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Description
Ah dwarves, everyone's favorite bearded bundles of bombastic battiness. Dwarves are actually one of the few creatures in modern fantasy culture which honestly aren't too far off from their mythological counterparts. If anything, modern dwarves are probably a bit too polite. There are certainly a handful of Tolkien-isms we can suss out, though. For one thing, like I discussed in my blurb on elves, dwarves and elves in Norse mythology don't really seem to be treated as separate "species" as Lord of the Rings or D&D would have it. I can't entirely blame Tolkien for that, instead I can blame Jacob Grimm. Grimm looked at Snorri Sturluson's three terms for elves: Ljósálfar (Light Elves), Dökkálfar (Dark Elves), and Svartálfar (Black Elves) and took this to mean the Norse believed in three distinct classes of creature. This glosses over the fact that both Dökkálfar and Svartálfar are treated as synonyms for one another, and both are treated as synonymous for dwarves. Indeed, Snorri states that the dwarves dwell in Svartalfheim ("Home of Black Elves"), and are "black as pitch" because they spend their lives underground in caves and mines getting absolutely caked in soot and grime. In real Norse mythology, there doesn't actually seem to be any creature that matches what we D&D nerds would probably call a Drow. This is further corroborated by just how little the elves appear, and when they do appear, they are simultaneously referred to as a god or a dwarf. The only character in the entire corpus who is exclusively called an elf in the Eddas is Wayland the Smith, and he sure as hell resembles a dwarf, but I've already talked about that.

In contrast, dwarves are kind of all over the place in Norse myth. In fact, an entire six stanzas of the cosmic poem Völuspá are taken up by a weirdly inserted list of dwarf names just kind of out of nowhere and for no apparent reason. Fun fact, this is where Tolkien got the names of his dwarf characters in the Hobbit, as well as the name of Gandalf, whose name in Old Norse just means "magic elf", which I find excessively funny. Due to their prevalence, we can get a much better picture of what dwarves are supposed to be compared to the ambiguous "elf". They're mostly characterized as cantankerous, dirty little pests who possess mastery over the forge and little control over their libido. Their great craftsmanship even applies to themselves, apparently, as in the Prose Edda the first dwarves Mótsognir and Durinn, on shaped the maggots crawling around in the flesh of the primordial giant Ymir into Dwarven mannequins for the gods to breathe life into. Four dwarves: Norðri, Vestri, Austri, and Suðri (North, West, East, and South) are then placed at the four corners of the Universe to hold aloft Ymir's skull as the sky. Damn, what a shitty way to start your new career as a sentient being, being stuck holding this damn thing up for eternity. Honestly I feel that way sometimes.

The most famous of all dwarves are probably the Sons of Ivaldi (Ivaldi is an obscure figure elsewhere attested as the father of the goddess Iðunn… who herself is sometimes called an elf). The Sons of Ivaldi once got into a bet with Loki after the trickster commissioned them to replace the beautiful hair he cut off of Thor's wife Sif. Apparently physically unable not to dig himself a deeper hole, Loki jests that the Sons of Ivaldi are only the second best craftsmen in the world, second to the brothers Brokkr and Eitri (or Sindri, depending on the manuscript), and bet that they can't make greater treasures than their competitors. As dwarves are not ones to turn down a dick measuring contest, they accept the bet. Loki, professional hole-digger, then goes to Brokkr and Eitri and presents them with the same challenge, and they accept, but make Loki bet his own head as collateral if they win. The contest begins, the forge fires up, and when Loki starts to realize that Brokkr and Eitri are actually making some pretty killer swag, he tries to sabotage them by turning into a fly which bites their forehead. Dwarves are nothing if not committed, though, and don't even flinch until Loki gets in one nasty bite on Eitri's eyebrow. Eitri wipes the blood from his eyes, causing the tiniest imperfection in his third and most important treasure.

Still, the masterpieces are presented to the gods for judgment. Sif of course gets a sparkly new set of luscious locks from the Sons of Ivaldi, and they also present Freyr with a magical ship called Skíðblaðnir, which can fold up to fit in a pocket. To Odin, they gift a magical spear named Gungnir, which always hits its target and flies back to his hand. Then Brokkr and Eitri present their creations. To Freyr, they give the magical flying boar Gullinbursti, who glows in the dark. Hell yeah. To Odin, they give the ultimate bling: the golden ring Draupnir, which spawns eight identical rings every ninth night. Lastly, they present the most important treasure of them all, a gift for Thor, the one which had been sabotaged. This was the legendary hammer Mjölnir, whose handle was famously short thanks to the slight imperfection in the forge. Thor, however, is an enormous fan of things which hit things really hard, and he fell in love with it at first sight, sorry Sif. And well if Thor approves of your contest entry, no one is gonna be brave enough to say you lost, so Brokkr and Eitri won Loki's head. Loki, hole-digger, tried to weasel his way out of the bet by saying "uhhhh well you know funny thing actually, I said you can have my head but not my neck, and since there's no way to cut off my head without getting my neck, you can't kill me. Yeah that's what I'm going with". The dwarves try to call bullshit, but the gods miraculously take Loki's side on this, so instead they compromise by sewing Loki's lips shut. I like ya Loki, but you kinda had that one coming.

Other famous creations of the dwarves include Gram, the legendary sword which the hero Sigurd used to slay the dragon Fafnir. Fafnir, incidentally, used to be a dwarf himself before his greed transformed him into a wyrm. His hoard included the cursed ring Andvaranaut, which brought misfortune on all who wore it. This is the tale which Wagner wrote an operatic fanfiction about, and is Tolkien's inspiration for the character of Smaug. Another famous product of a dwarven forge is Freyja's beautiful necklace Brísingamen. The story goes that she just kinda came across some dwarves making the necklace and offered to give them anything they wanted in exchange for the exquisite piece. Of course, little pervs said they wanted a night in bed with Freyja, and she obliged. You know what, good for her. We're sex positive here at Avapithecus. It does highlight the creep factor some dwarves can have, though. Another famous example of dwarves in love is the tale of Alvíss, who sought to marry Thor's daughter Þrúðr. No daughter of his was gonna marry a dwarf, though! So to get out of the arrangement, Thor kept Alvíss up all night talking about mythological trivia until the sun came up and turned the dwarf to stone… which is a thing that happens, I guess.

Design notes, sticking with the idea that elves and dwarves are really two flavors of the same creature, I wanted their get-ups to look recognizably similar. While I based my elves more on the Nordic Bronze Age, I decided to take a few cues from the Celtic Bronze Age instead for this piece. Their helmets specifically are based on the 2nd millennium BCE golden hat artifacts found throughout much of what would become Gaul and Germania. Their goggles meanwhile are inspired by the snow goggles worn by the indigenous peoples of Siberia and Alaska, as modern goggles are a surprisingly recent invention, and I just like the aesthetic. Lastly, I wanted to experiment with the whole "dark" side of dark elves. I could've just given them the stereotypical Drow skin and called it a day, but Snorri specifically says that their skin is dark because of their underground lifestyle. So instead, I looked at photographs of real coal miners, and you really do get a sense of where Snorri is coming from with that perspective. I actually think it looks quite nice, and it's a unique way of getting that Drow color palette. Might not be what modern fantasy thinks of when they think dwarf, but that's kinda what I was going for, and I'm happy with the results of the experiment.

Description
Ah dwarves, everyone's favorite bearded bundles of bombastic battiness. Dwarves are actually one of the few creatures in modern fantasy culture which honestly aren't too far off from their mythological counterparts. If anything, modern dwarves are probably a bit too polite. There are certainly a handful of Tolkien-isms we can suss out, though. For one thing, like I discussed in my blurb on elves, dwarves and elves in Norse mythology don't really seem to be treated as separate "species" as Lord of the Rings or D&D would have it. I can't entirely blame Tolkien for that, instead I can blame Jacob Grimm. Grimm looked at Snorri Sturluson's three terms for elves: Ljósálfar (Light Elves), Dökkálfar (Dark Elves), and Svartálfar (Black Elves) and took this to mean the Norse believed in three distinct classes of creature. This glosses over the fact that both Dökkálfar and Svartálfar are treated as synonyms for one another, and both are treated as synonymous for dwarves. Indeed, Snorri states that the dwarves dwell in Svartalfheim ("Home of Black Elves"), and are "black as pitch" because they spend their lives underground in caves and mines getting absolutely caked in soot and grime. In real Norse mythology, there doesn't actually seem to be any creature that matches what we D&D nerds would probably call a Drow. This is further corroborated by just how little the elves appear, and when they do appear, they are simultaneously referred to as a god or a dwarf. The only character in the entire corpus who is exclusively called an elf in the Eddas is Wayland the Smith, and he sure as hell resembles a dwarf, but I've already talked about that.

In contrast, dwarves are kind of all over the place in Norse myth. In fact, an entire six stanzas of the cosmic poem Völuspá are taken up by a weirdly inserted list of dwarf names just kind of out of nowhere and for no apparent reason. Fun fact, this is where Tolkien got the names of his dwarf characters in the Hobbit, as well as the name of Gandalf, whose name in Old Norse just means "magic elf", which I find excessively funny. Due to their prevalence, we can get a much better picture of what dwarves are supposed to be compared to the ambiguous "elf". They're mostly characterized as cantankerous, dirty little pests who possess mastery over the forge and little control over their libido. Their great craftsmanship even applies to themselves, apparently, as in the Prose Edda the first dwarves Mótsognir and Durinn, on shaped the maggots crawling around in the flesh of the primordial giant Ymir into Dwarven mannequins for the gods to breathe life into. Four dwarves: Norðri, Vestri, Austri, and Suðri (North, West, East, and South) are then placed at the four corners of the Universe to hold aloft Ymir's skull as the sky. Damn, what a shitty way to start your new career as a sentient being, being stuck holding this damn thing up for eternity. Honestly I feel that way sometimes.

The most famous of all dwarves are probably the Sons of Ivaldi (Ivaldi is an obscure figure elsewhere attested as the father of the goddess Iðunn… who herself is sometimes called an elf). The Sons of Ivaldi once got into a bet with Loki after the trickster commissioned them to replace the beautiful hair he cut off of Thor's wife Sif. Apparently physically unable not to dig himself a deeper hole, Loki jests that the Sons of Ivaldi are only the second best craftsmen in the world, second to the brothers Brokkr and Eitri (or Sindri, depending on the manuscript), and bet that they can't make greater treasures than their competitors. As dwarves are not ones to turn down a dick measuring contest, they accept the bet. Loki, professional hole-digger, then goes to Brokkr and Eitri and presents them with the same challenge, and they accept, but make Loki bet his own head as collateral if they win. The contest begins, the forge fires up, and when Loki starts to realize that Brokkr and Eitri are actually making some pretty killer swag, he tries to sabotage them by turning into a fly which bites their forehead. Dwarves are nothing if not committed, though, and don't even flinch until Loki gets in one nasty bite on Eitri's eyebrow. Eitri wipes the blood from his eyes, causing the tiniest imperfection in his third and most important treasure.

Still, the masterpieces are presented to the gods for judgment. Sif of course gets a sparkly new set of luscious locks from the Sons of Ivaldi, and they also present Freyr with a magical ship called Skíðblaðnir, which can fold up to fit in a pocket. To Odin, they gift a magical spear named Gungnir, which always hits its target and flies back to his hand. Then Brokkr and Eitri present their creations. To Freyr, they give the magical flying boar Gullinbursti, who glows in the dark. Hell yeah. To Odin, they give the ultimate bling: the golden ring Draupnir, which spawns eight identical rings every ninth night. Lastly, they present the most important treasure of them all, a gift for Thor, the one which had been sabotaged. This was the legendary hammer Mjölnir, whose handle was famously short thanks to the slight imperfection in the forge. Thor, however, is an enormous fan of things which hit things really hard, and he fell in love with it at first sight, sorry Sif. And well if Thor approves of your contest entry, no one is gonna be brave enough to say you lost, so Brokkr and Eitri won Loki's head. Loki, hole-digger, tried to weasel his way out of the bet by saying "uhhhh well you know funny thing actually, I said you can have my head but not my neck, and since there's no way to cut off my head without getting my neck, you can't kill me. Yeah that's what I'm going with". The dwarves try to call bullshit, but the gods miraculously take Loki's side on this, so instead they compromise by sewing Loki's lips shut. I like ya Loki, but you kinda had that one coming.

Other famous creations of the dwarves include Gram, the legendary sword which the hero Sigurd used to slay the dragon Fafnir. Fafnir, incidentally, used to be a dwarf himself before his greed transformed him into a wyrm. His hoard included the cursed ring Andvaranaut, which brought misfortune on all who wore it. This is the tale which Wagner wrote an operatic fanfiction about, and is Tolkien's inspiration for the character of Smaug. Another famous product of a dwarven forge is Freyja's beautiful necklace Brísingamen. The story goes that she just kinda came across some dwarves making the necklace and offered to give them anything they wanted in exchange for the exquisite piece. Of course, little pervs said they wanted a night in bed with Freyja, and she obliged. You know what, good for her. We're sex positive here at Avapithecus. It does highlight the creep factor some dwarves can have, though. Another famous example of dwarves in love is the tale of Alvíss, who sought to marry Thor's daughter Þrúðr. No daughter of his was gonna marry a dwarf, though! So to get out of the arrangement, Thor kept Alvíss up all night talking about mythological trivia until the sun came up and turned the dwarf to stone… which is a thing that happens, I guess.

Design notes, sticking with the idea that elves and dwarves are really two flavors of the same creature, I wanted their get-ups to look recognizably similar. While I based my elves more on the Nordic Bronze Age, I decided to take a few cues from the Celtic Bronze Age instead for this piece. Their helmets specifically are based on the 2nd millennium BCE golden hat artifacts found throughout much of what would become Gaul and Germania. Their goggles meanwhile are inspired by the snow goggles worn by the indigenous peoples of Siberia and Alaska, as modern goggles are a surprisingly recent invention, and I just like the aesthetic. Lastly, I wanted to experiment with the whole "dark" side of dark elves. I could've just given them the stereotypical Drow skin and called it a day, but Snorri specifically says that their skin is dark because of their underground lifestyle. So instead, I looked at photographs of real coal miners, and you really do get a sense of where Snorri is coming from with that perspective. I actually think it looks quite nice, and it's a unique way of getting that Drow color palette. Might not be what modern fantasy thinks of when they think dwarf, but that's kinda what I was going for, and I'm happy with the results of the experiment.