You make some good points. I am assuming that there is also some traffic on the old North/South Road through Eriador and that the Greyflood is fordable with reasonable safety, at least when the river is low. I briefly toyed with the idea of some enterprising person establishing a cable-ferry at the crossing at Tharbad, but I doubted that there would be enough business to support such an endeavor (assuming he wasn't robbed by bandits). As you say, the passes through the Misty Mountains remained hazardous at all times except during the Good Years when the number of Orcs in the range was at its lowest point.Arthadan wrote:Well, if there are Dwarves in the Blue Mountains, there must to be mines. Mines profitable enough to allow them to survive. So you have essentially the same craftsmen carving wood and working steel (I think Dwarves from the Blue Mountains sold axes in The Shire). Plus The High Pass was only open for some years after the Battle of the Five Armies.
I can picture some Dwarves travellng long distances to meet relatives, but I don't think commerce would be significant. The Blue Montains Dwarves would have already enough "customers" for they goods to survive and Erebor would have whole new "markets" to sell their goods in Rhovanion. So I think neither of them would need to make very long (and potentially dangerous) commercial trips.
Of course Dáin might also have political reasons for maintaining a western embassy. He might, for example, want to strengthen the alliances between the dwarven kingdoms, especially in light of the darkening of Mirkwood. He might also send envoys to the eastern Dwarves to maintain good relations. An Embassy would be as much about status as anything else, reconfirming Erebor as the greatest dwarven realm of the later Third Age.
You might be able to tell that I am writing Dís as a remarkable lady and as an exception to the traditional practices of and toward dwarven women. She has lived a very unconventional life: Uprooted from her home at the tender age of ten while witnessing the deaths of young friends and their families; being raised in foreign lands among strange peoples; watching literally all of the fit men of her own folk, including a brother, march off to war after the murder of her grandfather, few to return; more travel followed by adjusting to a new home as a young woman in her forty-second year; wedding and bearing two sons, only to have them go off with their uncle, her elder brother, to reclaim Erebor only to perish with him over a thousand miles from where they were born.About Dís returning to the Blue Mountain, Tolkien wrote Dwarven women only travel in times of great need, plus they doesn't seem to have a quite active role on dwarven society. Of course Dís could have been an exception, or you can assume the nformation we have is the "outsiders" view and the real Dwarven society allows a more relevant role for women.
I don't see Mistress Dís as a person who is married to convention or who gives a fig at her age of what anyone thinks of her or her actions. She is going to do what she thinks is best for herself or her kinsmen and damned to anyone who stands in her way. At the same time, I can see how Dís might be unhappy in Erebor. The Mountain is no longer her home and hasn't been since she was a small girl. It would be full of painful memories for her and once she had time to properly mourn her fallen sons and brother, Dís might long to return to a place that really is more of a home to her. That, naturally would be the Halls of Thorin in the Blue Mountains.
