Posted: March 18, 2000 at 03:09:24: by David Sleep Deprived and Rambling Freitag
My two bits: Now that Michael has pointed i tout, while Tolkien does mention a history of strife between elves and dwarves, he doesn't provide a lot of evidence.
The one example that jumps to my mond, however, is one that would really stand out in elven memory: the dwarves role in the fall of Doriath and the death of Thingol. Doriath is the longest enduring of the elf-realms of the first ages, Elu Thingol is from one of the first (if not the first) elven generations, may have awoke at Cuivenen.
He is also a jerk, not only to Beren, but also to the dwarves who made the Nauglamir (no _Silm_ on hand, this is memory) and the dwarves do deserve some compensation for shabby treatment. But what happened was a disaster for all (except Morgoth), and, over the ages, elves, Sindar especially, would remember with regret the loss of Doriath, and remember that dwarves had something to do with it. Folk memory doesn't retain all features of a complex situation, though sophisticated songs would (Thingol's greed, the Doom of Mandos, ill will of the Feanoreans and their oath).I suspect the main factor sundering the elves and dwarves is a lack of common temperment, interests, world-view: animosity is too strong a word, I'm looking more for something like, oh, grating on each other's nerves because of constant failures to understand each other, because of different meanings of the same words.
Dwarves are miners, technologists, metallurgists, they seek to make. Elves, especially Sindar and Sylvans, were foresters, seekers of knowledge and appreciation and expression (song).
Both practice crafts, though only the Noldor practiced the same crafts as the dwarves, and they were on great terms with them.
It isn't said anywhere, but, to keep a forge going, fuel is needed. I don't see evidence of coal-mining so that would mean charcoal which means chopping down trees, not something elves would look upon with kindness.
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