Ahira's Hangar

Was Gimli really a dwarf?

OK, he enjoys a pretty cave like the ones at Helm's Deep. But to more than counter that argument, he became best friends with an elf! And a wood-elf, at that! And he didn't enjoy Moria that much!

Where was the treasure at all cost mentality, as showed by Thorin towards the end of The Hobbit? He finds out that one of his companions is wearing a vest made of pure mithril, and there's not even a hint of covetnous? I know the whole Boromir scene was about to happen, but a few struggles with his dwarven nature might have been apt, for a true dwarf!

Dain's dwarves ran from The Iron Hills to The Lonely Mountain, night and day, fully encumbered and armoured, and yet Gimli can hardly keep up with a man and an elf on a little (daytime) run through Rohan.

Galadriel? Wasn't she about when the elves and dwarves were at each other's throats? What about the dwarven trait of not forgetting a slight? She must've knocked a few dwarves about in earlier ages! And Gimli asks for a lock of her hair!

Is Gimli just a short human? Maybe a hillman? Or a throwback to the petty dwarves?

Good point about Dain's dwarves...that's probably one of my favourite passages in The Hobbit, when the dwarves of the Iron Hills arrive at the battle of the five armies.

As for the avarice, well, isn't Gimli the son of Gloin? Maybe his father learned a lesson from Thorin's end and raised his son to be better? (And anyway, I always sorta had the impression that Thorin was a more than usually covetuous dwarf.)

--A

Maybe Gimli represented what dwarves are due to become...more manlike, perhaps even merging with and becoming human one day. After all, there are very few dwarf females, and many of them do not take husbands, which will eventually doom the race unless the dwarf men take human brides?