You’re the second person who has told me that. A friend spent about a year and a half in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1994 and 1998 on a study-abroad semester and some sort of bigtime law school scholarship, and he said the same thing, only he surmised that the hot young blonde Russian women go off and make cocoons somewhere, and come out as chewed-up old women, if not babushkas.
This seems largely to be true, right up to the moment of their sally from the gates of the Kingdom Under the Mountain in the third movie. Their “Flying Wedge” formation wreaks magnificent havoc, and is certainly one of the grand dramatic moments of the movie.
I think the book implies something similar: when they get in a supporting formation, and can get those axes swinging, ain’t nobody wants to get in front of them.
In the LOTR movies, too, Gimli was often pretty useless and played for low comic effect…until he hits his stride at Helm’s Deep, and at that point, he’s absolutely hell on wheels.
You might say that Dwarves are a very specific tactical solution. Comparable, in modern war terms, to a flamethrower, i.e., they aren’t useful in all circumstances, or even most circumstances, but when you get to the situation where they are appropriate, my God, you’re glad you have them on your side!
I call this phenomenon cronitis, and it’s not just a Russian phenomenon. It occurs everywhere hot young ladies morph into peasant grannies seemingly overnight.
