So here’s a question for you.
If you’re anything like me—an avid enjoyer of fantasy—you might have noticed how almost all dwarves in popular media nowadays get portrayed as Scottish.
(Something that’s, as I’ve recently learned, not unique to just dwarves, Vikings often get the same treatment in modern media—just look at How To Train Your Dragon).
But why?
I thought about this just a few days ago when, for both educational and inspirational reasons, I started playing The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt for the first time ever (yes I know, shame on me, should’ve played it already a long time ago).
In the game, you’ll come across many species, including dwarves, which are all portrayed as Scots.
This isn’t the only case, far from it.
At first, you might rightly want to point fingers at Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings—like almost every fantasy trope out there.
Simply watch the films and you’ll confirm that idea.
Except, Dwarves were never mentioned or hinted to be Scottish in Tolkien’s original books. If anything, they appeared to be Jewish more than anything else.
So where do you go looking for historical fantasy influences if not for Tolkien’s works?
That’s right, Gary Gygax’s Dungeons & Dragons.
And you’d be mostly correct.
It so turns out that the Scottish Dwarf can be traced back to early D&D novels. Some sources say Gary Gygax was influenced by yet another work of fiction a few decades before there was any mention of Dungeon & Dragons at all.
But that’s truly the end of our little rabbit hole.
Either way.
If someone mentions Dwarves in today’s day and age, chances are you’ll think of a short, red-headed, somewhat chubby, little fellow, going around, throwing out insults with his Scottish accent while wielding either an axe or a pickaxe in his hand.
Because as everyone knows…
If a dwarf ain’t a blacksmith or a miner, he ain’t no dwarf.
And that’s all because of one man who knew what he wanted to do, was passionate about his work, didn’t let anyone else tell them what he could or couldn’t do, and wouldn’t shut up about it until he was sure everyone knew what he was working on—and even then he’d keep on talking about it day after day, because that’s how much he enjoyed it.
Goes to show you the power of persistently sharing your work and talking about your interests.
As far as that goes nowadays, there’s simply no better way to do so than through daily email.
To learn more about how to go about writing daily emails, click here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla