Dwarf shortage

[Kuruharan]

Originally Posted by Zigûr

I think Azanulbizar is not helped by their CGI opponents giving absolutely no frame of reference either.

"Frames of reference" are an interesting thing to reflect on regarding dwarves because as a race one of their defining characteristics only becomes apparent in relation to others, i.e. they need others around to help define themselves.

This has always kind of bugged me and I've thought from time to time it would be nice to have a story that centers on dwarves, but you can't tell that they are "dwarves" until well into the plot when they meet members of another race for the first time and are shorter than the other race.

This issue also calls to mind the Elder Scrolls universe where the (sadly extinct ) Dwemer are more or less the same size as everyone else but are considered "dwarves" because they spent so much time interacting with giants.

[Mithalwen]

Yes. I havev always thought that the Breelanders were probably seldom more than wha we would think of as average height with most on the shorter side of it. Think of Aragorn's Bree nicknames, Strider and Longshanks,. He could have been up to a foot taller than the typical Breelanders which means there was typically a smaller height difference between Breelanders and Dwarves than Breelanders and Rangers. It may have been a factor in their suspicion of the Rangers.

Elrond with lineage featuring Thingol and Tuor as well as a prime Noldorin strain should have been big but Tolkien describes as stocky with hobbits being smaller even when not much shorter. A dwarf should give an impression of great strength and not in a wiry way.

[Galin]

Hobbits heights... or some citations I've collected about this

An extract from a letter apparently addressed to Tolkien's American publishers, and probably written in March or April 1938. Houghton Mifflin seem to have asked JRRT to supply drawings of hobbits for use in some future edition of The Hobbit.

(...) The feet from the ankles down, covered with brown hairy fur. Clothing: green velvet breeches; red or yellow waistcoat; brown or green jacket; gold (or brass) buttons; a dark green hood and cloak (belonging to a dwarf).

Actual size – only important if other objects are in picture – say about three feet or three feet six inches. The hobbit in the picture of the gold-hoard, Chapter XII, is of course (apart from being fat in the wrong places) enormously too large. But (as my children, at any rate, understand) he is really in a separate picture or 'plane' – being invisible to the dragon.

JRRT, letter 27

Much later, in one note dated around 1969, as I read the following anyway, JRRT ended up describing full grown males at an average of 3 foot 5 inches.

'... to this: Dwarves about 4 foot high at least. Hobbits were lighter in build, but not much shorter; their tallest men were 4 ft. but seldom taller. Though nowadays their survivors are seldom 3 feet high, in the days of the story they were taller which means that they usually exceeded 3 ft. and qualified for the name halfling. But the name halfling must have originated circa TA 1150, getting on for some 2,000 years (1868) before the War of the Ring, during which the dwindling of the Numenoreans had shown itself in stature as well as life-span. So that it referred to a height of full grown males of an average of, say, 3 ft. 5.'

That's quoted in The Reader's Guide to The Lord of the Rings, Hammond And Scull. Another contemporary note states that at the time of the story the average height of a male adult hobbit: Harfoots at 3 foot 6, Fallohides slimmer and a little taller, and Stoors broader, stouter, and a little shorter. In The Hobbit it's noted generally that 'hobbits are smaller than the bearded Dwarves'.

In one of these late notes JRRT also said that the remarks in the Prologue are unnecessarily vague regarding the height of Hobbits.