Right, but they lost most of their rocks. I think the main reason we have the Elves account of things and not the Dwarves was because a lot of the Elves who participated in the events of the first age were still alive, or at least their direct descendants.
In defense of Tharanduil, the Mirkwood elves were living in a forest under the literal shadow of evil, and had good reason to mistrust anyone or anything there unless proven harmless. And by the Third Age, the Elves were little more than museum pieces of what they had once been, their last refuges only maintained by the power of the three Elven Rings.
Both sides were dicks, in their own way. Dwarves were seldom guilty of great evil but they could too easily be greedy, stiff-necked, prideful and parochial. When you have two races, one that can in flights of passion do spectacular wrongs, and another that will nurse a grudge until mountains wear away, it doesn’t make for good relations.
The elves, because they’re holier-than-thou-art, smarmy, unctuous douchebags. With the possible exception of Legolas, every single elf we meet is, to one degree or another, a supercilious asshole.
That’s pretty amazing stuff for someone that doesn’t know what s/he’s talking about.
Not Cirdan, dammit. Take that back!
Incidentally, Tolkien fans will want to see Reclaiming the Blade, a pretty good documentary about swords in history and the movies, with quite a bit about how the LOTR movie swords were made, the training the actors underwent, as well as brief interviews with Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn), Karl Urban (Eomer), artist John Howe and various Weta craftsmen.
But if the spoken language of the Dwarves was a closely-held secret, what’s to say that their written language wasn’t just as secret, and just to make sure it didn’t fall into the hands of some serious cryptographers,they didn’t confine their secret Dwarvish writing to carvings that looked to the untutored eye, exactly like rock formations, or gem-facets?
Is that what Gimli was up to in the glittering caves?
Until every wall bears the secret message “elves are wankers”.
But I really don’t. I’ve read the Silmarillion and spotty bits of the legendarium once, and then when Skald created this thread, I did an hour or two of internet research to refresh my memory. So that’s what I got out of it. Also, I’m a “she.”
I think it’s fashionable on the SDMB to scorn the Elves, and I think it’s driven by the anti-elitist sentiment that pervades societal thinking in general these days. But I think Lumpy makes a good point; much of the Elves’ general aloofness was driven by very justified fear. The Elves had a long memory. They knew just how bad things could get; some among them had seen it personally. They also had seen just how bad unintended consequences could be. So many things went badly during the First Age because people, whether Elves, Dwarves, or Men, acted impulsively, sometimes with the best of good intentions. They knew the perils of trusting too much, whether it be Dwarves sacking Doriath, or Sauron forging the One Ring, or the Men of Numenor trying to conquer the Undying Lands, or Isildur failing to destroy the One Ring when he had the chance.
Despite all this, Elrond helped Thorin Oakenshield and his merry gang of dragon-robbers. He called the Council of Elrond, and included Dwarves and Men in his counsels. Galadriel lived through the sacking of Doriath (I think. Not really sure where she was at that time), yet she welcomed Gimli with words in his own tongue, and she and Celeborn gave gifts and aid to the Fellowship. All the Elves (well, maybe not Galadriel, because of her particpation in the Kinslaying, but the others) could have just picked up and left Middle Earth, but they didn’t. They stayed to share in the war of the Ring. Not just Legolas, but all of them participated in that war.
Yeah, they sometimes seemed a bit supercilious. But if you had been living and accumulating knowledge for three to ten thousand years or so, you’d probably come across as a bit supercilious yourself. The wonder, in my mind, is that they could be bothered with mortals at all, yet time and again they did.
The elves were the fairest and wisest of all the Eruhini, but the ones we’re most aware of via SIL, UT, and HOMES were all suffering under the Curse of the Noldor, which Feanor caused by the Kinslaying at Alqualonde.
Now that event would be trivial in the histories of men (and even dwarves, per writings by JRRT in HOMES), both of whom were much more prone to slaughter indiscriminately.
But the elves involved were nearly ‘apprentice godlings’, whose deeds and feats of craft (both actual and potential) were quite impressive.
Which makes what happened just so damn tragic!
And Feanor most of all. I mean, that guy was badass personified. He had such strength of wil that when he was born, the burning power of his spirits killed his mother. In the lands of the Immortals. Where the Powers of Life, Love, and Healing are just down the road.
With pretty much no martial training whatsoever, he developed his own weapons technology. With no more than revenge on his mind and a rarely-excercised title, he got his men ready to sail, stole ships and whacked some of his fellows who owned them, learned to sail, and then went off to mash Morgoth’s face.
Bloody Morgoth!
And then, Morgoth was so scared of his he sent a whole damn flight of Balrog’s to paste him (and only Feanor). And the Balrog’s ran off like scared little girls when his sons showed up!
For any non-geeks here, this is the guy who made magic gems so powerful they could have remade the original, much more awesome, sun and moon. These gems had the power to alter reality, such that the Powers themselves were allowed to fix things just by having one. Beren was able to come back from the dead (which humans are never, ever allowed to do) principally because he had held one. In his severed hand.
Feanor was so badasss that he when he finally died (to the aforementioned flight of Balrogs), the Valar said “Huh… we’d better not give this guy another body or he’ll start wreckin shit up.” He is presumed spends his time being very put out and trashing the God of Death in chess.
In retrospect, too, his attitudes are a little more understandable. Seriously, would you respect the Valar if Morgoth was able to basically waltz into their home, feed the (original, more badass) sun and moon to his pet mega-spider-demon, and waltz out again? And the Valar’s plan was “Hey, Feanor, hand over the gems.” And upon finding out that Morgoth had further killed your dad and stole the Silmarils, they aid, “Ho hum, well, don’t go after him.”
Things would have been much better if they’d just told Feanor that it was very unwise, but that the choice was his to go or stay, but having gone he could not easily return. But the Valar, though wise, are fallible.
Battle of Koom Valley. Ambush.
So, Qadgop and bandit make my point further for me. Even the pale shadows that are the Elves in the Third Age are pretty freaking awesome when compared to Men and Dwarves. I mean, Galadriel’s father Finarfin is Feanor’s half-brother, and in the professor’s universe, bloodlines count. And her other relations ain’t too shabby either. If they see themselves as superior to Men and Dwarves, it’s pretty much because they are.
Yes, they should have known better. But as Qadgop points out, they have a better track record than either Men or Dwarves, and even the Valar, who are the real godlings, err, as bandit outlines so well.
You can argue that the Dwarves are as Aule made them. But that’s ultimately a fruitless argument, because every being is as s/he was made. That’s one of the things I find so ultimately unsatisfying about mono-theistic religion.
I come down to:
[ul]
[li]The rift was more spoken of than acted upon.[/li]
[li]There’s plenty of blame on both sides.[/li]
[li]If I have to decide which side was more in the wrong, I go with the Dwarves.[/li][/ul]
Btw, lameness of the excuse notwithstanding, I don’t really count the hunting of the Petty Dwarves here. Petty Dwarves are not the same as Dwarves.
I don’t see how that applies to either Elrond or Galadriel. And no, I am not counting the movie version of either.
I disagree. The Petty Dwarves were various dwarves who were expelled from their various peoples for reasons unstated by JRRT, and became a varied People apart. Even so, they were just as much dwarves as the Avari were elves.
I just saw that last night and I back up the assertion, good stuff.
Back to the OP I blame the dwarves because their hair isn’t as pretty.
That was the real point of my posts #29 and #33. They weren’t supercilious, and even if they did seem rather aloof and superior at times, they were entitled. Smarmy and unctuous don’t apply at all; the Elves had no need and felt no desire to ingratiate themselves with any other race.
But then Fenris is a werewolf, and we all know where they stand in Middle Earth.
Qadgop, I seem to remember reading that they were both smaller and significantly less verbal. Sounded almost like Dwarf Chimpanzees to me. Admittedly, these days we’re not too down with killing chimps either, but some people still feel perfectly comfortable hunting and eating them, and if it’s a choice between that and starvation for them, I can hardly blame them.
No, we have significant dialog from a Petty-Dwarf in the Silmarilion. Remember Mim, who Turin and his men stayed with for a while?
Well, bloodlines count sometimes. Ultimately, it’s not actually as important as people claimed in-character. Really, though, Elves per se are not better than the other races, although as immortals they have been given some extra bonuses to carry them along. That hasn’t actually made them particularly superior, and even with the Noldor’s enhancements from Valinor, they’re not nearly as great as they like to think.
No, not really. Actually, Men and Dwarves are as good as the Elves, morally anyhow, and have about equal success against the forces of evil. Men, being more numerous and not havng been handed out innate resistance, are easier to subvert and corrupt. But we see than even a degraded and broken human or human-like creatures like Grima and Smeagol have some strength left. If any elves did fall into Sauron’s hands… well, we all know where that got to…
The Valar are far better than the Elves. They are capable of erring, but they are still far superior.
Uh… yeah. First off, the one has nothing to do with the other. Second, the entire damn point of the books is that being what you are made is not enough, and not particularly. Of course you are as you’re made! That’s true no matter what or where. But most of the books are about people either fulfilling or altering that as they chose. Aragorn was born with the blood of kings, but as a mud-spattered woodsman. He fulfills his destony and becomes King. Frodo was born a well-off Hobbit. He saved the damn planet. Sam was a Gardener, but he carried Frodo (figuratively and literally) through Mordor and gave him strength enough to reach the final heart of evil’s power. Legolas and Gimli, though both insular and prone to the prejudices of their ancestors, ushered in a new age of cooperation and friendship. Boromir wasn’t given the strength to fight the power of the Ring; but he fought anyway and even in death was carried out to sea - perhaps to be honored in the lands of the Undying themselves, for his courage.
And I don’t thinkI need to even talk about Merry and Pippin.
Now don’t be hasty.