What happened to the Dwarves in the Fourth Age?
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- Опубликовано: 18 сен 2024
- In this video, we look at the bittersweet future that the Dwarves faced in the Fourth Age, and explain what happened to them and why it might've happened.
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Aule creating Dwarves: "Ok. Tough as nails, check. Resistant to the evils of Morgoth, check. Good at making weapons and armor, check. What else....? Oh, they're going to need lots of warriors, so I'd better make the males twice as common as the females." Iluvatar: /rolls eyes
I suppose they're lucky they lasted more than a generation, since Aule's initial plan only seemed to involve "Seven Fathers". Old Aule *really* should have spent a little less time in the forge and picked up some pointers about biology from his wife.
This, I believe, is the real cause of the decline of dwarvenkind: it wasn't a curse by Ilúvitar, but a design flaw created by Aulë.
How about we make a what if theory
"What if dwarves had equal gender populations"
That was his mistake, he didn't consult with anyone when he came up with them. If he had collaborated with his wife the dwarves probably would have been more successful.
@@zayedbinimran957 Deep Rock Galactic
They live on. Durin VII built a space ship and they make a good living in deep space mining in a galaxy far, far away.
Rock and Stone!
We're rich 😊
FOR ROCK&STONE!
Eventually, they became the Jedi while a race of space-faring orcs became the Sith.
The cruel irony of all this? It mirrors Neanderthal's fall. Few in number, low birth rates, and a fractured people that really didn't communicate much with eachother. Robust and hardy though they are, they just couldn't replinish their numbers, and so. Faded.
Bold claim but, whatever its the internet.
I've noticed the similarities too. If our world is meant to be middle earth, then we can take great pride in knowing the dwarves live on through us, in our dna (at least in the world of lord of the rings)
And maybe some humans have some amount of dwarven blood as in reality we have Neanderthal blood?
Same as Emos from high school their depressed group dwindled at the time of Brittany Speers.
Neanderthals are probably the source of our dwarf legends to begin with. I mean, they were shorter, wider, stronger, lived mostly underground, and were associated with stone and masonry.
A great deal of dwarven problems may have been averted if they were more proactive about Gundabad. When their holy site was taken they probably had the strength to retake it, they had the rest of the misty mountains, the Iron Hills, Erebor and were in regular contact with the other clans (I believe they had regular meetings at Gundabad at the time) and many allies both human and elvish they could have called upon. Yet they didn't, they allowed the problem to fester and the orcs to multiply where eventually they began to infest the grey mountains, Angmar and move south, forcing the dwarves back down the misty mountains over the course of the third age and destroy their northmen allies in the Anduin. By the time the balrog happened durins folk seemed to have lost everything north of Moria to the orcs, who knows how many dwarven towns destroyed or abandoned with how many dwarven lives lost. If these places were still in dwarven hands the evacuation of moria would have been far easier as they would have settlements which to send the refugees and perhaps have been able to organise a counterattack to reclaim moria. At the very least there wouldn't have been a need to go to the Grey Mountains or Erebor meaning no war of the dragons and no smaug. With no orcs in the misty mountains there wouldn't have been a war of Dwarves and Orcs and perhaps no Angmar or at least angmar wouldn't be as dangerous with less or no orcs and trolls.
the fourth age feels really surreal to me already but the words "fifth age" were not something i was prepared for and am currently recovering from this
love your content btw i love how different the topics you talk about are from the other tolkien content creators 🙏
In one of his letters, Tolkien wrote that we are living in the 7th Age.
@@istari0almost three entire ages with nothing written about them is crazy
@@mariluzgallardo24Well if LotR takes place on what is supposed to be our earth's distant past there has to be time for these winders t ogrind down and for the shape of things to align with what we are digging up.
In 7th age, now we are seeing thay are showing up in USA, that woman with beard. I not sure eluvatr know, someone must tell him or this be our end.😂
With those handicaps, I think it's a miracle that they survived into the 4th age at all.
I thought the same.
Not as bad as the Warhammer Dwarfs, with at the best being 2 Dwarf women for every 10 Dwarf men.
100K seems a wild over-estimate to me to be honest. I got the impression Balin's expedition to Moria was only a few dozen strong, maybe 100 or so at most, and Dain was very reluctant to let that many Dwarves leave Erebor. Much earlier at the Battle of Five Armies Dain only managed to bring 500 warriors from the Iron Hills which was the main remaining Longbeard settlement. The Blue Mountains settlements are hinted to be very small and much reduced in grandeur compared to the ancient cities of Nogrod and Belegost. Gimli's colony at the Glittering caves is explicitly called a small colony. The total Dwarven population across the Blue Mountains, Erebor and the Iron Hills at the start of the Fourth Age may have been only 20K or so.
I remember reading about the "Doom of the Dwarves" in D&D lore and I think that the dwarves of Tolkien's work are experiencing the same problem. They don't have enough kids, aren't as fertile as humans or elves. But unlike the elves, dwarves do have the urge to mate outside of deliberately trying to conceive (I refer to Gimli's uncouth comments about dwarven women). But they don't "do it" as often as humans, probably viewing humans as "overly horny" as the reason why humans have so many kids.
The appendix in RotK that addresses the demise of Dúrin's folk doesn't mention what happens to the other clans. We can probably presume that their fates were similar, but do you imagine that the fates of the Firebeards and Broadbeams (and whichever clan or clans we see as refugees in chapter one of FotR) would happen sooner than the Longbeards, or later?
Hmm. This mostly points out how dwarves were not as well-fleshed-out as the other races.
The legend of the seven Dúrins was mirrored in some way in the other Fathers of the Dwarves. I did find this on TolkienGateway: "It was said that the Seven Fathers would return to life after generations among their own folk This did not mean reincarnation, however. Rather, the bodies of the Fathers would be preserved, and their spirits would return to the bodies and live once more." (sources: The Silmarillion and 'The Nature of Middle-Earth').
But whether the other Fathers returned fewer, the same number or more times and what the intervals between them were.. who knows? Dúrin seems to have been special being the eldest and the only one to awaken alone.. so perhaps his line was longer-lasting? That kind of fits Tolkien's worldbuilding.
@@LyricalDJ I wasn't aware that the other six fathers were reincarnated as well, although I guess I'm not too surprised. Do you suppose Azaghal was one of the seven fathers? He died during the First Age, which is when Dúrin I would have been in his twilight years or recently dead.
Plot twist: dwarves retreated into the mountains only to find the last Balrog.
They learned magic and shape shifting in order to survive to the 6th Age when they interacted with the Aesir. Of course! Somehow they managed to procreate enough despite the dwervines keeping being few. Later history proves this.
I think tolkien's implications for middle earth's timeline was that the memory of the dwarves lived on in stories where they got warped and mixed up with other beings, such as trolls for the story in which a dwarf gets turned to stone in the daylight, and with dragons in the case of Fafnir.
Nice video, but it basically only summarizes the Appendix A: Durin's Folk.
What would truly be horrible, is the fate of the last Dwarf in Khazad-dum. The last born child, throughout his youth he has seen maybe 10 other Dwarves, all much older than him. His mother was looked strangely upon, everyone advised her not to have a child, and force that child to later die alone, but she did. And he tends to them as they die. And then the Last Dwarf says farewell to his last companion, and is left alone in the dark.
Would he then lie and fall just fall asleep, never to wake? Or would he attempt to climb out to see Kheled Zaram once more? That would be one hell of a tale - the last dwarf emerging into a changed world. Maybe it would have a happy end? Him going to Erebor and finding survivors there, but well, then the story would just repeat itself. The happiest ending I can think of, is him finding people who remember the same times as him - either some lonely elves, or some scholars of men that would be delighted to meet one of the elder race, and talk with him, instead of putting him up on exhibition.
Dwarves are my favorite race in Middle-earth. They seem to be the ones you would want to hang out with, along with Hobbits.
The men of Gondor seem pretty cool for the most part. Beregond was totally cool with hanging out with a hobbit in his spare time and quickly became good friends with Pippin.
What? you like women like that? You are transgender?
It occurs to me if elves hate dwarves and dwarves hate elves, I reckon the dwarves have more reason to be pissed off. The amought of shit that came onto the dwarves heads through actions of the elves is staggering. The Oath of Feranor guaranteed that Morgoth was going to kick butt in the 1st age. Hunting petty dwarves like animals. The lost of two kingdoms, the breeding of the dragons, the elves falling for Annatar and making those god damned rings…….what did the dwarves do to the elves? Kill a king an nick some jewellery? And every dwarf on Arda cops crap for that.
Morgoth was going to conquer elves, dwarves, and men regardless of Feanor’s oath, it was his sole goal to destroy and defeat everything on Arda. The dwarves didn’t have to accept the rings of power, they could have said no but didn’t. They didn’t just kill some one off footnote elven king either, they killed the most powerful king in the first age after he refused to give them the thing that he commissioned them to make for him. This caused his queen, who was a Maia, to leave those lands due to grief and her protection over the lands faded. To top it off those dwarves came back with an army and massacred the now defenseless citizens of Doriath’s capital.
@@Roshambo920. Yes Morgoth wanted to conquer all of Middle Earth. It was the actions of the Noldor Elves that made sure that the Valar were not going to get involved. The dwarves didn’t have to accept the rings, but Sauron at this time was very smooth. He tricked the Elves into making the rings, and someone that smooth could properly persuade the dwarves to accept the rings. And the ring of Durin’s Folk was given to them by the Elven Smiths according to Dwarf tradition. As for killing Thingol, yes the dwarves got caught in the curse of hate and destruction that the silmarils caused, a curse of lust and possession that Thingol bought onto himself by sending Beran to steal a silmaril as bride price for his daughter. Like Thingol, the dwarves of Beleriand (not Durin’s Folk) got drawn into the doom of mightear realms.
NEVER TRUST THE KNIFE EARS! THEY ARE GOING IN THE BOOK OF GRUDGES!
It's a wonder the Dwarves survived as long as they did with their peculiar biology. Nowadays, the population replacement rate is 2.1, meaning that women need to average having 2.1 children to keep the population steady and that's with modern medicine, etc. Extrapolating that to the Dwarves means their women would need to average over 3 children.
When I am indulging myself in flights of fancy, I like to imagine that one day we will find the ruins of an ancient Dwarven city buried deep in the mountains of one of our ranges, perhaps the Alps.
The Humans bred them out of existence.
your channel now has 6.9 million views
I wonder how long it took for men to notice that the last dwarves had died out. Much like if by some magic we all stopped yawning, it would take a while to notice.
Weirdest and best example I've ever heard.
Good stuff, thanks a lot. May i ask for video about ages after third? New notion club is great source of information, but i wanna hear your thoughts on subject specifically
given what the next book may have been called The New Shadow, I think humanity would have turned dark again and turned against the others. Like the reunited kingdom would be thinking 'oh what did the Dwarves or Elves ever do for us? Lets take those mines and forests for ourselves!" kind of thing.
Very interesting video. I find the hints and small bits of writing about the forth age to be so beautifully bittersweet
I love how dominant LOTRO art is in Middle Earth videos.
I may be two weeks late, but since we often make the comparison between LOTR and our world, this makes me wonder what happened to the hobbits? it is a bit strange to ask since the shire is meant to be a representation of pre ww1 england (as I heard by some) and hobbits technically fall under the broad category of "men" more so than dwarves or elves due to when they die and how many children some hobbits can have. do you think they mixed in with the regular men over time or did something else happen to make them virtually non existent in our world? there might be a video about this already, but I haven't found it.
Read about the island of Flores, and Homo floresciencis, and you will get a very nice surprise.
He said they're hiding from us now.
It's fantastical and unlikely, but maybe in the 5th Age Aule himself visited the remaining dwarves deep underground, beyond the detection of Men, and created for a time a dwarves heaven on earth where they crafted their greatest works yet together with their God and Protector, and had some kind of cosmic closure.
There are lots of medieval and dark age legends of dwarves in our own world, so we can infer that they survived at least up until then. They are also mentioned in "Farmer Giles of Ham." Probably what happened is that as their numbers dwindled they couldn't support themselves as autonomous communities, so they went and lived with the humans. Those who wanted to marry would marry human women, and after 1 or 2 generations of mixing there wouldn't be any clearly identifiable dwarves.
You could make the same argument with dragons I think, well, except for the mixing with humans part.
@@DarthGandalfYT Exactly, and Tolkien also said that dragons lingered particularly late. His world was basically designed to merge seamlessly into the medieval world, or at least the way medieval Europeans used to understand their world. For example, there's a reason why he put the starting point of humans and elves both in the far east. According to the medieval scholarship and the RC Church, the garden of Eden was to the east of India (they didn't know China existed). It was either on the extreme end of the continent, or to the west. According to "The Book of Marvels and Travels," by Sir John Mandeville (actually an anonymous French RC Priest), the garden of Eden survived the flood. Medieval maps were oriented with the east at the top because they thought Eden was still there. In Tolkien's world, the west is at the top, though for the books they put it as a north-south orientation. What Tolkien did was differentiate between "Eden" and the Earthly paradise, because he also got a lot of his inspiration from Irish mythology. So Valinor sits where Tir Na Nog would be, which is the Irish paradise on Earth, but not the origin point for humanity. Anyways I could go on and on, but chances are no one will read so I'll stop here.
Ah yes, the background music brings back so much nostalgia
I choose to believe that they continued to survive deep under ground in small communities forever cut off from the surface.
No that is not possible.
Now we are seeing thay are showing up in USA, that woman with beard. I not sure eluvatr know and what is this age are.
Thay probably in the end assimilated more and more, well... thay have money, maybe start finding womans out on their kingdom's. Probably not some grimy or sad story about last one standing and died in some cave. We seen how one elf get love in dwarf.
When you fill no hairy women you are not back to one with hair on the face, Kily say.
But eventually that mixed one died off to, probably children's from that marriage's the woman's one not be lucky to find husband's if thay have father figure and mentality (I want that one$ or no one) in that man worlds. So simply washed away.
You make some valid points, and, since it's Tolkien's universe, and he writes in no uncertain terms about the end of the Dwarves, there is no reason to dispute it.
However, I think it's a bit of a stretch from a logical point of view. Societies tend to find ways to overcome challenges, and, if there were indeed no cataclysmic enemies or events in the future, I think the Dwarves would overcome the demographic decline. Add to that their friendly relations with the Men of the West, and that there was no overlap in settlement areas, and you have a situation where at some point a wiser king or ruler would look at the way things are going, and decree certain changes, perhaps in the form of boons for larger families.
This is not a critique of your assesment, I just feel like Tolkien might not have wanted a good ending for the Dwarves for the bad things they did, so he decided that they should be the ones with a bittersweet ending, while Elves and Men would go on.
Elves fade too. I think dwarf souls leave the mortal plan like the men and unlike the elves. So it's not all that bad
This is probably your second most depressing video- with the first one being what would have if you were to take the one ring. Keep it up though! The depressing side of Arda needs to be covered as well.
'Through the One Ring I would seek to do Good. Through me the One Ring would be capible of Terrible Evil.'
One god to rule tham all
One god to ...
Well eluvator make dark lords to
This is not depressing,this is funny, what wrong with you?
Now we are seeing thay are showing up in USA, that woman with beard. I not sure eluvatr know and what is this age are.
Thay probably in the end assimilated more and more, well... thay have money, maybe start finding womans out on their kingdom's. Probably not some grimy or sad story about last one standing and died in some cave. We seen how one elf get love in dwarf.
When you fill no hairy women you are not back to one with hair on the face, Kily say.
But eventually that mixed one died off to, probably children's from that marriage's the woman's one not be lucky to find husband's if thay have father figure and mentality (I want that one$ or no one) in that man worlds. So simply washed away.
Maybe is you ...if you see only depressed side.
Fun timing as I’m about to start Return to Moria 😊
Don't forget they were also a perfect bite sized snack for dragons.
What if sugestions
What if Finwe survived
What if Lord Girion killed smaug
What if Sauron killed Isildur
What if Lord Azaghâl killed Glaurung
What If Isildur HAD destroyed The One Ring? Hmmm......^_^
All M.E races wouldve seen the end of their kind, at their specific time huh. All except the race of Men. Just imagine how sad that would be, being the LAST of your kind in the whole of the world, knowing that when YOU breathe your last, your kind is gone forever. Esp for a member of a long-lived race that may have been particularly social etc. Born into a time when your people were many and everywhere you went, you could find at least one of your kind, then comes the day when the world is emptied of your kin and you are alone.
The Winter of the World trilogy by Michael Scott Rohan, which starts with The Anvil of Ice, has the decline of the dwarves as humans rise as a major theme. Some dismiss this as a 'Tolkien clone,' and some of the homages are obvious. But MSR does a smart reimagining of the Kalevala beyond what Tolkien did with Turin as well as a really nice Christian allegory that young me did not see coming.
I always thought that the Dwarves died out because the world of Middle earth started to change into the world we know now, this is why the mountains in which the dwarves lived collapsed, due to cataclysmic changes to the world. This explains why Misty Mountains which were probably located in modern Germany are gone, and most of northern Germany is flat. Maybe Norwegian fjords are northern Misty Mountains?
Demographic-based extinction is sadly mirrored in a lot of real wildlife species. A lot of animals (famously flamingos) follow the Allee Effect, a phenomenon where they won’t breed below a certain perceived density of individuals
What about breeding with the other races?
I seem to distinctly recall an Elf lady going full on Cougar on a very handsome boy basically telling him you belong to me now. And then years later them having children.
The only question remains whether or not dwarves are compatible with others, likely not given the fact that Elves and Humans are basically cut from same cloth and are considered a siblings race.
Doesn't seem to be the case with Dwarves.
Still anyone who knows anything out there?
Everything I have read indicates that only Men and Elves can successfully procreate together, but even that is rare. There is also the one exception of Melian and Thingol. That whole thing in the Hobbit movies was completely made up and not part of what Tolkien wrote.
What I find sad and moving is the thought of the very last dwarf, knowing he was the last and there would be no others of his kind, kind of a 'last of the Mohicans' scenario, and finally dying alone, unknown, unmarked and unremembered.
Man this video whose both well made but also made me feel a bit depressed so I don't know what to think lol.
Now we are seeing thay are showing up in USA, that woman with beard. I not sure eluvatr know and what is this age are.
Thay probably in the end assimilated more and more, well... thay have money, maybe start finding womans out on their kingdom's. Probably not some grimy or sad story about last one standing and died in some cave. We seen how one elf get love in dwarf.
When you fill no hairy women you are not back to one with hair on the face, Kily say.
But eventually that mixed one died off to, probably children's from that marriage's the woman's one not be lucky to find husband's if thay have father figure and mentality (I want that one$ or no one) in that man worlds. So simply washed away.
Did I help?😂
Way this is funny?
One Ring to rule tham all
One Ring to .....etc
That is religion from Vatican, Constantinople,Medina
Thay give the crown-ring power on the some land , than....is funny,see?😊
You'd think with looming extinction, that women would be more incentivized to get it on
As illuvatar told melkor. Nothing he does doesnt originatr entirely with eru. By that statement the dwarves were just as intended as the elves humans or even orcs
why do other adopted kids get to have cool beards?
But the dwarves are supposed to come back in Dagoth Dagorath to fix certain things.
There is also a possiblity that they had simply digged so deep underground that they were no longer approachable by people.
After all, I dont ever recall any mention in the books about dwarvenkind dying out.
still waiting for that hilman video
No dwarves today?
If they had half of men "extra" wars would literally not be a problem for them.
1:57 not my proudest
So Eru Iluvatar was a eugenicist?
At least he was quite the dick sometimes.
Sad that Eru should have favoured humans, who are so much less cool than dwarves.
No he is behind of dark lords, create tham to.
One ring to rule tham all
One ring to...
He prefers one god religion and this two is just his tools to remind everyone that can be only on.
That rings are the crown who only Vatican can give to someone to have power on some land to submit etc
One god to rule tham all
One god to....etc
😂😂😂
Extinction by low birthrates, what else
What I always found weird is how they managed to build great empires in the first place, giving their "biological limits".
mostly sealed away they may have lasted until the middle ages here as they and rural elves do appear in tales.
Now we are seeing thay are showing up in USA, that woman with beard. I not sure eluvatr know and what is this age are.
Thay probably in the end assimilated more and more, well... thay have money, maybe start finding womans out on their kingdom's. Probably not some grimy or sad story about last one standing and died in some cave. We seen how one elf get love in dwarf.
When you fill no hairy women you are not back to one with hair on the face, Kily say.
But eventually that mixed one died off to, probably children's from that marriage's the woman's one not be lucky to find husband's if thay have father figure and mentality (I want that one$ or no one) in that man worlds. So simply washed away.
they went back to their planet and gave exploiting earths resources
Were there trans dwarves?
Please collab with In Deep Geek or another youtuber with subs. You deserve soooo much more views 😮