Broadbeams

A note on the name

The Silmarillion names the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains only by their cities, Nogrod and Belegost. The house names Firebeards and Broadbeams appear in Tolkien's later writings on the Dwarves, and the assignment of Broadbeams to Belegost is a convention adopted here. What follows is the recorded history of the Dwarves of Belegost.

Origins and homeland

Belegost, the Great Fortress, called Gabilgathol by its people, lay on the eastern slopes of the Blue Mountains north of Nogrod and close under Mount Dolmed. Its founders were descendants of the two fathers who awoke together in those mountains. From Belegost the Dwarves came over the Dwarf-road into Beleriand and, together with their kin of Nogrod, entered the service and friendship of Thingol.

The delving of Menegroth and the arming of the Elves

The Dwarves of Belegost took part in the building of Menegroth, and it was they who taught the Sindar much of the working of stone. They were skilled smiths, and although Nogrod's craftsmen surpassed them in fine work, Belegost was celebrated for a particular invention: the making of masks and helms of great strength. The Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin was made in Nogrod but the visored war-masks of Belegost, fashioned into grim faces, were the pattern for such gear, and in the great battle against Morgoth they enabled the Dwarves to face dragon-fire.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

The hour of Belegost came in F.A. 472, when the Dwarves of the city marched in the host of Maedhros under their lord Azaghâl. When Glaurung came forth and the Elves and Men fled from the dragon, the Dwarves alone stood firm, for their hardiness and their masks let them bear the heat. They surrounded the dragon and hewed at him, and when Glaurung crushed Azaghâl beneath him, the dying lord drove his knife into the dragon's belly and made him flee back to Angband, taking the other beasts of Morgoth with him. The Dwarves lifted Azaghâl's body and marched from the field bearing it and chanting a dirge, and no enemy dared to stop them. It was the noblest deed of any Dwarf-host in the Elder Days.

The refusal at Doriath

When the Dwarves of Nogrod slew Thingol over the Nauglamír and raised an army to sack Doriath, Belegost would have no part in it. Its lords sought to dissuade Nogrod, and when that failed they stayed home. The distinction mattered little to the Elves, who thereafter distrusted all Dwarves, but it is recorded to Belegost's honour.

Later history

At the end of the First Age the Blue Mountains were broken and Belegost was ruined with Nogrod. Many of its people went east to Khazad-dûm, adding their numbers and their craft to Durin's Folk; the rest stayed in the remnant of the range that became the Ered Luin of later ages, where Dwarves still lived in the Third Age. The house is not heard of again under its own name.

The Dwarves of Belegost are remembered above all for their appearance in war: mailed head to foot and wearing visored helms wrought into hideous faces, so that they seemed a host of iron demons. Under the masks they were Dwarves like any other, broad, strong and hardy, and the name of the house suggests an even heavier and broader build.

Belegost was a city of masons and armourers. Its people were the more temperate of the two Blue Mountain houses, valuing their long friendship with the Elves and their obligations to allies, and their conduct at the Nirnaeth and at Doriath reflects that. Their most distinctive craft was the war-mask, and their custom of bearing the body of a fallen lord from the battlefield with a chanted dirge, no matter what enemies stood in the way, is one of the few Dwarvish funeral rites described in the histories.

Two of the Seven Fathers awoke together in the Blue Mountains, and the two houses descended from them delved Nogrod and Belegost on the eastern slopes of the range. The Dwarves never told the Elves the names of these fathers.

Belegost was ruined with the drowning of Beleriand and its people were absorbed into Khazad-dûm or remained in the shrunken Blue Mountains. As a distinct house the Broadbeams have no later recorded history.