Gwaith-i-Mírdain

The name is Sindarin and describes what its bearers did rather than where they came from. Its first element, gwaith, is the ordinary word for a people or folk; the second, mírdain, is the plural of a word for a jewel-smith, built on mîr, jewel. The whole means something like the folk of the jewel-wrights, and the Silmarillion itself glosses it in English as the People of the Jewel-smiths. That the chosen tongue was Sindarin, not the Quenya of Valinor, fits the Noldor of the Second Age, who had long since made the speech of Beleriand their daily language in Middle-earth.1

The word people in that gloss can mislead. The smiths were not a separate kindred with their own descent but Noldor who had remained east of the Sea after the ruin of Beleriand and later settled in Eregion, the land Men called Hollin, near the western gates of Khazad-dûm. The later account of Galadriel and Celeborn is explicit that they formed a society or brotherhood, a body one joined through craft and not through birth, and that it held great power within Eregion. Its head was Celebrimbor, a grandson of Fëanor, so that the guild carried the lineage of the greatest of the Noldorin smiths at its centre, even if its members as a whole shared no single house.2

The place of their founding shaped their character. Eregion lay close to the Dwarves of Moria, and in the memory of the Third Age the Elves of Hollin were remembered as the one folk of their kind who had kept a close friendship with the Dwarves; the west-door of Moria was a work of that alliance. The Silmarillion describes the Elves there as eager above all to increase their skill and the subtlety of their works, and it was this appetite for knowledge, more than any claim of rule, that defined the brotherhood from its beginning.3

The brotherhood's history cannot be separated from that of Eregion. The Tale of Years places the founding of that realm by the Noldor at about the middle of the eighth century of the Second Age, a time when the Elves of Middle-earth were still recovering from the wars of the First Age. For several centuries the smiths worked there in peace, and Eregion grew into the chief centre of Noldorin craft east of the mountains. Its trade with Khazad-dûm enriched both peoples, and the smiths had little reason to look beyond their workshops for either enemies or teachers.1

That changed around the year 1200, when Sauron, who had grown in strength once more, began seeking the trust of the Eldar. He took a fair appearance and called himself Annatar, the Lord of Gifts, offering his knowledge as a friend of Elves and Men. Gil-galad and Elrond distrusted him and would not admit him to Lindon. In Eregion he found a readier audience, since the smiths there wanted above all to enlarge their skill, and they received him. The chronicle records his failure in Lindon and his success in Eregion together, and the contrast determined everything that followed.2

Under his instruction the smiths reached the peak of their art, and around 1500 they began to make the Rings of Power. Sauron directed and watched this work closely, so that much of what they produced carried his influence without their knowledge. The Three were the exception: Celebrimbor made them by himself, and Sauron never handled them. The Tale of Years dates their completion to about 1590. In Elrond's account at Rivendell, the smiths of Eregion had been deceived, but the Three had been made apart from Sauron's hand, and that separation later spared them his direct control.3

About the year 1600 Sauron forged the One Ring in the fire of Orodruin, meaning to rule through it every ring the smiths had made. When he put it on, the Elves perceived him at once and understood what he intended, and they took off their own rings. Celebrimbor now saw what their teacher had been all along. Sauron, his plan exposed, demanded that all the rings be surrendered to him, since the Elves could not have made them without his teaching. They refused. The Three were hidden and never used while the One remained in his possession, and Sauron turned openly to war.4

The war against the Elves began in 1693. Two years later Sauron's armies entered Eriador, and Gil-galad sent Elrond to aid Eregion, but the help arrived too late to save it. In 1697 the land was laid waste and Celebrimbor was killed. The Dwarves closed the gates of Moria, which ended the friendship that had defined the region. Sauron seized the remaining rings of the smiths, and in later years he distributed them among the Dwarves and Men. The brotherhood did not survive the fall of its city. Elrond withdrew with the surviving Noldor and founded the refuge of Imladris, where some of the knowledge of the Elves of Hollin lasted into the Third Age, though no guild of that name was ever reestablished.5

Of the brotherhood's ordinary work only a little survived its fall, and the clearest trace of it is the west-gate of Moria. That door divided the labour between the two peoples. A Dwarf of Khazad-dûm built it, and Celebrimbor drew the signs upon it, which shows that the head of the guild did not look down on decorative and practical commissions for neighbours. The lines were laid in ithildin, a substance the Elves worked from mithril. It showed only under starlight or moonlight and stayed hidden in the plain light of day. Gandalf's account of mithril adds that the Elves loved it greatly and put it to many uses. The smiths therefore depended on the Dwarves not only for friendship but also for the rarest material their art required.1

Their chief ambition, however, was to make things that held power, not simply things that were beautiful. Gandalf later called the lesser rings early essays in a craft that had not yet come to maturity, and he said the smiths themselves counted them as trifles. The remark shows a workshop that learned by repeated trial and valued an object by the mastery it showed. The Silmarillion states what the Three were meant to do. Their virtues were understanding, making and healing, and keeping things unstained, and they were never meant for strength in war or for domination. At their best, then, the smiths saw their art as a kind of preservation and not a means of rule.2

The smiths therefore depended on the Dwarves not only for friendship but also for the rarest material their art required.

This aim to preserve is what set the brotherhood apart, and it also made the guild vulnerable. The Silmarillion says the chief power of the Elven-rings was to hold off the decay of time and delay the weariness of the world. Tolkien later explained that the Elves of Middle-earth wanted two things that could not both be had. They wanted to stay in the lands they loved, and they wanted those lands to remain as unchanging as the Undying Realm. He described their wish to stop change as a kind of embalming, a sad clinging to the past that he regarded as their particular failing. Sauron offered knowledge that seemed to fulfil that wish, and so the smiths' deepest care about time was the one he used against them.3

The sources do not divide the brotherhood into houses, clans or lesser companies, and they name only one of its members. That is Celebrimbor, and the Silmarillion is precise about his descent. He was the son of Curufin, the fifth son of Fëanor, and it records that he broke with his father. When Celegorm and Curufin were expelled from Nargothrond after their treachery during the quest for the Silmaril, Celebrimbor rejected what his father had done and stayed behind. The one lineage recorded within the guild therefore came from the House of Fëanor through a member who had disowned that house's conduct. The account of the Rings also qualifies his rank. It calls him the greatest in skill among the smiths, which places him first by mastery rather than by birth or title.1

Apart from Celebrimbor, the texts treat the smiths as a single body and identify them by their land and their craft. Elrond's account at Rivendell and the Tale of Years call them the Elven-smiths of Eregion, and the Silmarillion speaks of the Elves of Eregion as a whole. None of these sources separates groups by origin within the guild, and none names a second office-holder or a successor to its leadership. The narrative also marks the brotherhood off from its neighbours. The Dwarves of Khazad-dûm worked alongside the smiths but were never counted among them, and the Noldor of Lindon under Gil-galad stayed outside Eregion's fellowship as its own realm. Beyond the head of the guild and the land it belonged to, no internal division can be established from the published texts, and any finer genealogy would be conjecture.2

In The Lord of the Rings the brotherhood never appears in person. Its members had been gone for thousands of years when the story begins, so the reader meets them only through what others remember and through the things they left behind. Gandalf's first explanation to Frodo, the debate in Rivendell and the closed door beneath the Misty Mountains each bring them back into view without giving them a scene of their own. The effect is that the smiths serve as the story's hidden origin. The central problem of the book, a lesser maker's work tied to a greater and hostile will, was created in their workshops long before the first chapter.1

Their legacy is still active in the present of the narrative. The company passes through Lothlórien, a land kept in being by one of the Three, and Galadriel tells Frodo plainly that success in his task will diminish what she protects. So the quest does more than defeat Sauron. It also closes the last and best chapter of the jewel-smiths' art. The ending confirms this when the keepers of the Three leave Middle-earth together, and with them goes the power of the work Eregion had made.2

What the smiths stand for is set out in the Silmarillion and in Tolkien's own commentary. Sauron did not win them with threats. He persuaded them that together they could make Middle-earth as fair as the Blessed Realm, and he spoke to a hope they already held. Tolkien described the larger story as concerned with the Fall, mortality and the Machine, meaning the urge to make one's will effective in the world through power. The Mírdain show that urge at its most sympathetic. They were artists who wanted good things and were led through that wanting into a design they could not see, and so their fall is a tragedy of deceived makers, not of wicked ones.3