Dwarves Deserve Better than Comic Relief, Part 1: Are they having a laugh?
You may be familiar with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).
During the escape from Moria the Fellowship flees down the crumbling stairs of Khazad-dûm towards the bridge. They reach a gap in the stair with a terrifying void beneath. Legolas leaps across, and Aragorn turns to throw Gimli after him. Gimli refuses with “Nobody tosses a dwarf!” and jumps on his own, only just making it. Legolas catches him by the beard.
The film turns this into a running joke. In The Two Towers, at Helm’s Deep, Gimli asks Aragorn to throw him onto the causeway, and adds that Legolas mustn’t hear about it.
I laughed. I loved the (then) contemporary cultural reference. It was a brief moment when the film cast dared break the fourth wall. But none of it was in the books. Was Gimli living up to a stereotype in fiction, the comedic dwarf? A hangover from Disney’s Snow White, perhaps?
Maybe not, but dwarves don’t often get a good press in old stories. If not the butt of a joke, they are often treated abominably. The Aesir in Norse mythology are repeat offenders.
In Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, at the funeral of Baldr, after some shenanegans with a giantess, Thor stands and blesses the pyre with Mjölnir. A dwarf called Litr runs in front of his feet, and Thor petulantly kicks him into the fire, where he burns to death. Sturluson relates it in passing, as if it were a simple comedic incident, then moves on. It is ironic that during this episode Thor is holding the very hammer that makes him so feared, which the dwarves made for him.
Time and again the dwarves are shown to have incredible ability, only to be tricked or
maneuvered into giving away the things they made for far less than they were worth, or nothing at all. Dwarves, it is clear, can manufacture fabulous, coveted artefacts, but repeatedly the gods then trap them with words, through oaths or threats. The bargains each side tries to strike with the other are rarely fair.
Is it any wonder that dwarves ended up resentful?
At least Tolkien treated his dwarves with a bit more gravitas; as a serious people with a
fascinating culture, a unique history and elaborate realms. In the Eddas, in contrast, dwarves are usually treated with near contempt. They are regarded as greedy, grasping and untrustworthy.
Is this because the Aesir are jealous of their craft? Or is there something else at play?
Perhaps it is just harder to be taken seriously if you’re small?
There is plenty more to say on the subject of dwarves in mythology, and I’ll explore some more next time. In the meantime, if you would like to visit a world where dwarves are taken entirely seriously, sign up for Andrew Rylands mailing list, here https://andrew-rylands.kit.com/916f4bcae4, where you can download a free prequel novella to The Amethyst Throne series.
The first book in the series, A Crown of Brittle Glass, is available on Amazon’s Kindle+,
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