[Kalimac]

Two words: Courtly Love.

Gimli (as everyone above has already pointed out) loves Galadriel but not in a relationship-related way; he doesn't see her as his equal, but rather as an ideal to strive for, especially as in the usual courtly love situation she's already married to someone else and thus REALLY unattainable. Not that he's striving to *become* her or anything [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] but rather that he's striving to make the world a place which is worthy of containing her. And if this means hacking off a lot of Orc heads and trying to pull trolls off of Pippin, then so be it [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]. Incidentally, her gift of three strands of hair is a perfect courtly love token; in fact, it's a very good one - usually the knight-errant just got a handkerchief or something like that, but he gets something much closer to her than that.