Gimli

Lineage and youth

Gimli was born in T.A. 2879, the son of Glóin and a descendant of the royal house of Durin through the line of Borin, younger brother of Dáin I. His father and his uncle Óin were both companions of Thorin Oakenshield, and he was a kinsman of Balin. He grew up in the halls of the exiles in the Blue Mountains and was sixty-two when Thorin set out for Erebor, too young by Dwarvish reckoning to be taken on the quest, though he wanted to go. After the Mountain was retaken he moved there with his father and lived through the prosperous reign of Dáin Ironfoot.

The Council of Elrond

In 3018 messengers from Mordor came to Dáin asking after hobbits and a small ring, and Dáin sent Glóin and Gimli to Rivendell to seek Elrond's counsel and to warn Bilbo. Gimli was present at the Council of Elrond, where the fate of the One Ring was decided, and when the Company of the Ring was chosen he was named to represent the Dwarves, one of the Free Peoples, beside Legolas for the Elves. The two began the journey with the old distrust of their races between them, sharpened for Gimli by his father's memories of the dungeons of Thranduil.

Moria

When the Company failed to cross Caradhras, it was Gimli who most wanted to try Moria, hoping to find Balin, who had gone to refound the colony there thirty years before and not been heard of since. He walked in the dark of Khazad-dûm with grief and pride, singing the song of Durin by the way, and in the Chamber of Mazarbul he found Balin's tomb. He stood at it while Gandalf read the book that told the colony's end, and he fought at the door of the chamber against the Orcs and the cave-troll. At the Bridge Gandalf fell with Durin's Bane, and it was Gimli who had to be dragged away by Boromir. Before they left the valley he took Frodo to look into the Mirrormere, where they saw the crown of stars that Durin had seen and no reflection of themselves.

Lothlórien and Galadriel

At the borders of Lothlórien the Elves demanded that the Dwarf be blindfolded, and Gimli would not accept it unless the rest of the Company were blindfolded too; Aragorn settled the quarrel by having them all bound. What followed changed Gimli's life. Galadriel greeted him with the ancient Dwarvish names of his own homeland and spoke of Khazad-dûm with understanding, and Gimli, who had expected coldness, was won completely. When the Company left she asked what gift a Dwarf would want, and he asked for a single hair of her head, which she gave him three of, an honour she had refused to Fëanor long ago. From then on Gimli was her champion; he offered to fight Éomer over her name, and he and Legolas, who had walked the woods of Lórien together, were inseparable.

The pursuit of the Orcs

After the breaking of the Fellowship at Amon Hen, Gimli ran with Aragorn and Legolas across Rohan after the Uruk-hai who had taken Merry and Pippin, forty-five leagues in four days, the hardest running a Dwarf had done in living memory. They met Éomer's riders, found the hobbits' trail into Fangorn, and there met Gandalf returned. Gimli offered his axe to Théoden at Edoras and rode to the war of Rohan on the back of Legolas's horse, which he did not enjoy.

Helm's Deep

At Helm's Deep Gimli fought on the wall and in the caves behind the fortress. He and Legolas kept a running count of the Orcs they killed; Gimli came out ahead with forty-two, and it was Gimli who held the culvert when the Orcs came through it, and who was cut off with Éomer and saved the king's nephew from the enemy. But what he carried away from Helm's Deep was wonder rather than the tally: he had seen the Glittering Caves of Aglarond, and he told Legolas that no Dwarf could look at them and want to leave.

The Paths of the Dead

When Aragorn resolved to take the Paths of the Dead from Dunharrow to summon the oathbreakers, Gimli went with him, and he afterward said it was the worst ordeal of the war for him: a Dwarf, a creature of the underground, made afraid by the darkness under the mountain and by the Dead who followed. He rode with the Grey Company to the Stone of Erech, and on to Pelargir, where the Dead drove the Corsairs from their ships, and he came up the Anduin with Aragorn to the battle of the Pelennor Fields. After the victory he searched the city with Legolas for Merry and Pippin and found Pippin under the body of a troll. He marched to the Black Gate and stood in the last battle before it.

After the war

Gimli helped bury the fallen and, in the Fourth Age, took a company of Dwarves from Erebor to make a new gate of mithril and steel for Minas Tirith, whose old gate the Witch-king had broken. He and Legolas kept their promise to each other: they went together into Fangorn, which Gimli had feared, and into the Glittering Caves, which Legolas had been slow to admire. Gimli then led a colony of Durin's Folk to Aglarond and became Lord of the Glittering Caves, where the Dwarves did work with the stone that Gimli had described as the most delicate they had ever attempted. His people also worked for King Elessar and Éomer across Gondor and Rohan.

The passing over the Sea

When King Elessar died in Fo.A. 120, Legolas built a ship in Ithilien and sailed down Anduin and over the Sea, and it was said in the Shire and in Gondor that Gimli went with him. The Red Book records the tradition as strange and unprecedented: no Dwarf had ever sought the Undying Lands, and the histories offer two explanations, that Legolas asked for him out of friendship, and that Gimli wished to see again the beauty of Galadriel, who by then had gone over the Sea and who may have obtained the grace for him. He was then two hundred and sixty-two years old, and nothing is told of him after that.

Legacy

Gimli was the first Dwarf since the Elder Days to be named an Elf-friend, and his friendship with Legolas healed, in one pair at least, the oldest grudge between the two races. He was courageous, blunt, given to grumbling and to sudden generosity, and fiercely loyal to his companions. As Lord of Aglarond he built the last Dwarf-realm founded in the histories, and as a member of the Fellowship he ensured that the Dwarves had a share in the deed that ended the Third Age.

Ruled the Glittering Caves as lord through most of the Fourth Age; in Fo.A. 120, after the death of King Elessar, he sailed West with Legolas, and no more is told of him.