Blacklocks

A note on the sources

Of the seven houses of the Dwarves the published texts name only the Longbeards. The name Blacklocks, like Ironfists, Stiffbeards and Stonefoots, belongs to Tolkien's later unpublished writings on the Dwarves. This entry gathers what the canonical sources say of the eastern Dwarves generally.

Origins

The Seven Fathers slept in separate places under the mountains until after the Elves awoke. Durin rose alone at Gundabad, two fathers rose in the Blue Mountains, and four rose in pairs in the East. The Blacklocks are one of the houses of those eastern fathers. Their homes were in mountains beyond the knowledge of the chroniclers of Gondor and Arnor, perhaps near the great inland Sea of Rhûn or further still, and the Dwarves of the East entered the tales of the West only as travellers.

Part in the histories

When Azog slew Thrór in Moria and mutilated his body, the outrage united all the Dwarves. Thráin II sent messengers east and west, and the eastern houses sent warriors who fought through the six-year War of the Dwarves and Orcs and the Battle of Azanulbizar, in which the strength of the Orcs of the Misty Mountains was broken. After the burning of the dead the eastern Dwarves returned to their own lands, unwilling to attempt Moria with the Balrog inside. The Blacklocks, in the conventional listing of the eastern houses, were among them.

Character

The name suggests dark hair and beards, and no more is recorded. Like all Dwarves they were hardy, secretive and skilled in stone and metal, and their trade may account for the Dwarves of the East mentioned as wanderers on the roads in the North.

No description survives; the name implies black hair and beards.

Not separately recorded beyond the common culture of the Dwarves and their loyalty to the wider kinship of the seven houses.

Descended from one of the fathers who awoke in a pair in the eastern mountains after the Elves.

Unknown; presumed to have endured in the East into the Fourth Age.