Follow Up to the Blue Mountains Question - Gundabad
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. |
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. |
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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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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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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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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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? |
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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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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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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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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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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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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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 |
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. |
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.
hS |
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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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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By contrast, in the other cases the Dwarves were living comfortably and becoming restless. |
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