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Them Dwarves, Them Dwarves! - Page 6

© Michael Martinez

The story of the Petty Dwarves, the Noegyth Nibin, requires some consideration, however. They claimed to have been in Beleriand before the Elves came. That would mean the Dwarves must have awakened earlier than 1130. The first Eldar reached Beleriand in Valian Year 1115. The Noegyth Nibin were outcasts from the other seven houses, not really an eighth house but apparently their numbers were sufficient to sustain a community for the equivalent of many generations (the last of their kind died in First Age year of the Sun 500, when Hurin killed Mim). Since the Elves awoke in Valian Year 1050, there are only 65 Valian Years (a little more than 600 years of the Sun) available for the Dwarves to awaken, converge on Mount Gundabad, and divest themselves of the Noegyth Nibin. Things get a little tight even if we suppose the Dwarves awoke soon after the Elves. Still, we can suppose the Dwarves awoke before the Great Journey and that they began seeking each other before the War of the Powers. That would remove them from harm's way and places their awakening at the latest in Valian Year 1090 (the year the Valar began their assault on Melkor). In fact, it may be convenient to suppose the Dwarves awoke during the war. Therefore they would have gone unnoticed by the Valar, who had already discovered the Quendi, and we are provided with a reasonable span of 25 Valian Years (about 239.5 years of the Sun) before the Eldar entered Beleriand. In that time, the first outcasts from the Dwarven community must have been relatively few, probably too few to really establish a community, but they may have lived in Beleriand long enough to welcome other outcasts. The only real grief which lay between Dwarves and Elves in ancient times was the accidental hunting of the Noegyth Nibin by the Sindar. The Sindar did not recognize the Petty Dwarves as fellow rational Incarnates, and that seems to be due to the Noegyth Nibin's secretive nature and occasional hostility to strangers. The Elves ceased hunting the Noegyth Nibin once they met the Dwarves of Belegost and Nogrod, but they appear to have divulged their actions to the Dwarves, who conveyed this news to other Dwarves. Tolkien wrote that the Dwarves were offended by the hunting of the Petty Dwarves, and it may be this was the ancient grudge whose embers smoldered in the Third Age (as Tolkien noted in the Appendix to The Lord of the Rings).

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