A Dwarf’s-Eye View?

Here is an interesting thought: Just how accurate are our sources? The whole of The Hobbit was supposedly written from Bilbo’s own experience, and it is a fact that he kept more dwarvish company than elvish at the time. I would hazard to guess that Bilbo never ran his descriptions and explanations of the Elvenking past one of Thranduil’s own Elves.  Elrond might have seen it, and probably had a good laugh at his kinsman’s expense.

Namely, I refer to the charge that Thranduil was unjust in his dealings with the dwarves. "In ancient days, [the elves] had had wars with some of the dwarves, whom they accused of stealing their treasure. It is only fair to say that the dwarves gave a different account, and said that they only took what was their due, for the elf-king had bargained with them to shape his raw gold and silver, and had afterwards refused to give them their pay." This would seem reprehensible if one takes this only at face value and does not consider the historical implications behind it, together with the plausible distortions of time.

This whole account does suspiciously sound like echoes of the enmity between Doriath and Nogrod in the First Age. King Thingol did indeed hire dwarves to reshape the Nauglamír and set in it the Silmaril. They did threaten to steal it, he did refuse them their reward, and the rest is history.

". . . [B]ut the Dwarves in that moment withheld [the Nauglamír] from him, and demanded that he yield it up to them. . . . But Thingol perceived their hearts, and saw well that desiring the Silmaril they sought but a pretext and fair cloak for their true intent; and in his wrath and pride he gave no heed to his peril, but spoke to them in scorn . . . [and] bade them with shameful words be gone unrequited out of Doriath." (Of the Ruin of Doriath, The Silmarillion)

To their own shame, the Dwarves of Nogrod murdered King Thingol in his own halls, then fled with the Silmaril like the red-handed thieves they were. The Elves, of course, cannot have been expected to endure assassination and larceny, and so they pursued their king’s murderers to the death, missing only two who managed to limp back home to the mountains. "[A]nd there in Nogrod they told somewhat of all that had befallen, saying that the Dwarves were slain in Doriath by command of the Elvenking, who would thus cheat them of their reward." (Of the Ruin of Doriath, The Silmarillion)

"Somewhat?" Slain "by command of the Elvenking" who happened to be dead at the time? Clearly, defensive dwarves cannot always be taken literally at their word, being liable to bend the truth. Thranduil was himself out of Doriath, a Sinda of noble birth, even of Thingol’s kin by some accounts, but whether Thorin’s dwarves knew that or not, it is possible that one Elvenking was like another in their eyes. And if this is indeed the origin of this particular tale, it has had the leisure of six thousand years to become the rumor of legend, in which many pertinent details are prone to suffer.

Laying the blame on related but innocent shoulders in not unknown in history, and this could well be as flagrant an example as the accusation that Queen Marie Antoinette of France (later beheaded unjustly) quipped "let them eat cake," in regard to her starving citizenry, when in truth those were the words of a previous queen, her husband’s great-great-grandmother. So perhaps Thranduil inherited the historical grievances against "Elvenking" Thingol, his predecessor.

And with the same passages quoted above, it is said of Thranduil that "His people neither mined nor worked metals or jewels, nor did they bother much with trade or with tilling the earth. All this was well known to every dwarf, though Thorin’s family had nothing to do with the old quarrel I have spoken of." Well, what is "well known to every dwarf" may not be exactly what is known or held by every elf, or by anyone else for that matter. After all, if they did not work jewels, why were they on their collars and belts before?