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Can’t talk about elves without touching on dwarves. Let’s just dive into the first one:
- Dwarves hates elves and the feeling is mutual. Right from Tolkien, but misses the fact that Legolas and Gimli became friends. Many authors just have them hate each other for no reason. Others create an old feud over land, magic, or an object. At the very least, you have some mild animosity. I tried this in my books and it didn’t feel natural at all. I mean, why would these two species hate each other simply for existing?
- They live in the mountains, underground, or caves. Maybe this comes from Snow White having dwarves who are miners, but they tend to be born from the earth. This gives them great darkvision and a sense of all things mineral, but it really boxes them into a single biome. Just like the elves have their forests, dwarves have their mountains.
- Beards! I’m guilty of this too and I really should consider having a few show up without bushy facial hair. Dwarves have ornaments, braids, and even patterns with their beards. Even their women have beards at times, which is actually pretty cool since female dwarves don’t get shown a lot. Also, beards tend to be seen as a source of pride.
- Dwarves are short, stocky, and muscular with the strength, stamina, and durablity to match their appearance. One could say they are the visual opposite of elves, which could add to their feuding. Authors don’t typically depict dwarves as being agile and fast, but they can go trudging along for hours or even days to make up for their slower speed. This also gives them a more physical method of combat where they get in your face with brute force.
- Platemail and winged helmets, which is why they end up looking like stereotypical Vikings. Yes, I know Vikings didn’t have the helmets. Yet, the connection tends to be made, which flows into the next twofer stereotype.
- AXES AND ALE! Dwarves tend to have axes as their weapons and a love of ale. This seems to be a Viking stereotype too. It adds to their endurance as well because it shows them rarely getting drunk. This can lead to them being resistant to poisons or at least making money off drinking games. Still, authors can take it too far by never giving a dwarf a different weapon or having them drink anything other than ale. Some will even scoff at the very idea of imbibing another liquid.
- Coming straight from Tolkien, we have love of gold and jewels. Thankfully, this one is becoming less common. Actually, I think dwarves in old mythology were greedy with wealth too, so sorry to Tolkien. Even the heroic dwarves will go too far in their pursuit of coins. This makes them unreliable allies and almost hazardous when the group has more lofty goals. It means a dwarf will risk their friends and future just to get a couple jewels, which doesn’t paint them in a good light.
Legends of Windemere 
Terry Pratchett has a humorous spin on dwarves in the City Watch miniseries of his Discworld book series. 😊 I’ve never written about dwarves, but I appreciate books that have them. The friendship of Legolas and Gimli is a favorite from LoTR.
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I went fairly traditional, but I played with their anatomy. Bones have granite marrow and no central heart. So, their sturdiness and difficulty in killing them got explained. Just tough to remember all that when writing big action scenes.
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I enjoy your dwarves! 😊 And how cool that you made those changes to do something different in your series.
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Thanks.
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I also thought about the dwarves in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. They do have a pretty fixed stereotype, again from Lord of the Rings.
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Fantasy definitely has a lot from lotr. Probably won’t ever shed all of the traditions.
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It is good to learn new things about fantasy characters. Thanks.
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You’re welcome.
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😊
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Interesting. Yes, my dwarfs are a bit stereotypical, I’m sorry to say. I wonder what would have happened if Tolkien had never written LOTR? Would elves and dwarfs be different from how they are now, or perhaps we wouldn’t have them, nor fantasy, at all.
One thing I’ve noticed is that not infrequently they have something of a Scottish twang in their speech.
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If Tolkien never wrote his books, we probably wouldn’t have the fantasy genre we have now. DnD would never exist. Elves and dwarves might not be in fiction at all. Genre might copy CS Lewis instead, but even that might not have happened since he was friends with Tolkien. Thought they kind of worked off each other or at least discussed.
I looked up the Scottish dwarves thing. Apparently people thought that would work better as a ‘Norse/germanic’ accent, so it stuck.
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I agree about the genre being very different.
Interesting about the dwarves accent.
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I love dwarves. When I wrote mine, I made them a bit more Greco-Roman just so they had something a bit different.
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Now I’m imagining dwarves in togas.
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Legolas and Gimli’s friendship was a really important part of LOTR. I think it was Tolkein’s way to comment on inter-racial friendships, though he may have been thinking more of European nationalities that had traditionally been enemies.
Yes, in much of folklore, Dwarves hoarded jewels and other treasure, in a similar way to Leprechauns in Celtic lore. But for me the key element is how insular they could be. They live in a closed environment, easily shut off from the world, so it’s easy to shrug off problems in the wider world.
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I believe Tolkien did say it was about European groups, but he kept it universal. So the theme of settling old grudges to become friends is more general.
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