Quote:
Originally Posted by Zigűr
There was no Dwarven settlement in the Iron Hills until Grór led part of Durin's Folk there in 2589 after their halls in the Grey Mountains were destroyed by Cold-drakes.
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I ran across a couple of quotations pertinent to this in
Of Dwarves and Men:
[In the First Age]...the Longbeards had spread southward down the Vales of Anduin and made their chief 'mansion' and stronghold at Moria; and also eastward to the the Iron Hills, where the mines were their chief source of iron-ore. They regarded the Iron Hills, the Ered Mithrin, and the east dales of the Misty mountains as their own land."
And then in note 30:
It was a brief period in the dark annals of the Second Age, yet for many lives of Men the Longbeards controlled the Ered Mithrin, Erebor, and the Iron Hills...while the Men of the North dwelt in all the adjacent lands as far south as the Great Dwarf Road that cut through the Forest (the Old Forest Road was its ruinous remains in the Third Age) and then went North-east to the Iron Hills.
Much of this I find interesting, including the early association of Durin's Folk with Erebor, and the origin of the Old Forest Road. Anyway, none of this states unequivocally there was ever a -settlement- in the Iron Hills before T.A. 2590, but it seems to me as likely as not, at least for a time...both in the history of Middle-earth, and in Tolkien's ever-changing conception of the same.
But that's based merely on the above: there may very well be evidence to the contrary of which I'm ignorant.