I am happy to post this interview what is binary option with author Benita J. Prins, fellow lover of all things Tolkien and a great writer in her own right too! I read her fantasy, Sea of Crystal, Sea of Glass recently and recommend … Continue reading
Tolkien’s dwarves are among the clearest points of contact between Middle-earth and the world of Old Norse myth. Their names, underground kingdoms, metalworking, ancient grudges, and uneasy relationship with treasure all recall the dwarfs of the Poetic Edda and the Icelandic sagas. Yet Tolkien did not simply transfer Scandinavian figures into a modern fantasy setting. He reshaped familiar materials through his own languages, theology, storytelling, and concern with the moral dangers of possessiveness.
The result is a people who feel recognizably northern without becoming historical reconstructions. Thorin Oakenshield, Dáin Ironfoot, Gimli, and the other Dwarves carry the atmosphere of heroic legend, but they also possess a distinctive cultural identity: Khuzdul speech, a deep attachment to ancestry, a powerful sense of exile, and a complicated longing for home. Their Norse inheritance becomes a foundation for Tolkien’s original literary creation.
The most immediate evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in the names of the company in The Hobbit. Thorin, Fili, Kili, Dori, Nori, Ori, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dwalin, Balin, Oin, and Glóin are not random inventions. Many come from the catalogue of dwarfs in the Völuspá, one of the central poems of the Poetic Edda.
The Völuspá includes names such as Þorinn, Fili, Kíli, Nýi, Niði, Dvalinn, Bálinn, Bǫmburr, Nóri, Óinn, and Glóinn. Tolkien adapted the sounds into forms that would work within his narrative, while preserving enough of their original character for readers familiar with Old Norse literature to recognize the connection. Dáin, another important dwarf name, also has an Eddic source. Even Gandalf’s name appears in the dwarf-name sequence, although Tolkien gave it to a wizard rather than a member of the Company.
This naming practice creates a subtle literary effect. The dwarves of The Hobbit enter the story carrying the authority of an older heroic tradition. Before they speak about Erebor, Smaug, or the Arkenstone, their names place them in a world of northern legend. Tolkien’s readers may not know the Völuspá, yet the names still sound ancient, compact, and weighty.
In Norse mythology, dwarfs are associated with mountains, caves, metalwork, and hidden knowledge. They are often excellent smiths whose creations possess extraordinary power. Their intelligence can be practical and inventive, but it may also be secretive, cunning, or morally dangerous. These qualities strongly inform Tolkien’s portrayal of the Dwarves as miners, builders, armourers, and guardians of underground wealth.
The Norse dwarf is not always a comic figure or a small companion. In mythic narratives, dwarfs can be frightening beings who operate beyond the social order of gods and humans. Their expertise gives them influence, while their isolation makes them difficult to trust. Tolkien retains some of this distance. The Dwarves have their own language and customs, conceal Khazad-dûm from outsiders, and remain culturally separate from Elves and Men even when they form alliances with them.
Their connection with stone also carries symbolic importance. Dwarven identity in Middle-earth is tied to endurance, craftsmanship, and the making of things that may outlast their makers. A mountain kingdom is a home, a workshop, a treasury, and a memorial to ancestral achievement. The destruction of such a place therefore means more than the loss of property. It becomes a wound in collective memory.
Tolkien borrowed the imagery of northern myth, but he gave it a stronger psychological and ethical structure. In Norse stories, treasure often carries a curse or provokes betrayal. The hoard of the dragon Fáfnir is connected with violence, greed, and the corruption of its owner. Tolkien develops a related pattern through Smaug’s possession of Erebor and Thorin’s growing obsession with the treasure reclaimed from him.
The Arkenstone intensifies this drama. It is a beautiful object with political and emotional meaning, and Thorin treats it as the central emblem of his royal authority. His desire to possess it becomes inseparable from his fear of humiliation and loss. The treasure does not merely tempt him with luxury; it magnifies an existing weakness. Tolkien’s idea of “dragon-sickness” therefore functions as a moral and imaginative transformation of the cursed treasure motif.
| Norse tradition | Tolkien’s Middle-earth | Literary effect |
|---|---|---|
| Dwarfs are associated with mines, mountains, and smithcraft | Dwarves establish kingdoms such as Erebor and Khazad-dûm | Craft becomes the foundation of culture and memory |
| Dwarf names appear in Eddic poetry | Thorin’s company uses many adapted Eddic names | The narrative gains an atmosphere of northern antiquity |
| Treasures can provoke greed, violence, and betrayal | The hoard of Erebor and the Arkenstone divide allies | Wealth becomes a test of character |
| Fáfnir changes from dwarf into dragon | Smaug embodies the destructive power surrounding treasure | The dragon becomes the external form of possessiveness |
| Heroic fame is won through courage and endurance | Thorin, Dáin, and Gimli value lineage and remembered deeds | Honour shapes personal and political decisions |
| Mythic peoples may remain mysterious to humans | Dwarves guard Khuzdul and their customs | Cultural separation preserves their dignity and strangeness |
The connection between Tolkien’s dragons and Norse mythology is especially important for understanding his Dwarves. In the Völsunga saga, Fáfnir begins as a dwarf or dwarf-like figure before greed transforms him into a dragon. His hoard is inseparable from that transformation. The treasure represents a spiritual disease that has taken physical form.
Tolkien separates these elements into different characters. Smaug is the dragon who occupies Erebor, while Thorin is the heir whose relationship with the hoard becomes increasingly destructive. This division allows Tolkien to explore two forms of corruption. Smaug is the blatant, predatory embodiment of possession; Thorin is a heroic figure who gradually allows possessiveness to distort his judgement.
That distinction makes Thorin more tragic than a simple greedy king. He has legitimate claims, genuine courage, and a serious responsibility to his people. His anger at the loss of Erebor is understandable. His desire to recover the kingdom is initially noble. The danger begins when recovery becomes ownership without limit, and when the rights of others disappear behind the claims of blood and inheritance.
The Norse background helps explain why Tolkien’s treasure scenes feel older than their immediate plot. They belong to a tradition in which gold can carry a history of murder and sorrow. Wealth is never entirely neutral. It remembers the hands that made it, stole it, buried it, or killed for it.
Norse heroic literature also contributes to the Dwarves’ emphasis on loyalty, reputation, kinship, and vengeance. In the sagas, a person’s identity is shaped by family history and remembered deeds. Honour is public, fragile, and often defended at great personal cost. Tolkien draws on these values in the relationships among Thorin and his companions, and in the wider history of Durin’s Folk.
The Dwarves’ exile from Erebor gives their quest the structure of a northern return narrative. They are not adventurers looking for an exciting destination; they are descendants attempting to restore a broken lineage. Their songs preserve the memory of halls, fountains, bells, and gold beneath the mountain. These images make the lost kingdom feel almost like a vanished world from a saga.
Their courage is likewise presented in communal terms. A Dwarf fights for companions, ancestors, and future generations. This helps explain the significance of Thorin’s final recognition of Bilbo. His movement away from possessiveness is also a return to fellowship. The moral healing comes too late to save his life, but it allows his last words to affirm friendship over wealth.
Gimli develops this heroic inheritance in a different direction. His pride is strong, but his friendship with Legolas gradually breaks through inherited suspicion between Dwarves and Elves. Tolkien uses Gimli to show that tradition can preserve dignity without determining every relationship. The past matters, yet it need not become a prison.
Tolkien’s Dwarves are more developed as a coherent people than the dwarfs who appear across many Norse myths. Their language, Khuzdul, is carefully constructed and deliberately guarded. Their history includes migration, kingdoms, trade, conflict, and religiously resonant stories about awakening beneath the earth. Tolkien also gives them a remarkable concern with privacy: outsiders may know little about their true names, rituals, or inner life.
Their physical depiction has a literary purpose as well. Beards, sturdy bodies, helmets, axes, and heavy armour connect them to popular images of Scandinavian warriors, but Tolkien avoids making them merely rough or brutish. Dwarven artistry is as important as their military strength. Their weapons, halls, jewellery, and stonework reveal a culture devoted to precision and beauty.
Tolkien also complicates the traditional division between light and darkness. Dwarves are not naturally evil, even when their pride leads to conflict. They can be generous, loyal, courageous, inventive, suspicious, and vain. Their flaws arise from recognizable virtues carried too far: love of home can become isolation, reverence for ancestry can become resentment, and respect for craftsmanship can become obsession with possession.
This balance is central to Tolkien’s larger vision of fantasy. Mythic inheritance provides patterns, but character determines how those patterns unfold. A dwarf may resemble a figure from the Eddas, yet he still has the freedom to choose loyalty over revenge, friendship over suspicion, or humility over greed.
Readers exploring this subject can approach the relationship between Tolkien and Norse mythology through names, narrative motifs, and moral themes. The following works offer useful points of comparison:
These comparisons reveal that Tolkien’s use of Norse material is selective rather than decorative. He borrowed names, images, and story patterns, then placed them inside a much larger meditation on creation, mortality, inheritance, and moral choice. The Dwarves are therefore both archaic and original: recognizably descended from northern myth, yet fully at home in Middle-earth.
Tolkien’s achievement lies in making literary influence feel like lived history. When Thorin speaks of Erebor, the reader hears the echo of the Eddas, but also the voice of a particular king confronting his own fear. When Gimli praises stone, the words carry the weight of mountains and the warmth of friendship. Norse mythology gives Tolkien’s Dwarves their deep historical resonance; Tolkien gives that resonance a new emotional and ethical life.
Explore more reflections on Tolkien, Middle-earth, and the literary traditions behind fantasy through Anne Marie Gazzolo’s essays, book discussions, and recommendations. Comparative reading across the Eddas, the sagas, and Tolkien’s fiction offers a richer view of how old myths continue to shape new worlds.
An essay I wrote about the desire of Tolkien and the TCBS to be a light to their darkening world. A century later, he still provides light. Thank you, Professor and God trade binary option bless! Art by Justin Gerard … Continue reading