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Them Dwarves, Them Dwarves! - Page 3

© Michael Martinez

Tolkien's original conception of Dwarves was radically different from the noble yet oh-so-haughty race of brave warriors and kings we meet in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In his first mythology, the "mythology for England" which was laid out (nearly completely) in The Book of Lost Tales, the Dwarves were an evil race, led by Fangli or Fankil (a servant of Melko, the Dark Lord). These early Dwarves were enemies of the fairies (Elves) and they fought a terrible war with the Eldar. These early evil dwarves gave way to a more neutral race, who were old and never-dying. "Never comes a child among them, nor do they laugh," Tolkien wrote in "The Nauglafring", the first story in which his Dwarves played a prominent role. "They are squat in stature, and yet are strong, and their beards reach even to their toes, but the beards of the Indrafengs are he longest of all, and are forked, and they bind them about their middles when they walk around." (Tolkien, "The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two", p. 224). The Nauglath were master smiths and scientists in this early conception. They traded freely with Elves, Men, and Orcs, having no particular dislike for any race above others. In "The Nauglafring" the hoard of the dragon Glomund is brought to Tinwelint, king of the woodland Elves and father of Tinuviel, and though he at first seeks to dispose of the cursed gold he is persuaded by Ufedhin, a Gnome who has lived among the Nauglath, to contract with them to work the treasure into a new colection of wonders. But Urin's curse immediately takes effect, and Tinwelint has no sooner made his bargain with Ufedhin than he begins to suspect the motives of the Gnome. So Tinwelint alters the terms of the bargain and keeps Ufedhin and most of his followers prisoners while the Nauglath work on half the treasure. True to their word and friendship, the Nauglath appear at the appointed time with the reworked treasure and Tinwelint agrees to let them work on the other half of the hoard. But now Ifedhin is embittered by months of imprisonment, and he persuades the Nauglath to demand an unreasonable price from Tinwelint for shaping the gold into new treasure. Thus the curse ensnares the Nauglath, who demand bags of gold and silver and Elven maidens to take home with them, and Tinwelint becomes enraged. The story hardly resembles the reconstruction Christopher Tolkien published in The Silmarillion, and it need not be compared closely with "The Ruin of Doriath". "The Nauglafring" belongs to a different mythology, a different world completely. And its evil Dwarves, like old men steeped in craft and science and bereft of female counterparts in their race, have no place in the Middle-earth which took shape in the 1930s and 1940s.

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