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Old 12-14-2011, 02:57 PM   #1
Kuruharan
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Boots Follow Up to the Blue Mountains Question - Gundabad

I was reading about the War of the Dwarves and Orcs yesterday when a light went off in my head.

Gundabad was the birthplace of the dwarves and was a special place for them (at least according to what we are told) and the loss of Gundabad to the orcs was a real blow to the dwarves.

So if this is the case, why in the War of the Dwarves and Orcs did the dwarves not re-occupy Gundabad after they took it? The omission on the part of the Longbeards seems particularly curious since they didn't even have a settled home at the time.

Re-occupying old kingdoms seems to have been something of a racial obsession for the dwarves, at least as far as Khazad-dum and Erebor were concerned...but they didn't re-occupy Gundabad even after they had taken it and when they had no settled home.

This strikes me as odd.
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Old 12-14-2011, 03:12 PM   #2
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It might seem odd indeed. I still wonder though if the proximity to valuable metals and ores wasn't a consideration for the Dwarves when selecting a place to settle.

After all, Khazad-dûm was certainly revered as an ancient mansion of the Dwarves, but its location appears to be tied to the fact that mithril was found there. That could also explain why there weren't Dwarven colonies in the White Mountains, founded before the coming of the Númenóreans: there simply wasn't anything there the Dwarves thought they could use.
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Old 12-14-2011, 07:51 PM   #3
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Also, it was close to the Grey Mountains, which I believe was a 'There be Dragons' part of Middle Earth. Maybe the dwarves thought they had had more than their fair share of dragons up to that point and they didn't want more hassle.
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Old 12-15-2011, 08:19 PM   #4
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Also, it was close to the Grey Mountains, which I believe was a 'There be Dragons' part of Middle Earth. Maybe the dwarves thought they had had more than their fair share of dragons up to that point and they didn't want more hassle.
A good reason. And not just dragons - I suspect in the aftermath of the breaking of Angband many of the survivors of Morgoth's legions took refuge up there in the far north, making Gundabad an untenable option for the dwarves.
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Old 12-16-2011, 12:40 PM   #5
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A good reason. And not just dragons - I suspect in the aftermath of the breaking of Angband many of the survivors of Morgoth's legions took refuge up there in the far north, making Gundabad an untenable option for the dwarves.
Yet neither those minions nor any remaining dragons (after Smaug had staked his claim on Erebor) apparently gave any assistance to the Orcs at Gundabad, or any other place the Dwarves attacked.

Smaug was said to have been the "greatest of the dragons of his day", implying there were others; however, their inaction as regards helping fellow evildoers is curious.
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Old 12-16-2011, 12:44 PM   #6
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Yet neither those minions nor any remaining dragons (after Smaug had staked his claim on Erebor) apparently gave any assistance to the Orcs at Gundabad, or any other place the Dwarves attacked.

Smaug was said to have been the "greatest of the dragons of his day", implying there were others; however, their inaction as regards helping fellow evildoers is curious.
Like any self-respecting clever evil-doer, why would a great dragon help a bunch of weakling orcs, unless he was forced to by Sauron or someone? Evil doers are selfish by definition. If I was a dragon I'd let the dwarves take Gundabad, wait a while for them to amass a bunch of gold and cool armour, then swoop in and take it all! Tis a fail-safe plan.
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Old 12-19-2011, 01:22 PM   #7
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Re-occupying old kingdoms seems to have been something of a racial obsession for the dwarves, at least as far as Khazad-dum and Erebor were concerned...but they didn't re-occupy Gundabad even after they had taken it and when they had no settled home.

This strikes me as odd.
What significance did Gundabad hold other than being the place where Durin awoke? Was it ever a dwelling place for other dwarves? My impression is that Durin left it soon after he awoke and eventually founded Khazad-dum.
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Old 02-27-2018, 05:44 AM   #8
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What significance did Gundabad hold other than being the place where Durin awoke? Was it ever a dwelling place for other dwarves? My impression is that Durin left it soon after he awoke and eventually founded Khazad-dum.
Another perspective on this springs out of the sometimes-theorised connection between dwarves and Judaism: there is a strong body of thought in modern-day Judaism that it is forbidden to set foot on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, partly because only high priests were permitted in the inner areas of the temple, but there's no way of knowing where exactly they were, so anyone visiting the Mount could enter them accidentally.

It's easy to imagine an analogous situation for Gundabad. The canon says that the mountain was used for gatherings; perhaps dwarves were only allowed to enter with the express permission of Durin. Any of the first three Durins would have been able to give that permission before the mountain was first sacked, so it would have been in irregular use up to the mid-Second Age; but the War of the Dwarves and Orcs took place under Thrain. He may simply not have had the authority to open up the holy place. Nor would any other king of the Longbeards, until Durin VII reigned in Khazad-dum.

Obviously this is purest speculation, but the idea fits well with how Tolkien crafted his world. Only the kings of Numenor could speak on the hallows on Meneltarma; without them, the three prayers to Iluvatar simply couldn't be spoken. The idea of royal authority being required for something to take place is deeply embedded in Middle-earth - think of the Palantiri needing the right to use them (hence the Steward of Gondor had better luck than Saruman the White!), or Maedhros and Maglor unable to forsake their oath without the approval of Iluvatar who they swore it to.

Obviously this isn't a Tolkien Approved Answer - the actual reason is probably 'the idea of the War post-dated The Hobbit, so they couldn't resettle Gundabad without messing up the geography later' - but I think it's a Tolkien-Friendly one.

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Old 03-01-2018, 10:10 AM   #9
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Boots

That is an interesting idea.

However, Thrain was King of Durin's Folk. It seems oddly specific that he could only give permission to access Gundabad if he was ruling from a specific place.
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Old 03-01-2018, 01:33 PM   #10
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It's not about where he was ruling from - it's about who he was. The dwarves believed that Durin was reincarnated, so any one of the seven Durins would (under this theory) have the authority to open the birthplace of Durin I. Other kings of his line wouldn't have the same authority.

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Old 03-01-2018, 07:56 PM   #11
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Is it possible that they suspected that, even if they were to retake Gundabad, the Orcs would simply return in a generation or two (as they did) and seize it from them again? "If this is victory, then our hands are too small to hold it." Even without a menace like the Balrog, perhaps the Dwarves knew that they simply didn't have the strength to hold Gundabad in the long term.
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