Posted: April 15, 2000 at 13:43:56: by Michael Martinez
: A few weeks back, there was a thread discussing the
: relationships between Elves and Dwarves. I recall that Michael
: was adamant that enmity between the two races was an erroneous
: assumption unsupported by the text. At the time, I didn't fully
: agree with this. In rereading The Silmarillion, I came across
: the conversation between Aule and Iluvatar, in which Iluvatar
: states that "often strife shall arise between mine and thine,
: the children of my adoption and he children of my choice." Does
: this not support the idea of a predisposition to antipathy? The
: statements at the Council of Elrond concerning 'all the
: grievances that lay between Elves and Dwarves' would seem to
: have greater weight when considered with this conversation.This argument would work only if you exclude Men from the Children of Iluvatar (which you cannot do) and disregard the fact that there was far more documented strife between Men and Dwarves than between Dwarves and Elves. The ill-will between Elves and Dwarves was largely one-sided. The Dwarves appear to have harbored some sort of racial grudge against the Elves because the Sindar hunted the Petty-Dwarves. Elves in general tried to get along with the Dwarves and most did not harbor any bad feelings toward them. The business with Gimli in Lorien and with Gandalf and Gloin in Imladris has been taken out of context so many times it's gotten to the point of near-parody. Many people just seem to want emnity between Elves and Dwarves, even though it's not there. Tolkien said in one letter that these races were usually hostile to one another -- but he never substantiated that in his stories. Most of his accounts of Elf-dwarf relations show their friendships and alliances, which sometimes lasted for thousands of years. There was only ever one (documented) war between Elves and Dwarves, and that was a localized event, which one group of Dwarves openly opposed. : Forgive me if this has been resolved already.
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