HOME | DD

Description
Laurin is not a dwarf found in Norse mythology. He doesn't even appear in the random list of dwarf names which takes up six whole stanzas of the poem Völuspá, which is almost impressive in its own right. Instead, Laurin is to be found in medieval German poetry, specifically the eponymous poem Laurin (or Der kleine Rosengarten if it's feeling fancy). This poem was likely composed in the 13th century, though our earliest manuscripts only go back to the 15th century. Apparently within the manuscripts we have, there are five distinct variants of the tale, but I was only able to find one English translation nestled away in an 1818 edition of the Heldenbuch, itself a compilation of medieval German poetry centered on heroes of folk legend. Laurin, however, is not one of those heroes. The main character of this adventure is instead Dietrich von Bern, the mythologized counterpart of the historical 6th century king of the Ostrogoths, Theodoric the Great. So, allow me to spin you a yarn of how pissing off Dietrich is apparently the fasted way to end your 32-year kingship over all of dwarf kind.

The story starts out innocently enough… you know, by medieval standards. Laurin, king of the dwarves who dwell in the mountains of Tyrol, sends out a sorcerer with a cloak of invisibility to kidnap the beautiful maiden Similt, sister of one of Dietrich's knights, Dietlieb, to be queen of the dwarves. Dietlieb is pretty upset at this development, though I'm not sure why. I mean clearly Similt was the favorite of their parents given how stupid a name like "Dietlieb" is. Regardless, he spurs to action and rallies Dietrich and his half-elf sidekick Witege to go kick the dwarf's ass for him, you know like a real man. Arriving in dwarf territory, though, they are met with the sight of a secret rose garden so beautiful that Dietrich can't bring himself to push the advance and trample the flowers. Fun fact, these blossoms are meant to be a mythological explanation for alpenglow, an optical phenomenon which turns the snow caps on mountains a brilliant pink in the twilight of the day. I live in Indiana, so I can't say I've seen this in person myself, but all the photographs online are indeed quite beautiful.

Witege, however, says that pretty flowers are dumb and lame and charges in whole hog to kick some dwarf ass. This grievous insult to the art of landscaping summons Laurin from his chambers, decked out in such high level equipment that Witege initially mistakes him for the archangel Michael. The dwarf slings at them the kind of catastrophic insults that only dwarves and Scotsmen can muster, goading Witege to challenge the little shit to single combat. When Witege instantly gets his shit kicked in, Dietrich is forced to step up, and Laurin goes full dwarf on his ass. It's honestly awesome to read. Dietrich ends up flinging the dwarf against the wall like the Hulk smashing Loki, and damn near kills the dwarf, but Dietlieb intervenes in exchange for the dwarf telling him where he took his sister. A truce is finally called, and Laurin invites the knights to feast with him in his kingdom under the mountain. The atmosphere is beautiful, the food delicious, and Similt is reunited peacefully with her brother.

Similt insists to Dietlieb that she has been treated like royalty, and that Laurin really is a just king. Her only complaint is that she couldn’t see her friends anymore, and the dwarves are Heathens, which is enough to desire liberation. This is why Dietlieb refuses to join the dark elf side when Laurin asks him to help persecute his fellow knights for the injuries they inflicted. The party is thus drugged and thrown in jail, but it's okay. Dietrich gets so pissed off at this development that he's able to activate his fire breath and burn down the prison door. This is just… something he can do, I guess. I'm okay with that. Twenty-thousand dwarves iimmediately rush on him, and this son of a bitch just starts absolutely demolishing them. When Laurin sees this one guy mowing the fucking lawn with his entire army, he summons five giants from the surrounding forest. Dietrich is pretty much just Kratos, though, so five giants isn't exactly a problem. This entire fight scene is honestly awesome to read and I wish there was a visual aid attached.

Since pretty much all of Svartálfheim's finest are now dead as shit by the hand of one gigachad, Laurin decides that now is probably a good time to surrender. He is thus taken prisoner and demoted to Dietrich's court jester. Evidently, Dietrich was not done with Svartálfheim. The fragmentary poem Goldemar tells of his conflict with the eponymous kobold Goldemar which leads to the total obliteration of both the dwarves' mountain and their surrounding forests where those punk ass giants dwell. Dietrich eventually gets his comeuppance, though. According to the Heldenbuch-Prosa, at Dietrich's final battle, an unnamed dwarf which we can probably assume to be Laurin cryptically tells Dietrich that "his kingdom is no longer in this world", and the two poof away, the ultimate fate of the two left mysterious. What a ride. Insert Twilight Zone music here.

Design notes, so in building the world for my project set in 536, the mythological side of things often presents a problem. I've mentioned before how most mythologies aren't all that concerned with clean timelines, and Germanic myth is probably the biggest offender in this regard. Myths which feature historical figures in some capacity go a long way to establish benchmarks, even if a lot of them end up being frustratingly inaccurate. Since Laurin supposedly operated during the time of Theodoric, and seemingly returned to his homeland after the Ostrogothic king's death in 526, that provides a pretty good basis to sit him on the throne of Svartálfheim at this point in history. Given his status and background, I decided to keep him clean of all the muck and grime which I normally use to make my dark elves dark. Those roses are gonna need sunlight, afterall. As for his outfit, I could only find three historical reference images of this tale. One is an illustration attributed by the internet to Gotthold Klee, circa 1909. A less detailed image which inspired the basic silhouette was a 1926 painting by Ferdinand Leeke, depicting Laurin in the court of Dietrich. The last was a 1919 piece from a book by H.A. Guerber, which is my favorite out of all of them because it depicts this pissant little dwarf with just this massive sword. Of my own embellishments, it didn't show up very well in the scan, but the red part of his crown is actually one giant rock of carbuncle. The poem describes his crown as being bejeweled with a big lump of this gem, which is probably meant to mean just another inlay, but I like the idea of a dwarf king wearing a hat made of solid rock. The images on his sword are meant to be two greyhounds chasing a buck, which in the poem is instead described as being on a banner attached to the blade, but that looked really clunky every way I tried to do it, so instead I turned it into these gold engravings. Is it perfect? No. Do I think it would suffice keeping this angry little man from kicking my ass? Yes.

Description
Laurin is not a dwarf found in Norse mythology. He doesn't even appear in the random list of dwarf names which takes up six whole stanzas of the poem Völuspá, which is almost impressive in its own right. Instead, Laurin is to be found in medieval German poetry, specifically the eponymous poem Laurin (or Der kleine Rosengarten if it's feeling fancy). This poem was likely composed in the 13th century, though our earliest manuscripts only go back to the 15th century. Apparently within the manuscripts we have, there are five distinct variants of the tale, but I was only able to find one English translation nestled away in an 1818 edition of the Heldenbuch, itself a compilation of medieval German poetry centered on heroes of folk legend. Laurin, however, is not one of those heroes. The main character of this adventure is instead Dietrich von Bern, the mythologized counterpart of the historical 6th century king of the Ostrogoths, Theodoric the Great. So, allow me to spin you a yarn of how pissing off Dietrich is apparently the fasted way to end your 32-year kingship over all of dwarf kind.

The story starts out innocently enough… you know, by medieval standards. Laurin, king of the dwarves who dwell in the mountains of Tyrol, sends out a sorcerer with a cloak of invisibility to kidnap the beautiful maiden Similt, sister of one of Dietrich's knights, Dietlieb, to be queen of the dwarves. Dietlieb is pretty upset at this development, though I'm not sure why. I mean clearly Similt was the favorite of their parents given how stupid a name like "Dietlieb" is. Regardless, he spurs to action and rallies Dietrich and his half-elf sidekick Witege to go kick the dwarf's ass for him, you know like a real man. Arriving in dwarf territory, though, they are met with the sight of a secret rose garden so beautiful that Dietrich can't bring himself to push the advance and trample the flowers. Fun fact, these blossoms are meant to be a mythological explanation for alpenglow, an optical phenomenon which turns the snow caps on mountains a brilliant pink in the twilight of the day. I live in Indiana, so I can't say I've seen this in person myself, but all the photographs online are indeed quite beautiful.

Witege, however, says that pretty flowers are dumb and lame and charges in whole hog to kick some dwarf ass. This grievous insult to the art of landscaping summons Laurin from his chambers, decked out in such high level equipment that Witege initially mistakes him for the archangel Michael. The dwarf slings at them the kind of catastrophic insults that only dwarves and Scotsmen can muster, goading Witege to challenge the little shit to single combat. When Witege instantly gets his shit kicked in, Dietrich is forced to step up, and Laurin goes full dwarf on his ass. It's honestly awesome to read. Dietrich ends up flinging the dwarf against the wall like the Hulk smashing Loki, and damn near kills the dwarf, but Dietlieb intervenes in exchange for the dwarf telling him where he took his sister. A truce is finally called, and Laurin invites the knights to feast with him in his kingdom under the mountain. The atmosphere is beautiful, the food delicious, and Similt is reunited peacefully with her brother.

Similt insists to Dietlieb that she has been treated like royalty, and that Laurin really is a just king. Her only complaint is that she couldn’t see her friends anymore, and the dwarves are Heathens, which is enough to desire liberation. This is why Dietlieb refuses to join the dark elf side when Laurin asks him to help persecute his fellow knights for the injuries they inflicted. The party is thus drugged and thrown in jail, but it's okay. Dietrich gets so pissed off at this development that he's able to activate his fire breath and burn down the prison door. This is just… something he can do, I guess. I'm okay with that. Twenty-thousand dwarves iimmediately rush on him, and this son of a bitch just starts absolutely demolishing them. When Laurin sees this one guy mowing the fucking lawn with his entire army, he summons five giants from the surrounding forest. Dietrich is pretty much just Kratos, though, so five giants isn't exactly a problem. This entire fight scene is honestly awesome to read and I wish there was a visual aid attached.

Since pretty much all of Svartálfheim's finest are now dead as shit by the hand of one gigachad, Laurin decides that now is probably a good time to surrender. He is thus taken prisoner and demoted to Dietrich's court jester. Evidently, Dietrich was not done with Svartálfheim. The fragmentary poem Goldemar tells of his conflict with the eponymous kobold Goldemar which leads to the total obliteration of both the dwarves' mountain and their surrounding forests where those punk ass giants dwell. Dietrich eventually gets his comeuppance, though. According to the Heldenbuch-Prosa, at Dietrich's final battle, an unnamed dwarf which we can probably assume to be Laurin cryptically tells Dietrich that "his kingdom is no longer in this world", and the two poof away, the ultimate fate of the two left mysterious. What a ride. Insert Twilight Zone music here.

Design notes, so in building the world for my project set in 536, the mythological side of things often presents a problem. I've mentioned before how most mythologies aren't all that concerned with clean timelines, and Germanic myth is probably the biggest offender in this regard. Myths which feature historical figures in some capacity go a long way to establish benchmarks, even if a lot of them end up being frustratingly inaccurate. Since Laurin supposedly operated during the time of Theodoric, and seemingly returned to his homeland after the Ostrogothic king's death in 526, that provides a pretty good basis to sit him on the throne of Svartálfheim at this point in history. Given his status and background, I decided to keep him clean of all the muck and grime which I normally use to make my dark elves dark. Those roses are gonna need sunlight, afterall. As for his outfit, I could only find three historical reference images of this tale. One is an illustration attributed by the internet to Gotthold Klee, circa 1909. A less detailed image which inspired the basic silhouette was a 1926 painting by Ferdinand Leeke, depicting Laurin in the court of Dietrich. The last was a 1919 piece from a book by H.A. Guerber, which is my favorite out of all of them because it depicts this pissant little dwarf with just this massive sword. Of my own embellishments, it didn't show up very well in the scan, but the red part of his crown is actually one giant rock of carbuncle. The poem describes his crown as being bejeweled with a big lump of this gem, which is probably meant to mean just another inlay, but I like the idea of a dwarf king wearing a hat made of solid rock. The images on his sword are meant to be two greyhounds chasing a buck, which in the poem is instead described as being on a banner attached to the blade, but that looked really clunky every way I tried to do it, so instead I turned it into these gold engravings. Is it perfect? No. Do I think it would suffice keeping this angry little man from kicking my ass? Yes.