Dwarves do have one huge advantage over the other Children of Illuvatar: They’re essentially uncorruptable. An elf can be driven to reject the Valar, or to ally with the Enemy, or to kill for a lady’s hand, but about the worst impact that evil can have on a dwarf is to increase their miserly tendancies.
Also, on the subject of craftsmanship, while the Elves have a few outstanding craftsmen, the Dwarves are still better overall. If you took a list of the greatest smiths of all history (excluding the Ainur, of course), the elves would have the top four or five spots, but after that, it’d be almost all dwarves. Even an average dwarf is better at making things than all but the best members of the other races: Despite being trained primarily for war, Gimli still has the skill to make synthetic gemstones.
As discussed by others, Dwarves are typically not portrayed as immortal, though they do have a longer lifespan than humans and are not much prone to disease or the kind of infirmities elderly humans typically must endure.
Think of a Dwarf as having considerably greater mass than the average human, though packed into a shorter frame of denser material (they’re often said to spring from stone itself).
To everyone else’s eye, certainly, but Dwarves know the difference instantly.
Yup.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. I agree wholeheartedly.
They prefer to be closer to the living rock from which they are said to have been formed by (insert name of creator). It also means they don’t have to hike over hill and dale on their short, stubby legs to get to work each day.
Well, they lock themselves away for decades at a time, removed from distractions, working goodness-knows how many hours at a shift, pursuing perfection with a steadfast resolve beyond the pathetic capabilities of humans. Not to mention being possessed of trade secrets handed down from untold generations of fanatically secretive ancestors. As to the works of their hands being magic, a dwarf in a modest mood might, with great reluctance, admit that the gods themselves choose to bestow their blessings on items whose craftsmanship is worthy of their attention.
Elves and dwarves might be seen as representatives of two opposing perfections: the ideal and the physical. Consider that elves are eternal, wise, and according to some writers (Tolkien), their physical form is merely a projection into the earthly plain of a being that is almost entirely spirit (like the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave). Dwarves, on the other hand, are really real. They dwell in the hard, cold realities of the physical world, but possess sufficient strength, determination and hardiness to imbue perfection into their crafts. Being representatives of opposing philosophies, it is only natural that they should gravitate away from one another and work together only with great reluctance.
In one of the Dragonlance novels, a famous dwarf hero shaves his own beard (something forcibly done to dis-honored dwarfs) to protest what he feels is a great dis-honor done to his clan when they go to war against other dwarfs.