Ironfists

A note on the sources

The published histories say that there were seven houses of the Dwarves, name only the Longbeards, and describe two more by their cities in the Blue Mountains. The names of the remaining four, Ironfists, Stiffbeards, Blacklocks and Stonefoots, come from Tolkien's later unpublished essays. What can be said of them from the canonical texts is limited to what is said of the Dwarves of the East as a group.

Origins

The Seven Fathers were laid to sleep in separate places beneath the mountains, and after Durin woke alone in the north and two fathers woke together in the Blue Mountains, the remaining four awoke in pairs in the mountains of the East, far from the lands where the Elves and the Edain made their histories. Their mansions were in ranges never mapped in the West, and Dwarves of those houses were seen in Eriador and Rhovanion only as travellers and traders.

Part in the histories

The eastern houses touch the recorded history of Middle-earth at one moment. When Thrór was murdered by Azog in T.A. 2790, Thráin II sent messengers to every house, and all of them answered, for the insult to the heir of the eldest line was felt by all Dwarves. Warriors of the eastern houses fought through the six years of the War of the Dwarves and Orcs and at the Battle of Azanulbizar in 2799, and afterwards returned to their own lands, leaving Durin's Folk to bear the cost of that victory alone. The Ironfists, if the conventional listing of the eastern houses is accepted, would have been among them.

Character

The name suggests a house of smiths and warriors, but nothing specific is recorded. They spoke Khuzdul like all Dwarves and were presumably as secretive, as hardy and as fond of stone and metal as their western kin. The wanderers of the East who came into the North as merchants may have been of this house, but no individual Ironfist is named anywhere.

No description survives; the house shared the common Dwarvish frame and nature.

Nothing beyond the general culture of the Dwarves is recorded. Their kinship with the other houses was strong enough that they marched to war for the honour of Durin's line.

Descended from two of the Seven Fathers who awoke together somewhere in the mountains of the East after the awakening of the Elves.

Unknown. The eastern Dwarves presumably endured in their mansions into the Fourth Age.