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#1 |
Regal Dwarven Shade
Join Date: Jan 2002
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I was reading about the War of the Dwarves and Orcs yesterday when a light went off in my head.
Gundabad was the birthplace of the dwarves and was a special place for them (at least according to what we are told) and the loss of Gundabad to the orcs was a real blow to the dwarves. So if this is the case, why in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs did the dwarves not re-occupy Gundabad after they took it? The omission on the part of the Longbeards seems particularly curious since they didn't even have a settled home at the time. Re-occupying old kingdoms seems to have been something of a racial obsession for the dwarves, at least as far as Khazad-dum and Erebor were concerned...but they didn't re-occupy Gundabad even after they had taken it and when they had no settled home. This strikes me as odd.
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#2 |
Gruesome Spectre
Join Date: Dec 2000
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It might seem odd indeed. I still wonder though if the proximity to valuable metals and ores wasn't a consideration for the Dwarves when selecting a place to settle.
After all, Khazad-dûm was certainly revered as an ancient mansion of the Dwarves, but its location appears to be tied to the fact that mithril was found there. That could also explain why there weren't Dwarven colonies in the White Mountains, founded before the coming of the Númenóreans: there simply wasn't anything there the Dwarves thought they could use.
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#3 |
Pittodrie Poltergeist
Join Date: Jan 2007
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Also, it was close to the Grey Mountains, which I believe was a 'There be Dragons' part of Middle Earth. Maybe the dwarves thought they had had more than their fair share of dragons up to that point and they didn't want more hassle.
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#4 |
Pile O'Bones
Join Date: Apr 2010
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A good reason. And not just dragons - I suspect in the aftermath of the breaking of Angband many of the survivors of Morgoth's legions took refuge up there in the far north, making Gundabad an untenable option for the dwarves.
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#5 | |
Gruesome Spectre
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Smaug was said to have been the "greatest of the dragons of his day", implying there were others; however, their inaction as regards helping fellow evildoers is curious.
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#6 | |
Pittodrie Poltergeist
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#7 |
Gruesome Spectre
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If there were dragons capable and/or willing to do that, why wasn't the dwarven settlement in the Iron Hills ever attacked by them?
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#8 |
Pittodrie Poltergeist
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The Iron Hills doesn't seem that wealthy a settlement, maybe the dragons thought it wasn't worth the effort. If the Iron Hills were amazing, surely the dwarves wouldn't have been so keen to move back to Erebor.
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#9 | |
A Voice That Gainsayeth
Join Date: Nov 2006
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EDIT: x-ed with Elmo. I think that is also true, partially: it is clear the Iron Hills were in no way such a treasure-filled place as Erebor was, but also there still remains the idea about too many Dwarves being present (or maybe just the entrances were too small, who knows what kind of "holes" Iron Hill settlement really was?). So you could say even: yes, the effort/gain ration did not probably seem to be very inviting.
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#10 | |
Gruesome Spectre
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And if the Iron Hills was not considered a wealthy enough target, why would dragons have bothered a newly resettled Gundabad, which would presumably have taken very many years to repopulate and enrich?
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#11 |
Pittodrie Poltergeist
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The dragons weren't just in the Withered Heath, that's just 'whence came the Great Worms'. Seems to be their original home in those mountains. The dwarves must have had settlements all around the Grey Mountains that were destroyed by the great beasts. Gundabad is only a stone's throw (or a dragons breath) away from the western edge of the Grey Mountains.
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#12 | |
A Voice That Gainsayeth
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But we are talking about the reason why Dwarves had not resettled Gundabad. The idea of Dragons coming to Gundabad is purely hypothetical (or at least that's how I perceive this discussion). But if I am a Dwarf, and I am judging whether to resettle Gundabad or not, I am not going to say: "Let's go there, because Dragons won't come there after we resettle it at least for a couple of years before we gather some hoard there, and look at Iron Hills for comparison..." but I am rather going to say "Hey, people, you sure you want to resettle Gundabad? Even if we manage to get rid of the Orcs in there, which will certainly weaken us, what if a Dragon comes there once it hears we are back there again, and weakened?" I think the Dwarves are very practical in this, unless there is really great zeal about it, but we don't know about Gundabad holding any Arkenstone so that it would make the Dwarves' hearts blazing with fire just in order to see it.
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#13 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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In addition to what was already said, I think there was no treasure left to reclaim in Gundabad, unlike Erebor. And although it's a sacred place, I don't think it was ever a big Dwarven kingdom.
Moria didn't have any treasure either by the time of LOTR, but such a massive kingdom/structure is a treasure by itself, even without decorative riches.
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#14 | |
Wight
Join Date: Aug 2010
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Maybe no loose treasure just lying around, but the wealth of Moria was in the lodes of Mithril (even if it no longer amounted to loads of Mithril
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Last edited by Puddleglum; 12-16-2011 at 05:23 PM. |
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#15 |
Pittodrie Poltergeist
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Doesn't big G the Grey mention something about the treasure being drowned in water or in a shadow of fear? Without the Balrog, the fear will be removed so some treasure, at least, could be retrieved by the dwarves.
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#16 | |
Gruesome Spectre
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#17 | |
A Voice That Gainsayeth
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Also, if Iron Hills was something newly settled, then there is another good reason for the Dwarves to go there, of course: the chance to find something new in there. Gundabad was long explored and likely with nothing special in there.
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#18 | ||
Regal Dwarven Shade
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#19 | |
Gruesome Spectre
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That begs the question though, that if the Dwarves had been established in the Iron Hills for so long, why was it only in the Third Age that they settled Erebor?
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#20 | |||
Regal Dwarven Shade
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Of course, this brings us to a real contradiction where in Dwarves and Men it is said that the Grey Mountains were part of the Longbeard's empire during their height in the Second Age...and then after the fall of Khazad-dum they were suddenly "little explored." Part of what I think may be going on here is another aspect of Tolkien's struggle to reconcile the events in The Hobbit with the rest of the broader world and this is a bit that didn't get ironed out very well.
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#21 | |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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#22 | |
Haunting Spirit
Join Date: Apr 2006
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#23 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
Join Date: Nov 2017
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It's easy to imagine an analogous situation for Gundabad. The canon says that the mountain was used for gatherings; perhaps dwarves were only allowed to enter with the express permission of Durin. Any of the first three Durins would have been able to give that permission before the mountain was first sacked, so it would have been in irregular use up to the mid-Second Age; but the War of the Dwarves and Orcs took place under Thrain. He may simply not have had the authority to open up the holy place. Nor would any other king of the Longbeards, until Durin VII reigned in Khazad-dum. Obviously this is purest speculation, but the idea fits well with how Tolkien crafted his world. Only the kings of Numenor could speak on the hallows on Meneltarma; without them, the three prayers to Iluvatar simply couldn't be spoken. The idea of royal authority being required for something to take place is deeply embedded in Middle-earth - think of the Palantiri needing the right to use them (hence the Steward of Gondor had better luck than Saruman the White!), or Maedhros and Maglor unable to forsake their oath without the approval of Iluvatar who they swore it to. Obviously this isn't a Tolkien Approved Answer - the actual reason is probably 'the idea of the War post-dated The Hobbit, so they couldn't resettle Gundabad without messing up the geography later' - but I think it's a Tolkien-Friendly one. hS |
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#24 |
Regal Dwarven Shade
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That is an interesting idea.
However, Thrain was King of Durin's Folk. It seems oddly specific that he could only give permission to access Gundabad if he was ruling from a specific place.
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#25 |
Overshadowed Eagle
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It's not about where he was ruling from - it's about who he was. The dwarves believed that Durin was reincarnated, so any one of the seven Durins would (under this theory) have the authority to open the birthplace of Durin I. Other kings of his line wouldn't have the same authority.
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#26 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: Aug 2012
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Is it possible that they suspected that, even if they were to retake Gundabad, the Orcs would simply return in a generation or two (as they did) and seize it from them again? "If this is victory, then our hands are too small to hold it." Even without a menace like the Balrog, perhaps the Dwarves knew that they simply didn't have the strength to hold Gundabad in the long term.
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#27 | |
Overshadowed Eagle
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The one downside is that it assumes the dwarves are willing to allow that much common sense in. Given that Thorin faced down a dragon to retake Erebor with 12 companions, and Balin took a stab at reclaiming Moria despite Dain (the king at the time) saying 'haha, if we do that we'll all die horribly'... would they really be deterred from populating Gundabad just by the threat of a few Orcs? hS |
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#28 | |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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By contrast, in the other cases the Dwarves were living comfortably and becoming restless.
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