Follow Up to the Blue Mountains Question - Gundabad

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Legate of Amon Lanc

The Dragons had been plaguing all the Dwarven settlements in the North for ages, and especially those close to Withered Heath. Iron Hills was still relatively south (I know it sounds ridiculous if you look at the M-E map, but yes, in the relative sense - in relation to the Dragons - it still was South, and we can presume that most of the Dwarven settlements plundered by the Dragons were further to the north than that - simply judging from what we are told in The Hobbit: the Lonely Mountain was really very, very, very far south for the Dragons and considered safe and it took the biggest and bravest dragon of that age - i.e. Smaug - to come there), I think we can also conclude that Iron Hills was too strongly populated, defended, you name it - to be worth the trouble. Iron Hills: too far East for the mountain Orcs to threaten it, too far South (and possibly East, too) and seemingly really all too well defended for the Dragons to dare it. That's my conclusion, and I think it is rather evident (also because it is the only logical explanation anyway).

However, both Erebor and the Iron Hills would appear, judging from the maps, to be as near to the Withered Heath as Gundabad.

And if the Iron Hills was not considered a wealthy enough target, why would dragons have bothered a newly resettled Gundabad, which would presumably have taken very many years to repopulate and enrich?