One of the high points for “The Lord of the Rings” for me was the idea of the dwarves as being great miners and having carved out Moria from the heart of the mountain (even if they did dig up a Balrog.) But I was considering this this morning and remembered that Walt Disney, in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” also pictured his dwarves as miners. Disney’s version was released before TLOTR was even beginning to be written. So as much as I’m loathe to think that Tolkein got his inspiration from a Disney movie, is there a mythological or folklorish basis for the modern conception of dwarves as miners? Or was it just coincidence that both Tolkein and Disney envisioned the same model?
Norse mythology had dwarves being excellent smiths (making the chains that leashed Fenris), and excellent miners.
Norse mythology also refers to ‘Dwarves’ as ‘Dark Elves’. Drizzt is rolling over in his grave.
Brewer’s says dwarfs are “prominent in Teutonic and Scandinavian legend and generally dwelt in rocks and caves and recesses of the earth. They were guardians of mineral wealth and precious stones and very skilful at their work. They were not unfriendly to man, but could on occasions be intensely vindicative and mischievous.”
Tolkien, of course, drew heavily from Scandinavian legends.
My Wordsworth ‘Dictionary of Symbolism’ mentions “miners’ legends (which) portray dwarfs as guardians of precious metals who punish irreverent human intruders but free trapped miners”.
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The Hobbit, which describes the dwarve’s kingdom under the lonely mountain, was written in 1937, the same year that Snow White was released.
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Peer Gynt, which inspired Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, dates to 1875.
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Disney based *his[/I version on the Grimm Brother’s 1812 Snow-drop (which in turn was based on earlier legends). In this way darker than the cartoon Disney version, There are still Dwarfs and they are still miners
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The concept of the Seven Dwarfs as miners is not original with Disney. It appears in the original version of the tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, Sneewittchen. The first edition of their Kinder- und Hausmärchen (better known as Grimm’s Fairy Tales) was published in two volumes between 1812-1815.
One site speculated that the association between dwarfs and mining arose because miners had to be small to fit into their tunnels - that is, some ancient human miners may literally have been dwarfs.
I feel compelled to point out that the word translated as ‘Elf’ here more accurately translates as ‘Gnome’. I don’t know who Drizzt is or why he’s rolling over in his grave, but I hope this stopped him.
For a wild guess as to the “why it all started”: mines are (to us humans, anyway) small, cramped places. In the days before powered digging machinery, you didn’t make a mine tunnel that was any larger than absolutely necessary, because it was damn hard digging through all that extra rock just for the sake of comfort. The tunnels, therefore, weren’t real easy to work in. Being a dwarf in such a place would be pretty useful; you’d be able to walk upright. Whether there’s a historical basis for actual, non-mythological dwarves working in actual, non-mythological mines, I dunno.