Narvi

The friendship of Elves and Dwarves

Narvi lived in Khazad-dûm in the Second Age, in the years when the Noldor under Celebrimbor had settled Eregion at the western feet of the Misty Mountains, close to the Dwarf-kingdom's western door. It was the one time in the history of Middle-earth that Elves and Dwarves worked together in real friendship, each to the profit of the other, and Narvi was the Dwarf in whom that friendship was embodied. He and Celebrimbor were friends, and between them they made the West-gate that let the traffic of Eregion pass straight into the mountain.

The Doors of Durin

Narvi made the doors themselves, two great leaves of stone set into the cliff above the stream Sirannon, so perfectly fitted that when closed they could not be seen at all. Celebrimbor drew the designs upon them in ithildin, a substance made from mithril that shows only under starlight or moonlight and only when touched: the hammer and anvil of Durin, the crown and seven stars, two trees bearing crescent moons, and the star of the house of Fëanor. Around them ran an inscription in the Elvish letters naming the doors as the Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria, and recording that Narvi made them and that Celebrimbor drew the signs. The doors opened to a password, and the inscription itself gave the clue, though it took Gandalf some time to understand it in T.A. 3019.

Legacy

Nothing else is recorded of Narvi, not his birth, his death, or his lineage among the Longbeards. His work outlasted Eregion, which Sauron destroyed in S.A. 1697, and outlasted the kingdom of Khazad-dûm, and the Fellowship of the Ring passed through his doors in the last year of the Third Age, just before the Watcher in the Water tore them shut behind them. His name on the gate is the only Dwarvish signature on a work of the Elder Days that the histories preserve.

Unknown; he died at some time in the Second Age, and only his work and his name on the gate survive.