The Dwarves

Summary

The dwarves, Old Norse dvergar, singular dvergr, are a people in the myths of the Scandinavian north who live in the earth and in stones, and from them comes the craftsmanship the gods own: Thor's hammer, Odin's spear, Freyr's ship and the fetter that bound the wolf. In the story of the treasures Snorri calls them "black elves", and elsewhere he says that the "dark elves" live down in the earth and are blacker than pitch.

Their story begins with the body of the first giant. When the sons of Borr had killed Ymir and made the world from his body, the gods sat on their judgment seats and remembered where the dwarves had come from: they had quickened in Ymir's flesh and were maggots, as maggots quicken in flesh, and by the gods' decree they gained the wit of men and the likeness of men, yet they still live in the earth and in stones. The foremost of them was Móðsognir and the second Durinn. In Völuspá the gods take counsel who should shape the host of dwarves from Brimir's blood and Bláinn's limbs, both names of Ymir, and the seeress then lists their names one by one, among them Dvalinn, Andvari and Draupnir. The gods set four of them under the corners of the sky, which is Ymir's skull: Austri, Vestri, Norðri and Suðri, East, West, North and South.

Their best-known story is the story of the treasures. Loki cut off the hair of Sif, Thor's wife, and Thor held him until he swore to get the dark elves to make her hair of gold that would grow like any other hair. He went to the dwarves called the sons of Ívaldi, who made the hair, the ship Skíðblaðnir and the spear Gungnir. Then Loki wagered his head with the dwarf Brokkr that Brokkr's brother Sindri could not make three treasures as good. Sindri laid a pigskin in the forge and told Brokkr to blow and not stop; a fly came and stung his hand, and he held on until a boar with bristles of gold came out, which Snorri elsewhere calls Gullinbursti. Then Sindri laid in gold; the fly stung Brokkr's neck twice as hard, and he held on until the ring Draupnir came out, from which eight rings as heavy drop every ninth night. Then he laid in iron; the fly stung Brokkr between the eyes until blood ran into them, he lifted his hand for a moment to brush it off and the bellows sank, and the hammer Mjöllnir came out with a short handle. Loki gave Odin the spear, Thor the hair and Freyr the ship, which folds up like a cloth; Brokkr gave Odin the ring, Freyr the boar, which runs over air and sea and lights the dark with its bristles, and Thor the hammer. Odin, Thor and Freyr judged the hammer the best of the treasures and the gods' greatest defence against the frost giants, so the dwarf won the wager. Loki said: the head is yours, but not the neck, and Brokkr sewed his lips shut with a thong called Vartari.

The dwarves also made the fetter that held the wolf Fenrir. The wolf had broken two iron fetters, so Odin sent Skírnir, Freyr's messenger, down to the land of the dark elves, to certain dwarves, who made Gleipnir, a band smooth and soft as a silk ribbon, made of things that do not exist.

The idea the story turns on is that the dwarves were made from the very stuff of the earth, Ymir's flesh, and go on living inside it, and out of it they bring what keeps the gods' world whole: iron becomes the hammer that guards Asgard, gold becomes a ring that multiplies and hair that grows, and things that do not exist become a fetter that cannot be broken. The gods judge and receive; the dwarves make. Nor is the relation a friendly one: Loki cheats Brokkr of his wager, Thor kicks the dwarf Litr into Baldr's pyre, and Thor keeps the dwarf Alvíss answering questions until daylight catches him.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since neither essay mentions the dwarves. The r of dvergr is the Old Norse nominative ending, and the plural is dvergar, which leaves dverg-. Torp analyses it as a Germanic root dver- with an added g, built as draugr, "ghost", is built on a root meaning to deceive and harm, so that the dwarf is "properly a pernicious being". Torp, p. 215. That root is Arabic ḍāra, yaḍūru, ḍawran: ḍ belongs to the group of d and t, w answers the v of dv-, and r is r, so the three letters stand in order, and the g is a Germanic addition. In Lane ḍārahu, yaḍūruhu and yaḍīruhu mean "it harmed, injured, hurt him", and lā ḍayra is "no harm". Lane, ḍ-w-r and ḍ-y-r. That is what dwarves do in the stories: Fjalar and Galar kill Kvasir and then the giant Gillingr and his wife, and Andvari curses the ring so that it destroys whoever owns it. The second reading is Arabic dark, with d, r and k, and Arabic k is answered by g in the European languages. Lane gives dark and darak as "the bottom, or lowest depth, of a thing, as of the sea", or "of anything deep, as a well", and darakāt as stages downwards, opposed to darajāt, which are upwards. On this reading the dwarves are the people of the dark, the dwellers at the bottom, which is also what the story makes them: they live in the earth and in stones, Alvíss says "I dwell beneath the earth, I have my place under a stone", and the northerners called an echo "dwarf-talk", a voice coming out of the rock. The dictionary's partner for darak is daraj: daraja is said of a child or an old man who walks weakly, step by step, the creeping of the maggots from which the dwarves grew in Ymir's flesh. Lane, d-r-k and d-r-j. But the w of dv- has no letter in dark, so it stands second.

Linguistic Root

The dwarves, ḍawr and dark

Cleasby–Vigfusson say that an echo is called "dwarf-talk" from the belief that the dwarves lived in rocks, that a skilful man is called "skilled as a dwarf", and that "dwarf's-work" means any work of rare art, such as the enchanted swords of antiquity. Orel gives the Germanic word as *dwergaz, with Old English dweorg and Old High German twerg, calls it "of unknown etymology", and notes that one scholar compared Avestan drva-, "dwarfish, bent". Cleasby–Vigfusson, dvergr; Orel, p. 81. Torp, however, says it is "properly a pernicious being": he derives dverga from a root dver-, Indo-European dhver-, with an added g, just as draugr, "ghost", is built on drug-, "to deceive, to harm", whence Sanskrit druhyati, "seeks to harm", and he compares Vedic dhvarás, "a demonic being".

Lane, under ḍ-y-r: ḍārahu, yaḍīruhu, ḍayran, and yaḍūruhu, ḍawran, "it harmed, injured, hurt, mischiefed, or damaged him", as in "this is of the things that will not harm thee" and lā ḍayra ʿalayka, "no harm shall befall thee"; al-Kisāʾī heard lā yanfaʿunī dhālika wa-lā yaḍūrunī, "that will not benefit me, nor will it harm me". The entry ḍ-w-r refers to it, and from it comes taḍawwara, "he writhed by reason of the pain of beating, or of hunger". Lane, ḍ-y-r and ḍ-w-r. Lane also gives darak and dark as "the bottom, or lowest depth, of a thing, as of the sea and the like, or of anything deep, as a well", plural adrāk and darakāt; darak is also "a stage downwards", opposed to daraj, the stages upwards, so that the stages of Hell are called darakāt and those of Paradise darajāt. From the other root: daraja, he walked; said of a child, he walked a little when first beginning to walk; said of an old man and a child, he walked with a weak gait, or crept along.

The comparison follows the Juthoor sound laws: ḍ belongs to the dental and emphatic group that becomes t or d, w to the labials that become v or w, and r is the steadiest consonant in transmission. So ḍawr keeps all three letters in order, including the w that stands in the Old English and Old High German words too, and leaves the g to what Torp calls a Germanic addition. Dark and daraj keep d, r and g, since k and j belong to the group that becomes k, c or g, but in both the w has no answer. The question stays open because Orel still counts the word's origin as unknown, and Torp's analysis is one among several.

The dwarves' names

Cleasby–Vigfusson explain Sindri as "a forger" and say that brokkr is properly a badger, and also a trotting horse. Dvalinn goes back to the Norse verb dvelja, "to delay, tarry", which Orel lists on the same page as the dwarf word. The project's essays do not read these names, but the Semitic-reading essay reads the name of Ymir, in whose flesh the dwarves grew, as al-yamm, the sea and the first chaos.

Key Mythic Narratives

Dvalinn

Dvalinn's name comes up in the poems more than any other dwarf's. Völuspá speaks of the dwarves in Dvalinn's host, whose lines run down to Lofarr. In Hávamál Odin says that he carved runes for the gods, Dáinn for the elves and Dvalinn for the dwarves. In Alvíssmál the dwarves call the sun "Dvalinn's plaything". The dragon Fáfnir says in Fáfnismál that the Norns are of different births, some of the gods, some of the elves and some daughters of Dvalinn. In Grímnismál four harts gnaw the shoots of Yggdrasil, and one of them is called Dvalinn; the text does not say it is the same figure, but it belongs to the images of the world tree. Völuspá 14; Hávamál 143; Alvíssmál 16; Fáfnismál 13; Grímnismál 33.

Alvíss and the daylight

In Alvíssmál a dwarf called Alvíss, "All-wise", comes to take home a bride he has been promised, Thor's daughter. Thor asks him: what being are you, and why are you so pale about the nose? Were you among corpses in the night? Alvíss answers: I dwell beneath the earth, I have my place under a stone. Thor then asks him the names of things in each world, earth, sky, moon, sun, clouds and wind, and he answers, until at the end of the poem Thor says: I never saw more ancient lore in a single breast, but I have tricked you with a great trick; day has caught you above ground, dwarf, and now the sun shines into the hall.

Litr at Baldr's pyre

When Baldr was carried to his pyre on the ship and Odin laid the ring Draupnir on it, a dwarf called Litr ran in front of Thor's feet as he hallowed the pyre with the hammer, and Thor kicked him into the fire, and he burned. Later Baldr sent the ring back from the house of Hel to Odin with Hermóðr. Gylfaginning 49.

Other dwarves

The dwarves Fjalarr and Galarr killed the wise Kvasir and mixed his blood with honey into the mead of poetry. Reginn, foster-father of Sigurd, was the most skilful of men and "a dwarf in stature", and when Loki took the gold of the dwarf Andvari, Andvari went into the rock and cursed the ring.

Sindri's hall and the end

Völuspá says that in the north, on Niðavellir, stands a hall of gold belonging to Sindri's kin. In another version of the poem, as the end draws near and the giants' home resounds, the dwarves groan before their doors of stone, wise in the ways of the rock walls.

Symbolic Reading

The Norse rereading essay does not mention the dwarves, but it reads Ymir as "the first unshaped earth", a mass of clay, rock and ice that is the raw material, and reads Thor's hammer, belt and gloves as the tools of the smith and the worker. In the text the dwarves stand between the two: they grow inside that raw material and bring the gods' tools out of it, so that on this reading they picture the work that turns rock and metal into tools. The story itself supports it: the quality of the hammer depends on bellows that never rest, and the one lapse shows in the handle.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

At Ugarit Kothar-wa-Khasis makes the two clubs with which Baal defeats the Sea, as Sindri and Brokkr make the hammer with which Thor guards the gods; in both stories the weapon comes from a maker who does not fight. The image of Hephaestus at Memphis, that is Ptah, the Egyptians' craftsman, had the likeness of a dwarf, as Herodotus says, so the short maker who works for the gods is older than the North. This work places the dwarves among the culture heroes from whose hands tools come, and Loki's wager with them is a story of the trickster. Herodotus 3.37.

The four dwarves under the corners of the sky do what Shu does holding up Nut in Egypt and Atlas holding the sky among the Greeks, so they are the Norse witness of the separation of heaven and earth. Their growth in Ymir's flesh makes them part of a world made from a slain body, as in the cosmic body pattern. A stanza of Völuspá says that many likenesses of men were made, dwarves out of earth, and the maker may be the gods or the dwarves themselves; this sets their story close to the making of the first humans, though the text does not say they made people.