Dwarves of Middle-earth: Aulë, Durin's Folk, Moria and Erebor

Quick Answer: The Dwarves of Middle-earth were made by the Vala Aulë, who created the Seven Fathers in secret; Ilúvatar adopted them and made them sleep until after the Elves woke. The eldest Father, Durin, founded Khazad-dûm (Moria). His descendants, Durin's Folk, lost Moria to a Balrog, built a kingdom in Erebor, lost it to Smaug, and won it back with Thorin's company in The Hobbit. Dwarves speak a secret tongue, Khuzdul. In Sindarin a Dwarf is a Naug (plural Noeg); in Quenya, Casar.

The Dwarves are the most underestimated of Tolkien's peoples. In The Hobbit they are a comic band of hooded travellers who lose their dishes and their dignity in the first chapter, and in the films they are often played for laughs. Read The Silmarillion and the Appendices of The Lord of the Rings, though, and a very different people appears: ancient, proud, stubborn, secretive, capable of terrible grudges and unbreakable loyalty, with a creation story of their own and a language they would not teach anyone.

This guide covers their origin, the great houses of the Dwarves, the history of Moria and Erebor, their long relationship with the Elves, their secret language, and what the Elves called them. For the wider picture of every people in Tolkien's world, see our Races of Middle-earth complete guide.

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Made by Aulë: The Creation of the Dwarves

Of all the speaking peoples, the Dwarves have the strangest origin. They were not part of the original Music of the Ainur.

The Silmarillion (chapter 2, "Of Aulë and Yavanna") tells how Aulë the Smith, the Vala who shaped the rock and metal of the earth, grew impatient waiting for the Children of Ilúvatar to awake. He wanted pupils to whom he could teach his crafts. So in a hall under the mountains of Middle-earth he made the Seven Fathers of the Dwarves, strong and enduring, able to resist the power of Morgoth.

Ilúvatar knew at once. He asked Aulë why he had tried to do something beyond his power and authority; Aulë's creatures could move only by his thought, like puppets. Aulë repented, took up a hammer to destroy them, and the Dwarves flinched and begged for mercy. Ilúvatar had already given them true life. He accepted them as his adopted children, but he would not let them come before the Firstborn. The Seven Fathers were laid to sleep under the stone until the Elves had woken.

This story explains a great deal about Dwarvish character. They were made to endure and to resist, so they are tough, hard to dominate, and slow to trust. They were made by a craftsman, so they love making. And they know, deep in their lore, that they were not planned, which may be why they hold so tightly to what is theirs.

Tolkien adds that the Dwarves believe Aulë cares for them and gathers them after death to halls set apart in Mandos. What their final fate will be, the Elves say, is not known.

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The Seven Fathers and the Houses of the Dwarves

The Seven Fathers woke in pairs in different places, except for one. Durin, the eldest, woke alone at Mount Gundabad in the north of the Misty Mountains. His people became the most famous of the seven houses.

The other six Fathers founded houses that the Elves of the First Age met in the Blue Mountains, the Ered Luin. Two great Dwarf-cities stood there: Nogrod and Belegost. The Dwarves of those cities traded with the Elves of Beleriand, made weapons and armour for them, and built the halls of Menegroth for King Thingol. Of the remaining houses, Tolkien's later notes place them far in the east of Middle-earth, and they barely appear in the stories.

Durin's Folk are also called the Longbeards. They are the house of Thorin, Balin and Gimli, and almost everything readers of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings know about Dwarves comes from them. Durin himself lived so long that he was called the Deathless, and Dwarves believed he would be reborn in his line. Several later kings were named Durin; Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings counts six, and foretells a seventh and last.

There was also a smaller, sadder people: the Petty-dwarves of the First Age, exiles from the eastern houses who dwindled in Beleriand. Mîm, who shelters Túrin in The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin, was one of the last of them.

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Khazad-dûm: The Glory of Moria

Durin chose a cave above the mirror-lake Kheled-zâram, where he saw a crown of stars reflected in the water, and there began Khazad-dûm, the Dwarrowdelf. Over thousands of years it grew into the greatest of all Dwarf-mansions, running under the mountains from east to west.

The wealth of Khazad-dûm came from mithril, "true-silver," found nowhere else in the world. It was light, harder than steel, and never tarnished. Bilbo's mail-shirt, given to Frodo, was made of it.

In the Second Age the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm became close friends with the Elves of Eregion, the land of the Noldorin smiths just west of the mountains. The friendship produced one of the most famous objects in Tolkien: the West-gate of Moria, made by Narvi the Dwarf and inscribed by Celebrimbor of Eregion. Its inscription invites the traveller to speak "friend" and enter, and the password is the Sindarin word mellon. In the book, Gandalf works it out after Merry's question about the meaning of the inscription; the films give the moment to Frodo. Our Rivendell Elvish guide and Lord of the Rings Elvish phrases cover the Elvish around this scene.

The name Moria, which the Dwarves hated, is Sindarin, and The Lord of the Rings glosses it as the Black Pit or Black Chasm. The element mor- is the same "black, dark" that appears in Mordor, and in Quenya as morë. The Elves gave it that name only after the Dwarves had left and the halls had become dark and dreadful.

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Durin's Bane and the Fall of Moria

In the year 1980 of the Third Age the Dwarves, mining ever deeper for mithril, woke something that had been hiding under the mountains since the end of the First Age: a Balrog, one of Morgoth's fire-demons. It killed King Durin VI and then his son, and the Dwarves fled Moria. They called the creature Durin's Bane.

That Balrog is the one Gandalf faces on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm in The Fellowship of the Ring, and the two fall together. For the full story of these spirits, see Balrogs of Middle-earth.

After the fall of Moria, Durin's Folk wandered. Thráin I founded the Kingdom under the Mountain at Erebor, the Lonely Mountain, in the year 1999, and there the Dwarves found the Arkenstone. Later the kings moved to the Grey Mountains in the north, until dragons, the cold-drakes of the north, drove them out and killed King Dáin I. His son Thrór returned to Erebor, and the kingdom grew rich again, trading with the Men of Dale.

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Smaug and the Quest of Erebor

That wealth drew Smaug, the last great dragon of Middle-earth. In 2770 he came down on Erebor, destroyed Dale, and took the Mountain and its treasure. The survivors, led by Thrór, his son Thráin II and his grandson Thorin, went into exile.

The following years are full of grief, told in Appendix A:

• Thrór went to Moria alone and was killed by the Orc-chieftain Azog, who mutilated his body.
• The Dwarves gathered from every house and fought the War of the Dwarves and Orcs, ending in the Battle of Azanulbizar before the East-gate of Moria in 2799. Dáin Ironfoot of the Iron Hills killed Azog, but the Dwarves lost so many that they refused to enter Moria, knowing the Balrog was still there. Thorin earned the name Oakenshield in this battle, using an oak branch as a shield.
• Thráin II was later captured by Sauron, and the last of the Seven Rings of the Dwarves was taken from him in Dol Guldur.

This is the background of The Hobbit. In 2941 Gandalf met Thorin at Bree and set the Quest of Erebor in motion, which led to Bilbo, Smaug's death at the hands of Bard, the Battle of Five Armies, and the death of Thorin. Dáin Ironfoot became King under the Mountain. The films expand Azog's role considerably; in the book Azog is long dead by the time of The Hobbit, and it is his son Bolg who leads the Orcs at the Battle of Five Armies.

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Balin's Colony and the Book of Mazarbul

In 2989 Balin, one of Thorin's companions, led a small expedition to reclaim Moria. For a few years it seemed to work. Then, in 2994, the colony was destroyed by Orcs. The Fellowship finds the record of its last days, the Book of Mazarbul, in the Chamber of Records, and Balin's tomb with its runic inscription. The Dwarves' final message, that they could not get out, is one of the darkest moments in the book.

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The Seven Rings and the Dwarves

Sauron gave seven Rings of Power to the Dwarf-lords, but they did not work on the Dwarves as he intended. Appendix A says the Dwarves were made to resist domination, so the Rings did not turn them into wraiths. Instead the Rings kindled their greed for gold, and dragons came for the hoards. Four of the Seven were consumed by dragons; the last was taken from Thráin. This is one more reason the Dwarves were so slow to trust anyone offering gifts.

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Dwarves and Elves: Feud and Friendship

No two peoples in Middle-earth have a more complicated history than Dwarves and Elves.

The Nauglamír and the death of Thingol. In the First Age, Thingol of Doriath hired Dwarves of Nogrod to set a Silmaril in the Nauglamír, the Necklace of the Dwarves. They coveted it, killed Thingol in his own halls, and the Dwarves of Nogrod later sacked Menegroth. Beren and the Green-elves ambushed them on their way home. The story is in The Silmarillion, chapter 22.

The friendship of Eregion. In the Second Age, Moria and Eregion were close allies, and the West-gate stands as a monument to it.

The Third Age coolness. By The Hobbit, Thranduil's Elves imprison Thorin's company, and in The Fellowship of the Ring Gimli and Legolas start out openly hostile. Haldir wants Gimli blindfolded in Lothlórien.

Legolas and Gimli. Their friendship, beginning when Galadriel speaks to Gimli in Khuzdul names and gives him three strands of her hair, is the healing of that old wound. After the war, Gimli leads Dwarves to the Glittering Caves of Aglarond, and Appendix A records the tradition that he sailed West with Legolas, the only Dwarf ever to do so.

For more on the Elvish side of this story, see Elves of Middle-earth and Legolas's Elvish lines.

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Dwarvish Culture: Craft, Kin and Grudges

A few traits recur everywhere the Dwarves appear, and they make the history above easier to follow.

Craft above all. Dwarves love stone, metal and gems more than growing things. They work for the joy of making, and their halls, roads and weapons outlast the kingdoms of Men. The great hall of Menegroth in Doriath, the West-gate of Moria and the toys and weapons of Dale were all Dwarf-work.

Kin and lineage. Dwarves keep careful records of descent, which is why Appendix A can trace Durin's line generation by generation. A Dwarf-king's claim rests on that line, and Dáin Ironfoot becomes King under the Mountain because he is Thorin's nearest kinsman.

Long memory. A wrong done to a Dwarf is not forgotten, and it can become a feud that lasts for centuries, as with Azog and the Orcs of Moria or with Thingol's Doriath. The same loyalty makes a Dwarf a friend for life once trust is won, which is what happens between Gimli and Legolas.

Burial in stone. Dwarves lay their dead in tombs of stone, not in the earth. After Azanulbizar there were too many dead to entomb, so the Dwarves burned them, and Appendix A says that being "burned Dwarves" was remembered with grief and pride.

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Khuzdul: The Secret Language of the Dwarves

The Dwarves' own language is Khuzdul. Tolkien wrote that Aulë devised it for them, and that they guarded it so closely that very few outsiders ever learned any of it. Only a handful of words and phrases appear in the books: Khazad-dûm, Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!, the battle-cry Gimli shouts at Helm's Deep, and the place-names around Moria.

Even their names are hidden. The names we know, Thorin, Balin, Gimli, Dáin, are taken from the Old Norse Völuspá and represent, in Tolkien's framing, names in the language of the Men of the North. The true names of the Dwarves were never revealed, not even carved on their tombs.

Khuzdul is far less developed than Elvish, and Tengwar does not teach it. But it is fascinating to study. Our Khuzdul guide collects every attested word and explains its grammar. Dwarves used runes, the Cirth, rather than Tengwar; the Tengwar alphabet guide explains how the Elvish script compares.

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Dwarves in Elvish

The Elves had several words for the Dwarves, and their choice of word tells you something about the relationship. These are attested in Tolkien's writings.

In Tolkien's late notes on the Dwarves, Naug is connected with a root meaning "stunted," so it was not a flattering name. Hadhod and Quenya Casar are adaptations of the Dwarves' own name Khazâd, which is more respectful. Mellon, "friend," is the word that opens the Doors of Durin, and it is Sindarin only; the Quenya words for friend are different.

You can see any of these words in Tengwar with the Tengwar Scribe, or try writing mellon into the Elvish translator to see it in context.

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Dwarves in the Films Versus the Books

The films took several liberties with the Dwarves:

• Azog is alive in The Hobbit films and hunts Thorin throughout. In the book he died at Azanulbizar in 2799, long before Bilbo's journey.
• The company's look is far more varied in the films, with some Dwarves nearly beardless; in Tolkien, a long beard is a point of pride, and Durin's people are named the Longbeards for it.
• Kíli and Tauriel's romance is a film invention; Tauriel does not exist in Tolkien's work.
• The Dwarves' Khuzdul in the films, especially the curses and longer lines, was largely composed for the films by David Salo, expanding from Tolkien's handful of words.

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People Also Ask

Why do Dwarves and Elves hate each other? The deepest root is the murder of Thingol by the Dwarves of Nogrod and the battle that followed, told in The Silmarillion. Later grievances, and Thranduil's imprisonment of Thorin, kept the bitterness alive into the Third Age.

How long do Dwarves live? Around 250 years, according to Appendix A. Thorin was 195 when he died, and Dáin Ironfoot lived to 252.

Did Gimli go to Valinor? Appendix A records a tradition that Gimli sailed West with Legolas after the death of Aragorn, out of love for Galadriel, and that he was admitted because of her.

What is mithril? A metal found only in Moria, light and harder than steel. It was the source of Moria's wealth and the reason the Dwarves dug deep enough to wake the Balrog.

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Learn Elvish, the Language That Named Moria

The Dwarves kept their language to themselves, but the names the world gave them are Elvish: Moria, Naug, mellon. If you have ever wanted to read the West-gate inscription or the place-names on Tolkien's maps, Elvish is the key.

Learn Elvish free. Tengwar's course begins with ten free lessons in Quenya and Sindarin, built from Tolkien's own vocabulary and voiced word by word. Start the free Elvish lessons, or find out how your own name looks in Elvish script with the Tengwar name tool.

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Related Reading

• Races of Middle-earth: The Complete Guide
• Khuzdul: The Dwarven Language
• Elves of Middle-earth
• Men of Middle-earth
• Hobbits of Middle-earth
• Balrogs of Middle-earth
• Dragons of Middle-earth
• Orcs and Goblins of Middle-earth
• The Hobbit Riddle Game Explained
• Middle-earth Elvish Place Names Explained