Mim

Dwarves
Petty Dwarf
Died First Age 502

Mim article
Revenge Lives in the House of Ransom poem

Mim

by Irmo-(Valar)   
July 21, 2001
Note: excerpt from the Valar Guild's Yahoo Discussion Board for the Valar Guild, not originally  intended as an article, used by permission.

        Mim already figured as a dwarf in the first version of the 1915 Tale of Turambar and in the subsequent Nauglafring, when all (!) dwarves
   were still perceived as being evil by JRRT. The idea of Seven Houses with Seven Fathers was only to arise decades later.
       JRRT for the first time wrote down the idea of the dwarves being created by Aule - therefore not being altogether evil, though not having
   spirits like elves and men :) - in the second version of the later Annals of Beleriand (1931 or later).
        I would like to point out that throughout the pre-war development of the story of the fall of Nargothrond and Doriath, Mim has always
   been named Mim the Fatherless (!) by Tolkien. He played a major role in these stories, his curse causing whole chains of events.
        As I said earlier, Mim was an idea from JRRT's youth, when he was still under the influence of other mythologies. Mim survived the
   revolutionary changes JRRT made to the stories relating the sack of Nargothrond and Doriath and the changes to the origin and character
   of the dwarves.
        As such he was changed from Mim the Fatherless Dwarf to Mim the Petty-Dwarf, last of his kind. But I do not know of any effort of
   JRRT to explain explicitly the extraordinary place of Mim in the context of the eventual world of the Silmarillion.

References: Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales 

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