Them Dwarves, Them Dwarves, Part II - Page 5
© Michael Martinez
Tolkien does not say exactly how the Dwarves dispersed. The Longbeard kings moved northeast to the Lonely Mountain. But some of the Dwarves living in the northern Misty Mountains or the Grey Mountains quarreled with Fram, a lord of the Eotheod, over the hoard of Scatha the Worm. The Dwarves eventually slew Fram after he refused to surrender the treasure. The Belegostians may have returned to their kin in the Ered Luin. But eventually the Longbeards colonized the Grey Mountains in great numbers, where they drew the attention of dragons and were driven south to Erebor again. This time one of the dragons, Smaug the Golden, followed them, and he seized Erebor in 2770. For the next 171 years the Longbeard Dwarves had no permanent home, except for a colony which survived in the Iron Hills and a few unnamed colonies in the northern mountains.
By the end of the Third Age the fortunes of three of the seven kindreds had fallen. Nogrod's people were largely destroyed in the war with Doriath at the end of the Third Age. Most of Belegost's people left the Ered Luin early in the Second Age because their city had been destroyed. Those Dwarves who remained in the Ered Luin appear to have been few but they retained control over a region of land between the Elves and the Men of northern Eriador. These Dwarves probably lived in a similar relationship with their neighbors to Khazad-dum's great alliances, but they were few in number and not seriously threatened by Orcs or dragons, so they do not play any roles in the great wars of the Second Age. Tolkien implies they did not march with the Last Alliance, for he says few Dwarves fought on either side of that war.
The spread of the custom of taking outer names in Mannish languages from the Longbeards to other kindreds probably occurred in the Third Age, perhaps as late as after the fall of Khazad-dum. At that time the Longbeards would have begun wandering the lands and some doubtless settled among other Dwarves. If there was indeed a return of Belegostian-descended Dwarves to Ered Luin, they would have taken the custom with them if it had not preceded them already.
Tolkien says little about the four eastern kindreds. He suggest they (or at least the two easternmost) may have become "evil" in some fashion, but they did not support Sauron at the end of the Second Age. Sauron's relations with the Dwarves are peculiar. Having failed to seduce the Elves with the Rings of Power he seized as many of the Elven Rings as he could during his war with the Elves and took them back to Mordor. There he perverted them in some fashion with the intention of using them to seize control over the great lords of other peoples. Sauron contrived to give seven Rings to the Dwarves, presumably one to each of the lords of the seven kindreds (although this is by no means certain). If that is the case, then Tolkien's remark that tradition said each of the ancient Dwarf-hoards was founded on a ring would imply that the Belegostian lords never left Ered Luin. It seems unlikely they'd have their hoard in Khazad-dum.
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