate throughout the tumults of the First Age; while Nogrod and Belegost were ruined when Beleriand was drowned under the Sea. Thus many dispossessed Dwarves of those cities flocked to Khazâd-dûm, swelling its numbers and its craft. And so the realm grew ever more rich and powerful while outside was ruin and a Change of the World.

Although Dwarves had always been wealthy, the discovery of mithril under the roots of Barazinbar early in the Second Age made the inhabitants of Moria fabulously rich. The Smiths of the High-elves (who did not share the ancient prejudices of their Grey-elven kin against Dwarves) eagerly founded a settlement near the west-wall of Moria, to engage in trade for this metal, most prized by all Elves. And the friendship that existed between Elves of Eregion and Dwarves of Moria was the greatest that has ever been between the two peoples. Yet when war swept over the lands of Eriador, the Moria-dwellers, fearful for their treasures, shut the doors of the city. Thus Khazâd-dûm survived the War of the Elves and Sauron, and the long dominion of the Lord of the Rings over Middle-earth during the Accursed Years of the Second Age.

Nevertheless Moria fell at last. In 1980 Third Age the miners were once more tunnelling down into the roots of Barazinbar, seeking the full extent of the mithril-lode. At the heart of the vein slept an evil spirit from the Realm of Morgoth. Somehow it had escaped from the ruin of Thangorodrim at the end of the First Age – and had been slumbering in the depths of the mountain ever since. The Balrog slew Durin VI and, the following year, his son Náin I; then the Dwarves of Durin's House fled from Moria, never to return while the Third Age lasted.

Many of those who escaped made their way into the North, to Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, where Náin's son Thráin I founded the first Kingdom ‘under the Mountain' (1999 Third Age). But his own son Thorin I, desiring to rule a kingdom of his own, passed still further into the north, to the Grey Mountains, taking with him the greater part of Durin's Folk. There his people once again began to amass great wealth – until their ancient enemies, the Dragons, heard of this and made war upon them, driving the Dwarves from these mountains and back to Erebor in the year 2590. Yet while the expedition to the Grey Mountains had ultimately failed, the days of the Dwarves did not seem so very hard, for Erebor had already been made rich and fair, and the skill and industry of the returning Dwarves of Durin's Line soon produced even greater results. Both Erebor and the Dwarf-dwellings in the Iron Hills prospered, until the year 2770, when the greatest Dragon of his time, Smaug the Golden, learned of the treasure under the Lonely Mountain, and came against King Thrór with consuming fire and great wrath. The Dwarves were scattered or slain, the nearby town of Dale was ruined and the surrounding country became a scorched, barren desert. Inside the Great Hall of Thrór, Smaug slept upon a vast pile of wealth and weapons.

Dispossessed yet again, the remaining Dwarves dispersed: some to the Iron Hills, some to Eriador and some to the meagre mines of the Blue Mountains, there to scratch a living as blacksmiths and ironmasters. In the end, Thrór could stand the shame no longer and, in his unreason, resolved to go to Moria. His murder by Orcs there and the bitter six-year war which followed brought about the last mustering of the Dwarves of the Seven Houses. In the year 2799, grim, mail-clad warriors bearing spears, mattocks and their beloved axes, marched to Azanulbizar to give final battle against the Orcs of the Misty Mountains. There, many of the Dwarves – and almost all of the Goblins – were slain.

Nevertheless, towards the very end of the Third Age, the fortunes of the Dwarves of Durin's House unexpectedly revived. In the account he titled
There and Back Again,
the Hobbit Bilbo Baggins tells of the manner in which Smaug the Dragon came to be slain and the Dwarves of Erebor to regain their inheritance despite the fact that the ancient enmity between Dwarves and Elves (and in this case, Men), nearly led to a disastrous reversal of their fortunes.
5
Bilbo himself took a significant part in these events; as a result, the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain thereafter showed great friendship towards Hobbits. More significantly, from this point onwards through the remainder of the Age, the Dwarves of Durin's Line continued to ally themselves with all other Free Peoples.

Of the reasons for the Dwarves' ancient feud with the Elves, little is said in the Red Book, but much in
The Silmarillion.
Each race attributed blame to the other. To Men it might seem likely that the Dwarves' legendary avarice had played the stronger part in fomenting disagreements between the two peoples. Yet the Dwarves might well have been justified, in their own eyes, in taking exception to the somewhat lordly manner employed by many Elves in their dealings with them (for there was often trade between the peoples). Perhaps, more than anything else, the rift was simply due to cultural differences: for Dwarves were quite unable to perceive any particular merit in trees, skies and hunting under the stars; while the very contemplation of dwelling underground filled Elves with abhorrence – though they did so on many occasions, and often employed Dwarves in the delving of these subterranean kingdoms and fortresses.