Quote:
Originally Posted by Kuruharan
While to some extent that is plausible, I don't know that I am in complete agreement with it because the eastern dwarves probably had very few to almost no dealings with elves. They certainly had no dealings with the more advanced elves. I am not sure they would have had enough dealings with elves to make having a grudge against them a primary motivating force.
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We know (as quoted in this thread) that they did have contact with the Avari though.
I also wanted to mention "countless companies of Men of a new sort that we have not met before. Not tall, but broad and grim, bearded like dwarves, wielding great axes. Out of some savage land in the wide East they come, we deem." (
LR p.803)
I've always like the idea of an Easterling-Dwarf cultural connection. There's even "the theory (a probable one) that in the unrecorded past some of the languages of Men - including the language of the dominant element in the Atani from which Adūnaic was derived - had been influenced by Khuzdul" (
The Peoples of Middle-earth p.317), which is an interesting notion.
It seems that there is an Easterling-Dwarf connection. And we know that there is a substantial Easterling-Orc connection. Is might be possible, then, for there to have been in Rhūn a variety of races in contact with one another, perhaps including the Avari as well. Not to say that this was likely a pleasant or altogether peaceful situation but at least one which may have been somewhat functional.
Given their great resistance to Evil, and the willingness on the part of all seven houses to contribute to the War of the Dwarves and Orcs, I'm not totally convinced by the notion that the Eastern Dwarves turned to Evil entirely, but may certainly have been under the Shadow to a greater extent than their Western kin (explaining how at least some of them apparently allied and traded with Orcs, came to serve Sauron etc). As I discussed elsewhere, to my mind the Dwarves were not of the same spiritual calibre as the Eruhķni which might explain how they neither attained the same levels of heroism nor, perhaps, the same Fallen depths.
I could discuss Dwarf-lore all day...