Why do Elves and Dwarves hate each other?

okay this goes both ways I could have asked why the elves hate the dwarves the feeling is mutual but why do dwarves and elves hate each other hi everyone this is Robert welcome to in deep geek this video is brought to you with support from Skillshare the online learning platform and I have a special offer for you from them at the end of this video so please stick around for that from now on I'll be bringing you regular JRR tolkien and Lord of the Rings content on this channel as well as the best of other great fantasy and science fiction like a Song of Ice and Fire if you're interested in seeing more of that please click on the subscribe button in the bottom right of your screen and the Bell icon the enmity between elves and dwarves is a fantasy staple it appears all through the Lord of the Rings until Legolas and Gimli strike up their friendship and as you might expect from Tolkien it has a very clear history and there are grievances on both sides so why is there this mutual grudge first of all I should clarify that not all elves hate all dwarves and not all dwarves hate all elves JRR Tolkien created a wide variety of different kinds of elves and dwarves different languages cultures histories and so on there have been plenty of times when elves and dwarves have actually got on really well just to take one example the Great West door of Moria that the fellowship passed through in the Lord of the Rings is a joint build between dwarves and elves to aid trade and fellowship between the two races that's why the password to this dwarven stronghold is in elvish the elvish word for friend when we're talking about a grudge between elves and dwarves we are talking mostly about the cinder and silver elves and well and most Dwarfs dwarves are good at grudges if we're looking for a starting point for the grudge though we should probably note that the two races were created separately and differently this doesn't excuse their antipathy but it does perhaps part explain it the elves as we know love the forests and nature above ground the dwarves love life below ground the natural friction between their two natures was apparent from the start that's why the ents were created after all to protect the forest from dwarves and those like them chopping them down for crafting materials but the first real problem seems to have been with what happened to the petty dwarves the petty dwarves were a branch of the dwarves slightly smaller and less sociable but apparently less likely to carve their homes deep under mountains they split from the rest of the dwarves and established their home in Beleriand then the elves arrived and not to beat around the bush on this they killed them all of them virtually in a rather horrific act of ethnic cleansing hunting them down like animals even the rather derogatory name petty dwarves was invented by the elves this did not start the relationship between the elves and the dwarfs off on the best of bases but the real antipathy between them started six thousand seven hundred years before the time of the Lord of the Rings that may seem like a long time ago but let's not forget that dwarves live for a long time and elves live for a very long time some of the characters we see in the Lord of the Rings were actually still alive at the start of this grudge it all starts with King Fingal of doriath an elven king who came into possession of two great treasures a silmaril one of the three legendary gems of unparalleled beauty whose story we read about in The Silmarillion and nog Lamia the necklace of the dwarves the most famed artifact of the dwarves in elder times Fingal had the idea to have the silmaril set in nog Lamia this would undoubtedly create an item of such beauty the world had never seen and as fate would have it a troupe of dwarves were then at that very time in Menna growth his home he offered them a high price to do the smithing he needed and waited impatiently for them to finish the dwarves however grew greedy and once they had finished their work refused to hand it over the nog Lumiere was the Dwarven artifact they you'd stolen from them in the first place it was theirs thing goal reacted angrily insulting them and as we read in The Silmarillion bade them with shameful words begone unrequited out of doriath things escalated quickly from there the dwarves killed Fingal where he stood and fled to the city the elves hunted them down and killed them except for two who made it home to no Grodd and told their brethren that they had been betrayed by the elves the dwarves of Nagaraja then raised an army and invaded doriath and sacked the city of meligrove but on their way home they were in turn ambushed by the elves led by Baron the bloodshed seems to have ended at that point but the animosity was established and lingered it might not have been open warfare anymore but there was clear distrust there to bring it all up to date by the time of the stories we know there was of course that little incident in The Hobbit the dwarves in Thorens company and Bilbo of course were passing through the woodland realm of Mirkwood enroute to Erebor the lowly mountain for them it was a moral crusade of sorts they were heading to reclaim the home that had been taken from them by Smaug they strayed from the path into the lands of renewal that king of the elves who ordered them to be imprisoned Bilbo rescued them with the help of the ring but the damage was done this wasn't just some random elves waylaying some random dwarves it was a king of the elves imprisoning a king of the dwarves or from the other perspective a king of the dwarves trespassing on the land of the king of the elves so when it got to the end of the Third Age and the Council of Elrond these grudges were well entrenched the film's short-circuit all of this history by the mechanism of Gimli shouting out never trust an elf something he never actually says in the books but it sums up the feelings quite well Gimli is actually quite quiet at the Council of Elrond his father glowin is doing a lot of the speaking glowin of course was one of those who had been imprisoned by Thranduil I'll cover this properly in a video and Gimli at some point but it's fair to say that the film version of Gimli is a lot more of a caricature of dwarves than the representation of other races are of their race notwithstanding this the friendship between Gimli and Legolas was important both races had largely kept to themselves in the millennia since the trouble at mini growth but mistrust was still there the elves did not linger long enough in middle-earth after the events of the war of the ring for the full fruits of this to manifest itself but the signs were there that perhaps finally the historical grudge had ended they had fought side by side against a greater evil and two of the greatest of their younger generation had become firm friends working together and traveling together in the end when Legolas and Gimli the son of Randall who had imprisoned blowin the father of Gimli sailed together to Valinor it perhaps marks an end to the animosity but I told you I'd say a bit more about Skillshare who sponsored this video Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of inspiring classes for creative and curious people you can explore new skills deepen existing passions and get lost in creativity I use Skillshare myself to fire up my own creativity I've been watching video essentials using lenses and lighting by Oren Safa I'm looking to upgrade my equipment here for live streams and the like and I need to know how to make the best of it this is helping me understand the principles of how to film and how to get better at it there are also add free classes across a whole range of other creative areas like WordPress art and how to be productive and that's all for only $10 a month and I said I had an offer for you the first thousand of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get a 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Channel: In Deep Geek

Views: 85,380

Rating: 4.9559817 out of 5

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Id: 6iHDlVIYYzg

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 20 2020