Firebeards

A note on the name

The published narratives of the First Age speak of the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains by their cities, Nogrod and Belegost, and never by house name. The names Firebeards and Broadbeams for the two houses that dwelt there come from Tolkien's later unpublished essays on the Dwarves, and the pairing of Firebeards with Nogrod and Broadbeams with Belegost is a convention rather than a statement found in The Silmarillion. This entry follows that convention and describes the Dwarves of Nogrod.

Origins and homeland

Two of the Seven Fathers awoke together in the Ered Luin, the Blue Mountains that formed the eastern wall of Beleriand, and their descendants delved two great cities on the eastern side of the range south of Mount Dolmed. Nogrod, whose name the Elves rendered as the Hollowbold, lay further south than Belegost, and its people were famed even among Dwarves for their smithcraft. From the Dwarf-road that ran down from Mount Dolmed to the ford of Sarn Athrad on the Gelion, the Dwarves of Nogrod came into Beleriand while Melkor was still a prisoner in Valinor.

Relations with the Elves

The Dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost were the first Dwarves that the Elves of Beleriand met, and their relationship with Thingol was long profitable. Together the two cities delved Menegroth and forged the first weapons of the Sindar. Nogrod's smiths were the greatest: Telchar, whose work included the knife Angrist, the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin and Narsil, the sword of Elendil, was of Nogrod, and the Dwarves of Nogrod also made the swords, mail and jewelled work that the Noldor prized in the years of the Siege of Angband.

Nogrod also had dealings with the dark Elf Eöl of Nan Elmoth, who visited both cities and learned the smithing of galvorn there. Its craftsmen were later hired by Thingol to set the Silmaril of Beren into the Nauglamír, the necklace that Dwarves of Nogrod had made for Finrod long before. That commission ended in disaster: the Dwarves claimed the necklace and the jewel, quarrelled with Thingol, and killed him in his own treasury. Most of the murderers were hunted down, and the two who escaped roused Nogrod to a war of vengeance.

The sack of Doriath and Sarn Athrad

The host of Nogrod marched over the Dwarf-road, and with Melian's protection withdrawn, entered Menegroth, sacked the Thousand Caves and carried off the Nauglamír and the Silmaril. On the way home they were ambushed at the ford of Sarn Athrad by Beren with the Green-elves of Ossiriand, and the Ents of the mountains fell on those who fled. The Lord of Nogrod was slain and cursed the treasure as he died. Belegost had refused to join the venture and tried to dissuade Nogrod; the deed nonetheless cast a shadow over all Dwarves in the memory of the Elves.

Later history

Nogrod was ruined when Beleriand was broken at the end of the First Age. Many of its people went east to Khazad-dûm and were absorbed into the population of Durin's Folk, while some remained in the surviving Blue Mountains, which in the Third Age again held Dwarf-halls, including those of Thráin II. No separate history of the house is recorded after the Elder Days.

Nothing distinguishes the Dwarves of Nogrod in appearance from other Dwarves in the published texts; the name of the house suggests red or ruddy beards. Like all Dwarves they were short, broad and hardy, and they were masked and mailed in the great war-gear of their own forging.

The Dwarves of Nogrod were smiths first of all, and their reputation for craft exceeded even that of Belegost. They had a strong sense of obligation and payment, which made them valuable partners in trade and dangerous when they felt cheated, as the quarrel over the Nauglamír showed. They kept the Dwarf-road and the ford of Sarn Athrad as their highway into Beleriand, and dealt in weapons, mail and worked metal in exchange for pearls, food and the goods of the Elves.

Two of the Seven Fathers awoke in the Blue Mountains, and from them came the two houses that built Nogrod and Belegost. The Dwarves say little of their fathers' names, and the Elves of Beleriand knew them only as the Naugrim who came over the mountains.

The city was broken at the drowning of Beleriand and its people scattered east to Khazad-dûm or lingered in the Blue Mountains. As a house the Firebeards disappear from the record, though the Blue Mountains remained a Dwarvish home until the end of the Third Age.