Them Dwarves, Them Dwarves, Part II - Page 3
© Michael Martinez
By the time Thangorodrim fell most but not all of Morgoth's followers had been destroyed. The easternmost forces fled when Morgoth was defeated and they scattered throughout Middle-earth. Some of the Orcs apparently seized Mount Gundabad and infested the northern mountains of Wilderland. The Longbeard Dwarves were hard put to defend themselves against this onslought. They had already begun exchanging service for food with the Edainic men of Wilderland, but now they established an alliance with the Men whereby they were able to drive the Orcs out of the mountains. This unique alliance is documented only in The Peoples of Middle-earth, in the essay "Of Dwarves and Men", which was written sometime after June 1969 (according to Christopher Tolkien).
Tolkien says the Longbeards, "though the proudest of the seven kindreds, were also the wisest and the most farseeing". He goes on to say "Men held them in awe and were eager to learn from them; and the Longbeards were very willing to use Men for their own purposes." These purposes were twofold: to provide the Dwarves with food and to assist them in their wars against the Orcs. The secretivity the Dwarves were known for had by this time been abandoned through necessity and a desire for commerce with other peoples both in Beleriand and in Rhovanion. But it appears that the secretiveness would eventually be restored.
The Longbeard Dwarves were the first to begin using "outer" names taken from the languages of nearby Men. Tolkien writes that the Dwarves were willing to teach their language to Men but Men found it difficult to learn, and yet all the Dwarves were unwilling to give out their true names to non-Dwarves. Hence, to facilitate the alliance the Longbeards learned the language of the Men of Wilderland (just as the Dwarves of Ered Luin learned Sindarin) and they took their "outer" names in this language. It was during the early Second Age that the Dwarves began accumulate a list of names which tradition eventually tied to their race alone. "Durin" is the translation Tolkien offers for the Mannish name which meant "king", and it was more a title than a name which eventually did become a name. "Narvi" would be another example of the name-set drawn from the northern language (essentially a dialect of Adunaic, the language spoken by the Marachians).
With the aid of Men the Longbeards were able to re-establish control over those regions they considered to be theirs by right. This alliance helped pave the way for the eventual alliance between the Longbeards and the Elves of Eregion, but there appears to be one other prerequisite, the migration of the Belegostians to Khazad-dum. These Dwarves had not participated in the war between Nogrod and Doriath, and thus had no tradition of direct enmity with Elves (though Tolkien says memory of the war "poisoned relations of Elves and Dwarves in after ages" despite providing almost no evidence of such poisoned relations).
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