Norse myth In Tolkien's
The Book of Lost Tales, the very few Dwarves who appear are portrayed as evil beings, employers of
Orc mercenaries and in conflict with the
Elves—who are the imagined "authors" of the myths, and are therefore biased against Dwarves. Tolkien was inspired by the
dwarves of Norse myths and of later Germanic folklore (such as that of the
Brothers Grimm), from whom his Dwarves take their characteristic affinity with mining, metalworking, and crafting.
Jewish history In
The Hobbit, Dwarves are portrayed as occasionally comedic and bumbling, but largely as honourable, serious-minded, and proud. Tolkien was influenced by his own selective reading of medieval texts regarding
Jewish people and their history. The dwarves' characteristics of being dispossessed of their homeland in
Erebor, and living among other groups but retaining their own culture, are derived from the medieval image of Jews, Medieval views of Jews also saw them as having a propensity for making well-crafted and beautiful things, The Dwarf calendar invented for
The Hobbit reflects the
Jewish calendar's
Rosh Hashanah in beginning in late autumn.
Semitic-style language In
The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien continued the themes of
The Hobbit. When giving Dwarves their own language,
Khuzdul, Tolkien decided to create an analogue of a
Semitic language influenced by
Hebrew phonology. Like medieval Jewish groups, the Dwarves used their own language only among themselves, and adopted the languages of those they live amongst for the most part, for example taking public names from the cultures they lived within, whilst keeping their "true-names" and true language a secret. This raises the question, examined by Rebecca Brackmann in
Mythlore, of whether there was an
element of antisemitism, however deeply buried, in Tolkien's account of the Dwarves, inherited from English attitudes of his time. Brackman notes that Tolkien himself attempted to work through the issue in his Middle-earth writings. It has been suggested that the formation of the deep friendship between the dwarf
Gimli and elf
Legolas in the
Lord of the Rings, overcoming longtime mutual suspicion, can be seen as Tolkien's reply toward "Gentile anti-Semitism and Jewish exclusiveness". The philologist
Helge Fauskanger analyses Khuzdul, finding in it features of
Semitic languages.
Spelling The original editor of
The Hobbit "corrected" Tolkien's plural "dwarves" to "dwarfs", as did the editor of the
Puffin paperback edition. According to Tolkien, the "real 'historical' plural" of "dwarf" is "dwarrows" or "dwerrows". He described the word "dwarves" as "a piece of private bad grammar". In Appendix F of
The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien explained that if people still spoke of "dwarves" regularly, English might have retained a special plural for the word "dwarf", as with the irregular plural of "goose", "geese". and "dwarf(-)" (e.g. "
Dwarf-lords", "Old Dwarf Road") as adjectives for the people he created. == Adaptations ==