Dwarves (Middle-earth)

Dwarves

Khazâd, Hadhodrim, Naugrim
An illustration of a Middle-earth dwarf, by a fan artist.
Attributes
Founder	Aulë Durin and the other Fathers of the Dwarves
Leader(s)	Kings of Durin's folk had precedence over all Dwarf-lords
Home world	Middle-earth
Base of operations	Khazad-dûm (to T.A. 1981), Blue Mountains, Lonely Mountain, Iron Hills
Language	Khuzdul
Races	Longbeards, Broadbeams, Firebeards, Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks, Stonefoots (see #Divisions below)

In the fantasy of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Dwarves are a race inhabiting Middle-earth, the central continent of Earth in an imagined mythological past. They are based on the dwarfs of Germanic myths: small humanoids that dwell in mountains, and are associated with mining, metal-craft and jewelry.

They appear in his books The Hobbit (1937), The Lord of the Rings (1954–55), the posthumously published The Silmarillion (1977), Unfinished Tales (1980), and The History of Middle-earth series (1983–96), the last three edited by his son and literary executor Christopher Tolkien.

In The Book of Lost Tales the very few Dwarves who appear are portrayed as evil beings, employers of Orc mercenaries and in conflict with the Elves—who are the imagined "authors" of the myths, and are therefore biased against Dwarves. Tolkien was inspired by the dwarves of Norse myths and dwarves of Germanic folklore (such as those of the Brothers Grimm), from whom his Dwarves take their characteristic affinity with mining, metalworking, crafting and avarice.

The representation of Dwarves as evil changed dramatically with The Hobbit. Here the Dwarves became occasionally comedic and bumbling, but largely seen as honourable, serious-minded, but still portraying some negative characteristics such as being gold-hungry, extremely proud and occasionally officious. Tolkien was now influenced by his own selective reading of medieval texts regarding the Jewish people and their history. The dwarves' characteristics of being dispossessed of their homeland (the Lonely Mountain, their ancestral home, is the goal the exiled Dwarves seek to reclaim), and living among other groups whilst retaining their own culture are all derived from the medieval image of Jews, whilst their warlike nature stems from accounts in the Hebrew Bible. Medieval views of Jews also saw them as having a propensity for making well-crafted and beautiful things, a trait shared with Norse dwarves. For The Hobbit almost all dwarf-names are taken from the Dvergatal or "Catalogue of the Dwarves", found in the Poetic Edda. However, more than just supplying names, the "Catalogue of the Dwarves" appears to have inspired Tolkien to supply meaning and context to the list of names—that they travelled together, and this in turn became the quest told of in The Hobbit. The Dwarves' written language is represented on maps and in illustrations by Anglo-Saxon Runes. The Dwarf calendar invented for The Hobbit reflects the Jewish calendar in beginning in late autumn. The dwarves taking Bilbo out of his complacent existence has been seen as an eloquent metaphor for the "impoverishment of Western society without Jews."