Tidbits of Curiosity

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Morsul the Dark

I’m so excited this thread exists I was planning a similar one.

I’m going to piggyback and say I thoroughly wish we knew more about the dwarves at Bagend the night Bilbo left.

Well, we slightly do! Let's take a look at them:

Originally Posted by FotR

An odd-looking waggon laden with odd-looking packages rolled into Hobbiton one evening and toiled up the Hill to Bag End. The startled hobbits peered out of lamplit doors to gape at it. It was driven by outlandish folk, singing strange songs: dwarves with long beards and deep hoods. A few of them remained at Bag End.

We know that Bilbo's walking-companions arrived in early September, so were hanging out at Bag-End for 1-2 weeks. We know they came from the Lonely Mountain, by way of Dale.

We can also conclude that they're old enough to have been alive at the time of the Battle of Five Armies, but they may not have fought in it. If they're under about 100, they would have been children during the Battle; and even if older, they may have been in the Blue Mountains, not the Iron Hills. See next point.

Originally Posted by FotR

'And look at the outlandish folk that visit him: dwarves coming at night...'

This quote comes before the one above, and tells us that Bilbo had dwarves as guests often enough for Sandyman to notice. Given that the Shire doesn't exactly have trade with Erebor, those dwarves were probably mostly passing through on their way to and from the Blue Mountains. I think it's reasonable to guess that Bilbo's house-guests and walking-companions weren't people he'd just met that month: more plausibly, they were some of those traders and/or other migrants crossing the Shire.

More tentatively, that means they may have been from Thorin's faction of the Longbeards, not Dain's. The people most likely to make the long and dangerous journey to the Blue Mountains are the ones who used to live there, not the ones from the Iron Hills! That makes them either children during Thorin's quest, or dwarves who didn't go with him to Erebor.

Originally Posted by HoME VI: Return to Hobbiton

'Nar, Anar, Hannar, are you ready? Right. Off we go.'

It's from the draft, but they have names! Furthermore, from their names, they're probably a set of brothers (see: Balin and Dwalin) or two brothers and a cousin (see: Dori, Nori, and Ori), or maybe a father and two sons (see: Groin, Oin, and Gloin). Definitely close relatives, at any rate.

Originally Posted by Appendix A

Years afterwards Thrór, now old, poor, and desperate, gave to his son Thráin the one great treasure he still possessed, the last of the Seven Rings, and then he went away with one old companion only, called Nár.

Slightly speculatively: dwarven names often recur down the family tree (there are three Nains, for example). A lot of these could be just families using the names of kings, but there's no King Nar that we know of. Nar, companion of Bilbo, could be a descendent of Nar, companion of Thror. There's about 200 years between their appearances, and Thror's Nar was old; given that dwarves tend to have their children at age 100, we're looking at Bilbo's friends being his grandchildren or great-grandchildren. They may be old enough to have heard the tale of Thror's death in Moria first-hand; they would certainly have heard it from the elder Nar's children.

This would tie in nicely with the idea of them being Blue Mountain dwarves originally, who had moved to Erebor after the Battle of Five Armies.

Much more speculatively: Nar is not mentioned at the Battle of Azanulbizar, nor anyone related to him. Tolkien being Tolkien, if the family of the dwarf who witnessed Thror's death was present during the fight to avenge him, you'd expect a mention somewhere! So I can imagine Thrain taking his father's companion by the shoulder and saying 'You're not coming; you've done enough'. Whether he means 'by serving Thror to the last' or 'because you got him killed' is open to interpretation, but the upshot is that the later Nar, and his kinsmen Anar and Hannar, would have been left out of Thorin's expedition because their family has already Done Enough. (We know dwarves have long memories - they still have a grudge against the elves over Thingol!)

~

And that, I think, is all we know or can plausibly deduce. Tolkien Gateway claims that in the early drafts Nar is given "some dialogue and a bit more development", but I think this is wrong: they've carried it across from Lofar, the fourth dwarf who stayed back with Gandalf and has a line to himself ("Goodbye, Bingo; I am going with Gandalf"). He was dropped completely from the book, while the others just lost their names; but their only dialogue appears only ever to have been "Everything" in response to Bilbo asking if everything was ready.

(One cheeky final bit of speculation: the Blue Mountains were originally home to the dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost, who mingled with Durin's folk after Beleriand fell. Those two cities were founded by the Firebeard and Broadbeam houses. At least two dwarves of Nogrod, Telchar and Naugladur, have seemingly Elvish use-names. "Nar" is the Quenya word for "fire", as "Anar" is Quenya for "Sun"... could they be ancient use-name adopted by the Firebeards who came in contact with the Quenya-fluent elves of Eregion, which werelater taken to be Northern names and matched with the similar Hannar? )

hS