Skip to main content

the lord of the rings - How deep down into the Earth did Erebor and Moria go?


Watching the movies, I pay a lot of attention to the darkness below the Bridge of Khazad-dûm and the Erebor mines. My question is this:


How far down do the mines go? Is there any information as to how far the Dwarves went before stopping?



Answer




I searched through The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, but didn't find anything, and in The History of Middle-Earth, I only found the following brief passage, speaking of the mining of mithril (The Treason of Isengard, p. 185):



'The dwarves tell no tale, but even as mithril was the foundation of their wealth so also it was their destruction: they delved too greedily and too deep, and disturbed that from which they fled.'


A final draft for this passage ends illegibly: 'The dwarves will not say what happened; but mithril is rich only far down and northward towards the roots of Caradras, ...'



And also this short passage, which references the abyss's depth moreso than Moria proper (The Treason of Isengard, p. 431):



'...Little had I guessed the abyss that was spanned by Durin's Bridge.'


'Did you not?' said Gimli. 'I could have told you had there been time. No plummet ever found the bottom - indeed none that was ever case therein was ever recovered.'[*]




What little information I have is from The Two Towers, pg. 491 (emphasis mine):



'Long I fell, and he fell with me. His fire was about me. I was burned. Then we plunged into the deep water and all was dark. Cold it was as the tide of death: almost it froze my heart.'


'Deep is the abyss that is spanned by Durin's Bridge, and none has measured it,' said Gimli.


'Yet it has a bottom, beyond light and knowledge,' said Gandalf. 'Thither I came at last, to the uttermost foundations of stone. He was with me still. His fire was quenched, but now he was a thing of slime, stronger than a strangling snake. We fought far under the living earth, where time is not counted. Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him, till at last he fled into dark tunnels. They were not made by Durin's folk, Gimli son of Gloin. Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things....In that despair my enemy was my only hope, and I pursued him, clutching at his heel. Thus he brought me back at last to the secret ways of Khazad-dum: too well he knew them all. Ever up now we went, until we came to the Endless Stair.'


'Long has that been lost,' said Gimli. 'Many have said that it was never made save in legend, but others say that it was destroyed.'


'It was made, and it had not been destroyed,' said Gandalf. 'From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak it climbed, ascending in unbroken spiral in many thousand steps, until it issued at last in Durin's Tower carved in the living rock of Zirakzigil, the pinnacle of the Silvertine.



From this, we see the endless stair seems to stretch the entire depths of Moria, and above it, up to the mountain-top, in many thousand steps. How many is "many thousand"? We don't have that answer, but it seems like that is the best available. We also know that mithril was rich deep down towards the roots of the mountain, so this tells us the mines stretched at least the height of the mountain, and depending on what "roots of the mountain" actually means, could mean miles below the surface. Given that in modern times, gold mines can reach over 2 miles below the surface, it is not improbable to think of Moria being thousands of feet below the base of the mountain, and many more thousands overall.


As far as the Lonely Mountain's mines, there is even less about them. We know that (from The Hobbit):




They buried Thorin deep beneath the Mountain, and Bard laid the Arkenstone upon his breast.


...


Upon his tomb the Elvenking then laid Orcist, the elvish sword that had been taken from Thorin in captivity. It is said in songs that it gleamed ever in the dark if foes approached, and the fortress of the dwarves could not be taken by surprise.



[*]Footnotes indicate that in earlier drafts the abyss was conceived of as merely a moat, not very deep, but with water that led down into the Deeps


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir

the lord of the rings - Why is Gimli allowed to travel to Valinor?

Gimli was allowed to go to Valinor despite not being a ring bearer. Is this explained in detail or just with the one line "for his love for Galadriel"? Answer There's not much detail about this aside from what's said in Appendix A to Return of the King: We have heard tell that Legolas took Gimli Glóin's son with him because of their great friendship, greater than any that has been between Elf and Dwarf. If this is true, then it is strange indeed: that a Dwarf should be willing to leave Middle-earth for any love, or that the Eldar should receive him, or that the Lords of the West should permit it. But it is said that Gimli went also out of desire to see again the beauty of Galadriel; and it may be that she, being mighty among the Eldar, obtained this grace for him. More cannot be said of this matter. And Appendix B: Then Legolas built a grey ship in Ithilien, and sailed down Anduin and so over Sea; and with him, it is said, went Gimli the Dwarf . And when that sh

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l

What is the etymology of Doctor Who?

I recently decided to watch Doctor Who, and started viewing the 2005 version. I have the first two episodes from the first season, and I can't help but wonder what is the etymology of the name "Doctor Who"? And why does the protagonist call himself "the Doctor" (or is it "the doctor")? Answer In the very first episode of Doctor Who (way back in 1963), the Doctor has a granddaughter going by the name "Susan Foreman", and the junkyard where the TARDIS is has the sign "I.M. Foreman". Barbara, who becomes one of the Doctor's companions, calls him "Doctor Foreman" (probably assuming that is his name given his relationship to Susan), and Ian (another early companion) does the same in the second episode, to which the Doctor says: Eh? Doctor who? What's he talking about? "Foreman" is most likely selected as a convenient surname for Susan to use because it happened to be on display near where the TARDIS landed.