Did Tolkien invent dwarves and elves?
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Did Tolkien invent dwarves and elves?
Did Tolkien invent dwarves and elves?
Thalidomide Vintage Ad Shirt $22.14 |
CRIME Shirt $21.68 |
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That was Shakespeare
american education
so no he didnt
The modern idea of them, yes.
Aka just humans with pointy ears and humans with beards? Lmao
Elves in norse mythology were basically equal to gods, that's why they are immortal. Dwarves were crafty and greedy but very stubborn.
Dwarves were also magical spirits like elves, but usually more antagonistic
>Aka just humans with pointy ears and humans with beards
Maybe that's how it comes across in the movies but Tolkien's elves in particular are a very distinct race to humans from everything to their physiology, lifestyle, culture, history, spirituality.... I could go on.
Well multiple humans in the books grew up among elves and were mistaken for elves so obviously not. They’re just humans who Eru likes more than the other ones.
>They’re just humans who Eru likes more than the other ones
Dumbest take in the entire thread.
There are entire volumes published which document how elves are a distinct race and culture, literally everything ranging from the connectivity between body/soul, women's roles, how/when they were created, where they live, what they eat, how they talk, what they do, how they have sex and what happened after they 'die' are different. Really the only main connection is that they can (seldom) have children together.
That’s not it! Elves are a little bit taller and thinner, and Dwarves are a little bit shorter and squatter. It’s really deep and layered if you think about it.
No scandinavians did
Yes but they didn't look like that
You could have just went on Wikipedia and checked. He did not invent those races, and the article says people believed in Elves in the Middle Ages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elf
I suspect the myth was created because there were beautiful Europeans, who lived in nature, like the movie Midsommar, and the ugly people saw them as magical beings.
>Europeans
>beautiful
Kek good one
You're only kidding yourself, bucko.
See Brown Seethe.
Seethe, Brown! Seethe!
Traditionally elves were more like hobbits. They're small and do mischievous things, not much different from fairies or kobolds or trolls. Tolkien made them into tall, immortal, wise demi-beings.
Hobbits weren’t led by a king of the woodland who stole children and shot their parents with poison arrows for trying to find them.
Raping women, kidnapping children, and firing arrows at travelers is not really mischievous it’s subhuman.
ackshually they were superhuman for being supernatural
yeah, that's all code for israelites. changeling lore. israelites/gypsy-subset get so inbred they have to swap out the resultant groogs with healthy local babies.
it was a different time back then
Nah Tolkien stole that from Norse and Celtic myth where they’re mysterious holy nature spirits, but made way more generic and boring and dull
That would depend on your traditions. Elves are different in different parts of the world
If I remember correctly elves = gnomes was more of a Victorian thing and Tolkien hated that depiction so much he basically created the elves in his stories to correct it.
It's generally thought he based them on the Tuatha De Danann from Celtic folklore.
He later regretted calling them "Elves" because the name had already been used so much to refer to so many different supernatural creatures
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuatha_D%C3%A9_Danann
i want more icsh boy elves onscreen
Adulthood is realising Tolkiein is a hack who stole everything from Norse myth
Tolkien actually did his research on real mythology and almost every other fantasy author copied from him. If that makes him a hack then you're a hack for "copying" your parent's looks
Lmao what research? He made three races of generic humans and copy pasted names from much more interesting and fantastical creatures onto them, in a world where the only mythology is that everything is a poor retelling on Paradise Lost
He literally invented a language, I don't know what makes you have this immense hatred towards Tolkien
And no, elves and dwarves didn't exist in anything but name, they had different interpretations everywhere, there wasn't an official "lorebook" of mythical creatures everyone followed specifically. Elves meant something completely different depending on where or when.
Everything you seem to take for granted in fantasy only exists because of Tolkien in the first place, there wasn't a definition of what "dwarfs" are, there were various depictions of small creatures named dwarfs, being described completely different, it's not like europeans in the middle ages had warcraft races in mind
They existed in all of European myth, get his tiny platoon-abandoning dick out your mouth. There were hundreds of myths and stories of dwarves, who were all fantastical and magic spirits who fought heroes and spread disease held up the sky.
Tolkien stole that from other culture’s myth and changed the perception on them into some short humans who dig stone. He’s not only a hack, he’s a boring hack.
to be fair one theory for where dwarf stories came from is that they were shorter people from south who dug stone
So did Star Trek, but nobody pretends like they're geniuses for giving Klingons some bullshit words to throw around.
Invented languages are always woefully lacking in vocabulary.
But the difference is they weren't bullshit words, they have their own grammar, sentence structure and extensive vocabulary. Not like with most alien stuff where they just make up a few bullshit words for a few lines for the movie
>And no, elves and dwarves didn't exist in anything but name
have a nice day Lotrmanchild
Fricking moron, you don't understnad folklore, they weren't as clearly defined back then before tolkien as you think they were. We wouldn't even have this discussion without tolkien yet there's so much seethe about him for literally no reason
Everything “defined” by Tolkien is something the actual myths created.
Tolkien didn’t define anything, he’s a hack who took a popular and very widely written mythical creature and turned it into a dull lackluster human who digs in tunnels
Cope
Brownoids seethe. The actual myths did not create these stories and races.
Please read
and stop consooming Tolkien’s badly written children’s story
Elves in norse mythology weren't really well defined or even described physically. You could transcend into being an elf when you died and basically become a god. So yeah tolkiens elves are something he created based loosely on folk lore but it is his own creation.
Disney made a fricking Snow White film about the seven dwarves before Tolkien. Holy shit you fricking moron
The hobbit came out in the same year as the disney movie and he wrote about middle earth for two decades at that point. And again, those dwarves are nothing like the dwarves in tolkiens work
Yes they are, the dwarves in the hobbit are just midgets who cut stone and hoard gold.
Bro Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was published in 1812.
It’s just a clear example of how Tolkien didn’t invent shit that they were already making Disney movies about them by the time he started writing. Fairy Tales have always featured and described Dwarves since before 1200, Tolkien just took the stories THEY made and turned dwarves boring and generic and unmagical
But we already established that mythological dwarfs are nothing like tolkiens dwarfs?
It seems silly to mald about Tolkien here when he stands at the very beginning of the fantasy genre and much of modern storytelling, what does that make everyone else in the genre then? Isn't everyone making stories a hack then?
women dwarves in the rings of power series are not canon. it is known that women dwarves have beards.
Oh, so women dwarves are just like taylor swift and just "date around" so people don't realize they are carpet munchers?
>But we already established that mythological dwarfs are nothing like tolkiens dwarfs?
This is true. Myth Dwarves were holy, magical beings with incredible myths and involvement with creation who were also short craftsmen. Tolkien’s dwarves were just short craftsmen (stolen from Brothers Grimm who did this first)
>when he stands at the very beginning of the fantasy genre
He doesn’t, not by millenia. He is a follower of followers of followers.
That's objectively false. You can clearly see a ton of inspiration in the entire fantasy genre on tolkiens work, you're being wilfully ignorant.
Willfully ignorant of what? Being a later inspiration for some sources does not undo the reality that all his creatures and all his stories he stole from preexisting myths that existed for thousands of years. If fantasg were a timeline, Tolkien is some guy at the most modern 1% who repeated a halfassed kiddy version of shit the first 50% created.
I can already tell the only thing you know about “the entire fantasy genre” is DnD and low-effort Isekaii anime
You're talking to a nordicist.
Which is ironic considering how much Tolkien loved Germanic culture. That's the reason he made those stories in the first place
He made several languages including two Elvish languages. Cindarin and Quindi iirc.
But yeah they are soooo boring and superficial that we are still talking about them 3, 4 generations later.... lmao
He read, studied and taught all the old texts concerning European mythology, what do you think he did for a living?
>Why, no - I haven't read Tolkien OR Paradise Lost!
>... How could you tell?
Like the ring of the nibelungen?
Smaug is basically a reskin of Fafnir so yeah
No, but he standardized this version of them.
Elves originate from norse mythology and old germanic folklore about fey creatures.
>They weren't ethereally beautiful immortal beings of light
They were, that’s how they get their names in Gylgayinning
Celtic Elves were the same
in swedish "älva" translates to something like faerie, and the alfr of pagan nordic mythology were pretty much like faeries. Tolkien took capricious, dangerous spirit-folk and turned them into basically a civilization of half-angels.
Good thing that tolkien's elves aren't based on swedish ones, apart from them being homosexuals like swedes
they're definitely based on nordic elves + you are brown. but the point is that tolkien made elves into a tangible civilization, whereas they used to be hidden beings, not quite wild but certainly not like humans.
>fancy glowing humans descended from god who live in a magic promised land across the western sea
Nah they’re Aos Si ripoffs
They were not descended from any god, dumbass.
Yes they were, moron. They were created by Eru and named “The Firstborn” because he considered them his children after birthing them
Created is not descended, imbecile. Chairs are not descendants of carpenters, you ignorant canker sore on a pig's butt.
Eru considered all sentient beings his children - even the Dwarves, though he didn't create them
Älvor and Alver are two completely different entities ditt jälva kioskmongo
any alternative Dwarf appreciators?
They have been part of European folklore a long time but he certainty humanized them,
In folklore they almost always horrible monsters living in the forest
No, you are moron.
In their current form? Yes
No, but he contributed to the modern perception of them. I think the ultimate blame lies with D&D and how much they copied Tolkien without context.
Yes, he also totally invented trolls and goblins and eagles
And his creation myth is totally his own too, John Milton copied from him
Dragons too. Everything about Dragons, ever? All from the Hobbit. Nowhere else, Tolkien invented everything.
He didn’t invent tax policy.
He is a goddamn prodigy i burn incense for him everyday and watche the LOTR trilogy weekly just to write a 2000 page essay on all the details in them
Tolkien was in cahoots with big ring businesses. The Hobbit was just early t@vistock propaganda experiments to see if they could make people start buying small pieces of metal for engagement gifts and shit. Irreparable damage to western culture.
u didnt take ur meds today did u
Pretty sure dwarves were invented by the Norse.
No idea about elves.
Orcs were 100% invented by Tolkien.
elves are also northern mythology which is why african-looking dwarves and elves make no sense whatsoever
basically there is some overlap between elves and dwarves. for example the dwarf alberich of legend contains elf (alb) in his name
Orcs were invented in Beowulf. They were monstrous humanoids mentioned offhandedly to be descendents of Cain
Tolkien is indisputably the father of modern fantasy and everybody else is, at best, walking in his very large shadow.
Hero worship is bad enough, but hero worship for some overrated autist that just pillaged mythologies for some christcuck allegory? Meds.
fantasy as a literature genre sucks because there's literally only one good fantasy author and he's dead
meanwhile there's hundreds of science fiction classics that all hold up on their own
Dwarves are probably some modification of gnomes. There are plenty of folk tales about small people
>people shitting on Tolkien
Brownies detected
My only criticism of Tolkien is that the Scourging of The Shire is objectively fricking stupid.
The modern popular fantasy concept of them yes, the original mythical counterparts that existed in European folk tales and myths, obviously no.
Modern version of Elves and Dwarves? Yes.
But not the concept of Elves and Dwarves as a whole who originally fell under the large mess of European fae-folk and spirits.
But a lot of Tolkien's inspiration for what became his version of Elves and other things such as Orcs also stemmed from some coked up Anglo-Saxon poet who made Beowulf.
What did Aragorn do with all the satyrs?
He certainly did not have tea parties with them.