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Originally Posted by Kuruharan
I have to say I disagree with those. If anything it would be the reverse.
I also think that those numbers are too high. Maybe 4-6,000 might be okay for the Lonely Mountain, but the Iron Hills would be much lower than that.
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Before this comes to a bashing of me and my calculations, I encourage you to go read the Durin's folk in Appendix A, in the beginning of when it talks about Gandalf's worries about the North. It says:
"Among many cares he was troubled in mind by the perilous state of the North; because he knew then already that Sauron was plotting war, and intended to attack Rivendell. But to RESIST ANY ATTEMPT FROM THE EAST to regain the lands of Angmar and the northern passes in the mountains there were now ONLY THE DWARVES OF THE IRON HILLS"
Now Tolkien doesn't say Elves or Men but the Iron Hills. If at the time Dain could only muster a force of "500" Dwarves while Sauron could muster thousands, and the Elves of Mirkwood could muster more than a thousand, wouldn't it be the other way around?
So to me your statement makes no sense, because if what you were saying is so then the Elves should be much weaker than the Dwarves.
So why are you puzzled? obviously, the Iron Hills had a military superiority over the Elves.
About the Iron Hills. The Iron Hills was not an outpost at this time in history. around half of Durin's folk lived there, since most of those that survived Smaug went to the Iron Hills, except for those led by Thror, and those who still dwelt in the Ered Mithrin and elsewhere.
Why did Thror not take his people to the Iron Hills? I do not know for Tolkien didn't say, But would it matter if it was an outpost or not? He may have went elsewhere out of respect for his brother's lordom of the Hills or maybe it wasn't a desirable place for him to live or maybe he was such a proud king that he wanted to make it on his own, I don't know. But still would it matter if it were an outpost or not?
I haven't seen anywhere in Tolkiens works (which I haven't read all of yet) so far, that says that the Dwarves were very few. I think we as readers kind of just figured they were but, what it says is that they slowly increase as race, and when they do not have a secure dwelling are in danger of not having any reproduction.
Lastly, you wondered why I calculated the Iron Hills army at 8-10,000. Well I did it out of studying military patterns from real life and from the books. From them I figured if Durin's folk had an average population of 1,000,000 people throughout the the mid to late third age, and you broke it up I figured that the Iron Hills after Smaug was around 2-300,000 people and later around 3-500,000 (I will retract my calculation of 600,000). While Thorin had around 2-400,000 people in the Ered Luin (after his fathers capture) since his population was growing from the wandering Durin's folk . And of course we can't orget those wanderers and colonies in the Ered Mithrin and elsewhere which may have been in the tens of thousands.
So if the Iron Hills had from 1 to 5 percent of it men in the military it would come out to 5-10,000. For these are the percentages most militarys come from in almost every country on earth.
I hope this answers your questions and I'm sorry if my figures are proposterous to you and anyone else. I'm was just trying to think figuratively and logically.