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
thumb|Tolkien found dwarves in [[Norse mythology. 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. – a warlike race who fought fiercely against their enemies, including other Dwarves.
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. Aulë sealed the seven Fathers of the Dwarves in stone chambers in far-flung regions of Middle-earth to await their awakening.
thumb|upright|The petty-dwarf Mîm may derive from the shrunken figure of [[Regin|Mime,
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.
Arte<!--British English-->facts
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.
<span class="anchor" id="Names"></span> Language and names
thumb|upright=1.5|Tolkien invented parts of [[Middle-earth to resolve the linguistic puzzle he had accidentally created by using different European languages for those of peoples in his legendarium.]]
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 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. 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. 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<!--same article as prev. link, Norse dwarves--> (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<!--this is not the place for a summary of The Hobbit--> Erebor, and living among other groups but retaining their own culture, are derived from the medieval image of Jews, Medieval views of Jews also saw them as having a propensity for making well-crafted and beautiful things, The Dwarf calendar invented for The Hobbit reflects the Jewish calendar's Rosh Hashanah in beginning in late autumn.
{| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto;"
|+ Tolkien's use of Jewish history for his Dwarves This raises the question, examined by Rebecca Brackmann in Mythlore, of whether there was an element of antisemitism, however deeply buried, in Tolkien's account of the Dwarves, inherited from English attitudes of his time. Brackman notes that Tolkien himself attempted to work through the issue in his Middle-earth writings. It has been suggested that the formation of the deep friendship between the dwarf Gimli and elf Legolas in the Lord of the Rings, overcoming longtime mutual suspicion, can be seen as Tolkien's reply toward "Gentile anti-Semitism and Jewish exclusiveness".
The philologist Helge Fauskanger analyses Khuzdul, finding in it features of Semitic languages.
{| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto;"
|+ Helge Fauskanger's analysis of Semitic features of the Dwarves' language, Khuzdul
|-
! style="width: 120px;" | Element
! style="width: 270px;" | Description
! style="width: 220px;" | Example
|-
| Word stems || Not pronounceable words, only consonants || R-Kh-S "Orc-"
|-
| Parts of speech || Nouns, verbs etc formed by inserting vowels into word stems; sometimes with doubling of a consonant || Rukhs "Orc"; Rakhâs "Orcs"
|-
| Construct state || Word before noun taken as genitival,<br/>i.e. X Y = "The X of Y", "Y's X" || Baruk Khazâd! "Axes of the Dwarves!"
|-
| Nominal sentence || Verb "to be" can be implicit || Khazâd ai-mênu! "The Dwarves [are] upon you!"
|}
Spelling
The original editor of The Hobbit "corrected" Tolkien's plural "dwarves" to "dwarfs", as did the editor of the Puffin paperback edition. According to Tolkien, the "real 'historical' plural" of "dwarf" is "dwarrows" or "dwerrows". He described the word "dwarves" as "a piece of private bad grammar". In Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien explained that if people still spoke of "dwarves" regularly, English might have retained a special plural for the word "dwarf", as with the irregular plural of "goose", "geese". and "dwarf(-)" (e.g. "Dwarf-lords", "Old Dwarf Road") as adjectives for the people he created.
In Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated film The Lord of the Rings, the part of the Dwarf Gimli was voiced by David Buck.
In Peter Jackson's live action adaptation of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, Gimli's character is from time to time used as comic relief, whether with jokes about his height or his rivalry with the elf Legolas. Gimli is played by John Rhys-Davies, who gave the character a "Welsh-derived" accent.
In Jackson's three-film adaptation of The Hobbit, Thorin is portrayed by Richard Armitage, with Ken Stott as Balin, Graham McTavish as Dwalin, Aidan Turner as Kíli, Dean O'Gorman as Fíli, Mark Hadlow as Dori, Jed Brophy as Nori, Adam Brown as Ori, John Callen as Óin, Peter Hambleton as Glóin, William Kircher as Bifur, James Nesbitt as Bofur, and Stephen Hunter as Bombur. Jackson's films introduce a story arc not found in the original novel, in which Kili and the Elf Tauriel (a character also invented for the films) fall in love.
Role-playing games
thumb|upright=1.2|Dwarves at the [[Council of Elrond in Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring]]
In Iron Crown Enterprises' Middle-earth Role Playing (1986), Dwarf player-characters receive statistical bonuses to Strength and Constitution, and subtractions from Presence, Agility and Intelligence. Seven "Dwarven Kindreds", named after each of the founding fathers—Durin, Bávor, Dwálin, Thrár, Druin, Thelór and Bárin—are given in The Lords of Middle-earth—Volume III (1989).
In Decipher Inc.'s The Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game (2001), based on the Jackson films, Dwarf player-characters get bonuses to Vitality and Strength attributes and must be given craft skills.<!--In the Dwarves of Middle-earth (2003) supplement, the seven Dwarf Lords and their houses are named as Durin, Sindri, Linnar, Var, Uri, Thulin and Vigdis.-->
In the real-time strategy game The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II, and its expansion, both based on the Jackson films, Dwarves are heavily influenced by classical military practice, and use throwing axes, war hammers, spears, and circular shields. One dwarf unit is the "Phalanx", similar to its Greek counterpart.
Notes
References
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Secondary
Sources
- <!--Carpenter 1981-->
- <!--Rateliff 2007-->
- <!--Tolkien 2007-->