# Dwarf Women: Beards or No?



## Beytran70 (Apr 7, 2022)

Hello all. One topic I've seen brought up more and more frequently in regards to Amazon's new show is the age old debate on whether female Dwarves REALY DO have beards in the CANON. Some people point out plenty of evidence from the appendices and other peripheral works that indicate Dwarf women do have beards, while others indicate that they do not consider such works or articles of the lore as fully canon and so find the matter up for debate. I am curious what some of the more level-headed folks here think on the matter?


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## Ealdwyn (Apr 7, 2022)

It's in the Appendices of LotR, and as that was published by Tolkien himself I consider it canon:
_"They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, *so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart.*" _(my emphasis)
So the dwarf women and men look exactly alike to anyone who isn;t a dwarf. In other words, beards are worn by all.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Apr 7, 2022)

I suppose the somewhat ambiguous phrasing gave rise to the debate, although a strictly grammatical reading would indicate that "if they must go on a journey" applies only to "garb".


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## Ealdwyn (Apr 7, 2022)

If he'd written _They are in voice and appearance and in garb, if they must go on a journey, ... _(note comma position)- then I'd say that the voice/appearance/garb applies to going on a journey. As it stands, in the actual quote, the words _and in garb if they must go on a journey _are a separate clause_, _meaning the garb only applies to going on a journey.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Apr 7, 2022)

Did anyone ever see a "non-journey" Dwarf? I don't remember.


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## Goldilocks Gamgee (Apr 7, 2022)

Doesn't it say somewhere that dwarves prefer to not really go anywhere outside their kingdom, and shun outsiders? I don't remember where, but I think that was said...

Or at least PJ's Elrond says it: "They hide in their mountains, seeking riches..."


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Apr 7, 2022)

Oops -- I meant to say "non-journey Dwarf _women_". Sorry. 😑


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## Elthir (Apr 19, 2022)

Beytran70 said:


> Hello all.



Hi!



Beytran70 said:


> One topic I've seen brought up more and more frequently in regards to Amazon's new show is the age old debate on whether female Dwarves REALY DO have beards in the CANON.



I'd say they do!



Beytran70 said:


> Some people point out plenty of evidence from the appendices and other peripheral works that indicate Dwarf women do have beards, while others indicate that they do not consider such works or articles of the lore as fully canon and so find the matter up for debate.



Well, in my opinion _The Lord of the Rings _Appendices *are* canon. *Published* by JRRT himself seems very solid to me, canon-wise! And *Ealdwyn* has already provided that description, concerning which I agree means that Dwarf-women have beards.

Also, if peripheral works include _Quenta Silmarillion_, we have evidence *written* by Tolkien himself, which directly states that Dwarf-women have beards: *"For the Naugrim have beards from the beginning of their lives, male and female alike; nor indeed can their womankind be discerned by those of other race, be it in feature or in gait or in voice, nor in any wise save this: that they go not to war, and seldom save at direst need issue from their deep bowers and halls.*" JRR Tolkien, *early 1950s*_ The Later Quenta Silmarillion,_ Section 5, _The War of the Jewels.

But why wasn't this much included in Christopher Tolkien's constructed Silmarillion, for example? _It seems to me, based on the description given by Christopher Tolkien, that JRRT wrote a *later account* of the Dwarves that *does not* include this description . . .

Why? Was the idea rejected? My answer is no, not rejected . . .

. . . I note that in the _Later Quenta Silmarillion _(the quote above) it was _Pengolodh_ the Elf who related this information to a Man named _Ælfwine_ ("Elf-friend"). But when writing the later account, Tolkien would (arguably) have realized that he'd already given this information about Dwarf-women, and had already noted (Appendix A) that the information for Section A III _Durin's Folk_ was *"probably"* derived from *Gimli the Dwarf *. . .

. . . who was also named "Elf-friend" as it happens, in Appendix A.

*In short-er*, I'd say that this _Quenta Silmarillion_ information about Dwarf-women, again, once given to Pengolodh to reveal in that book, was not rejected, but by the time Tolkien wrote the later QS account of the Dwarves, it was removed -- as it had already been given to Gimli and already revealed in _The Lord of the Rings_.

Of course, that's not to say, generally speaking, that things couldn't be repeated in various texts, but in any case, that's what I think happened here.

(not to mention that the "Ælfwine mode" of transmission of the texts was to be altered as well, another factor for a wider discussion)


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## Matthew Bailey (Dec 8, 2022)

Another thing in which the answer is likely a categorical yes, *but…*.

We know that the Númenóreans did not grow beards at all for the men, save possibly (note: Possibly) as they approach the time of death. 

This seems to have been important for the Númenóreans when they still possessed the means to voluntarily _Surrender the Gift_. The Growth of a beard means “Get your life in order to prepare to _Surrender the Gift._” While the beard turning grey means “It is time to leave.”

The Dwarven Women likely have beards that are rather like the plumage of Female birds (and especially those birds where the Males are given to _extravagant displays_, behavioral or physical in dance/actions/gifts or in the color and _Size_ of the plumage):

The beards would likely be less pronounced than those of the Males, and would likely be highly groomed whether male or female.”

Yet with a marked decrease in size and evocative coloration as in female birds of species like the Myna, or the Bird of Paradise.

So female beards likely grew in a different pattern on the face, likely with less “coverage” than the male.

Yet being something that the secretive nature of the Dwarves keeps other _Races_ from being able to discern.

As I see others have remarked upon.

We have issues of species in which we could not determine purely by observation which was Male and which was Female. 

Most of these have been Fish, such as the Seahorse or the varieties of Anglerfish, Frogfish and such, whereby ALL adults we see are Females, given that the Males tend to have a lifespan of all but a day or so. They are also tiny, and their ONLY act in life is biting the ventral surface of a Female, such that they become a vestigial fin on that surface, eventually absorbed completely by the female to fertilize later eggs.

While I *highly doubt *that Dwarves in Middle-earth have such a parallel, it does illustrate that other Races (Species) can have difficulty in detecting the Gender/Sex of instances like the Dwarves, Anglerfish, or Frogfish (and many Toads/Frogs for that matter).

MB


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## Ent (Dec 8, 2022)

Ealdwyn said:


> _"They are in voice and appearance, and in garb if they must go on a journey, *so like to the dwarf-men that the eyes and ears of other peoples cannot tell them apart.*" _(my emphasis)



Going back to this, grammatically, Ealdwyn has the proper take. "and in garb if they must go on a journey", is a parenthetical insertion - an 'additive phrase' - that can be removed entirely without changing the sentence. 

"so like to the dwarf-men..." relates directly back to the primary focus (subject) of the sentence, "they are in voice and appearance....so like the dwarf-men...".

The 'additive phrase' simply provides another environment and altered physical attribute (clothing) wherein they ALSO look indistinguishably like the dwarf-men. 

One can only wonder what garb the dwarf-women wore in the home setting and when not on journeys enabling a distinction, and why they chose to drop the distinction when a journey was their objective.

Tolkien would not have been in error in setting his grammar in place here. His intent was to leave us without doubt that they were indistinguishable from one another.


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## Tar-Elenion (Dec 8, 2022)

Matthew Bailey said:


> Another thing in which the answer is likely a categorical yes, *but…*.
> 
> We know that the Númenóreans did not grow beards at all for the men, save possibly (note: Possibly) as they approach the time of death.
> 
> This seems to have been important for the Númenóreans when they still possessed the means to voluntarily _Surrender the Gift_. The Growth of a beard means “Get your life in order to prepare to _Surrender the Gift._” While the beard turning grey means “It is time to leave.”


Not quite. Numenoreans in the line of Elros did not have beards:
"The tribes of Men from whom the Númenóreans were descended were normal, and hence the majority of them would have beards. But the royal house was half-elven, having two strains of Elvish race in their ancestry through Lúthien of Doriath (royal Sindarin) and Idril of Gondolin (royal Noldorin). The effects were long-lasting: e.g. in a tendency to a stature a little above the average, to a greater (though steadily decreasing) longevity, and probably most lastingly in beardlessness. Thus none of the Númenórean chieftains of descent from Elros (whether kings or not) would be bearded."
NoMe, Beards (ca. (late) 1972 or 73
There are some problems with this, however:
"Frodo saw the old king’s head: it was lying rolled away by the roadside. ‘Look, Sam!’ he cried, startled into speech. ‘Look! The king has got a crown again!’
The eyes were hollow and the carven beard was broken, but about the high stern forehead there was a coronal of silver and gold."
LotR, Journey to the Cross-roads
Tolkien also seems to have approved of Pauline Baynes depiction of the Argonath on the poster map she drew:
"Tolkien wrote a set of comments on these depictions of places and characters. Some of these comments are appreciative: e.g. Tolkien found four of the vignettes, sc. those depicting the Teeth of Mordor, the Argonath, Barad-dûr, and Minas Morgul, particularly well-executed, and described them as agreeing “remarkably with my own vision … Minas Morgul is almost exact”..."
NoMe, Descriptions of Characters (1970) 
Baynes depiction of the Argonath includes beards.


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