Why is everything a Gnome?

[Nettlekid]

I was having a conversation the other day with a friend who's a diehard fan of all things Dwarven, and I mentioned how amusing it would be to see a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with proper LotR-esque Dwarves, fighting to reclaim a castle. He's furious about how Disney Dwarves are really essentially Gnomes, friendly and subterranean and somewhat charismatic and very much not the Scottish drunkards we know and love. I remarked that Santa's Elves are also Gnomes, short little tinkerers. Or the Elves and the Shoemaker, those are tiny little Gnomes too. So many real-world fantasy creatures are short, tricky, gritty men. It fits the description of a Gnome better than anything. Why is that so often the case? And for the sake of it, can anyone think of any other fantasy creature that's best described in D&D terms as a Gnome, even (or especially) if that's not what culture calls it?

[Aldrakan]

Uh I feel like those little troll dolls are also very gnome-like, but that could just fit into trolls endlessly inconsistent portrayals.

Mostly it goes back to the way they pretty much just invented the way you're conceiving them. They drew from mythology and folk tales (and Tolkien), and there's a lot of overlap. They had to make distinct creatures out of them. If they'd done it differently you could be asking why everything is a kobold and it would be about as accurate.

As for why that type shows up so often, not sure but I think you might be able to trace it back to household gods in some way?

[daremetoidareyo]

I was having a conversation the other day with a friend who's a diehard fan of all things Dwarven, and I mentioned how amusing it would be to see a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with proper LotR-esque Dwarves, fighting to reclaim a castle. He's furious about how Disney Dwarves are really essentially Gnomes, friendly and subterranean and somewhat charismatic and very much not the Scottish drunkards we know and love. I remarked that Santa's Elves are also Gnomes, short little tinkerers. Or the Elves and the Shoemaker, those are tiny little Gnomes too. So many real-world fantasy creatures are short, tricky, gritty men. It fits the description of a Gnome better than anything. Why is that so often the case? And for the sake of it, can anyone think of any other fantasy creature that's best described in D&D terms as a Gnome, even (or especially) if that's not what culture calls it?

I am going to take this to a very weird place. But, it's a wednesday night, and I failed to fix both of my cars today, so it looks like I'm not going to work tomorrow either. I'm going to start where great wanders always start, with the sasquatch.

The sasquatch, also known as bigfoot, is an ape myth that comes out of the western part of the US. Generally regarded as large robust men over 8 feet tall with hair covering their entire body, with a powerful jaw and for shortened and sloping forehead. These stories come out of a region of the world that was colonized about 20,000 years ago. Humans walked from Asia to North America, and soon after their arrival, large megafauna all over the Continent started to die off. This is speculative, but there is a group of hominid apes in the paranthropus genus that match this description. The fossils of these specimens are restricted to Africa, but the fossil record isn't entirely complete. Paranthropus are 8 foot tall nut eating hominid apes with small skulls and giant flat teeth with super exaggerated jaw muscles and cranial features to support them. Is there a chance that those original settlers of North America interfaced with another Hominid group that had beat them out there? If not, is there a chance that the story of the ape man hominids travelled with people across their migration out of Africa through the oral tradition? Where am I going with this? I need to line up some more weird stuff before I am done, Scully.

There exists on Flores, scientific proof of the existence of another one of these hominid species, Homo floriensis, with fossils dating to 700,000 years ago. Thus demonstrating that the Homo erectus, heidlebergensis, and sapiens weren't the only human species to leave Africa. But here, we see the sticky corner edge that allows us to finally use the scotch tape, there is folklore native to the island of the ebu gogo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebu_gogo). Translates as "grandmother who eats anything." The folklore of the human peoples of that island carried the existence of co-habitating with the creature as recently as 13,000 years ago. That folklore survived until today. Tying this back to Sasquatch, if we find archaeological evidence of australopithecus or paranthropus fossils on the western edge of canada or the US, we can also infer that the sasquatch myth of the native americans may have a route in the retelling of the first encounters with those non-human real world hominids.

Keep in mind, we "scientifically proved" giant squid existence well after there were 100s of years of sailors reporting sightings of the same ilk. We spoke of mermaids and found manatees. We spoke of unicorns, but then encountered rhinos. We talk of dragons yet existed on the same planet as the giant pangolin. Or maybe ancient hunters knew when they stumbled across dinosaur fossils that a thing called a dragon could totally explain the bird bones and lizard skull. The fire breathing was added by Jimmie the Liar in 23,478 BCE.

Now let's look at your gnomes from the folklore of the europeans. Industriousness, subterraenean, neither evil nor good, although if you include the industrious goblin into your gnomish totem, then there is that too. Why have these tiny artisans erupted out of the native peoples of Europe. It could be prolonged racial stereotyping of the Picts, who were the oppressed Celts that the Romans viciously broke through a prolonged campaign. Maybe European cultures attributed traits to other ethnic groups and then some of the context for all of that sort of shifted through time, and big bad celt barbarians slaughtering us for our wine became orcs. Or we can go further back, the original colonizers of Europe were maybe even the ancestors of the ebu gogo. We homo sapiens saw them in Europe, and promptly got to kicking the little bastards out. I hear that "They eat anything". We inherit these folktales with common tropes and elements because our ancestors remembered those stories vividly though the oral tradition. 'zall I'm sayin'

[Psyren]

I was having a conversation the other day with a friend who's a diehard fan of all things Dwarven, and I mentioned how amusing it would be to see a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with proper LotR-esque Dwarves, fighting to reclaim a castle. He's furious about how Disney Dwarves are really essentially Gnomes, friendly and subterranean and somewhat charismatic and very much not the Scottish drunkards we know and love. I remarked that Santa's Elves are also Gnomes, short little tinkerers. Or the Elves and the Shoemaker, those are tiny little Gnomes too. So many real-world fantasy creatures are short, tricky, gritty men. It fits the description of a Gnome better than anything. Why is that so often the case? And for the sake of it, can anyone think of any other fantasy creature that's best described in D&D terms as a Gnome, even (or especially) if that's not what culture calls it?

Because many of those portrayals (e.g. Santa and Snow White, well the Disney version anyway) are aimed at children, and what we understand as gnomes are more kid-friendly due to the decreased focus on things like violence and alcohol. They're also not based on Tolkien, or the Norse myths that his now iconic dwarven template came from.

[Chronos]

In the original folklore, there wasn't really a sharp distinction drawn between elves, gnomes, dwarves, pixies, sprites, and so on. There were humans, and then there were the Other Folk. The Other Folk might have come in a variety of shapes and sizes, but then, humans show a fair bit of variety, too. They were all regarded as one kind of being. I suspect that Tolkien was the first to envision elves and dwarves as being fundamentally different creatures, with different origins, histories, traits, and personalities. And he probably did that just because he wanted an excuse to create even more languages.

[nedz]

It goes wider than Fantasy

Conspiracy Theories: Swiss bankers - they're also Gnomes.

Star Trek: Ferengi - also Gnomes.

It's a common stereotype I suppose - and that's probably where the concepts for D&D Gnomes were taken from.

[Psyren]

Star Trek: Ferengi - also Gnomes.


I'd say those are actually Goblins, of the "shrewd trader" variety (see also Harry Potter.)

[Spiryt]

I
The sasquatch, also known as bigfoot, is an ape myth that comes out of the western part of the US. Generally regarded as large robust men over 8 feet tall with hair covering their entire body, with a powerful jaw and for shortened and sloping forehead. These stories come out of a region of the world that was colonized about 20,000 years ago. Humans walked from Asia to North America, and soon after their arrival, large megafauna all over the Continent started to die off. This is speculative, but there is a group of hominid apes in the paranthropus genus that match this description. The fossils of these specimens are restricted to Africa, but the fossil record isn't entirely complete. Paranthropus are 8 foot tall nut eating hominid apes with small skulls and giant flat teeth with super exaggerated jaw muscles and cranial features to support them. Is there a chance that those original settlers of North America interfaced with another Hominid group that had beat them out there?




Well, maybe I'm googling badly, but there's nothing about Paranthropus being 8 feet tall or large in general....

In fact nothing about being taller than 5 feet.



. It could be prolonged racial stereotyping of the Picts, who were the oppressed Celts that the Romans viciously broke through a prolonged campaign.


It's not certain that Picts were really Celts, and compared to most of the Celts, their contacts with Romans were actually quite marginal...

[nedz]

I'd say those are actually Goblins, of the "shrewd trader" variety (see also Harry Potter.)

Well who knows ?

I always thought of them as a pastiche of the Gnomes of Zurich.

[Honest Tiefling]

Um, your friend does realize that many representations of dwarves in mythology involved them being weak and mostly unable to fight? So yes, many representations of 'dwarves' are going to be bad at combat if they draw upon the source material instead of Lord of the Rings. I don't think Snow White is going to be based upon the Lord of the Rings, through that might make for a more interesting version.

Also, gnomes are probably closer to earth elementals in their original form, given that they can essentially burrow through solid earth with no effort. If you want a small humanoid that is tricky, you're actually talking about a kobold, who liked to hang around mines and play tricks on miners and resembled a tiny human.

So I guess no one gets represented correctly.

[NomGarret]

It's not. We just all failed our Will save to believe otherwise.

[Milodiah]

It's not. We just all failed our Will save to believe otherwise.

****ing Gnome Illusionists.

[DrMotives]

I've also been told by a Celtic historian that Ireland has been colonized by 5 or so separate waves of people, all different ethnic groups. The Celtic people that are the Irish of today are the most recent group, and that the previous people have been mythologized into the Sidhe (elves, more or less) who replaced older people like the Firbolg & the Formorian, both of which are in folklore as fairy giants. I've never seen an MM entry for Sidhe, although either elf, Seelie or Unseelie fey would work perfectly, but Firbolg & Formorian are both statted out in the game now.

[Eldariel]

This is mostly because myths haven't been translated with distinctiveness in mind, nor do myths from one area form one consistent continuum: the various creatures by the same name can be very different even within myths from the same tradition. Various myths are sources for various kinds of creatures by various names; many have been named in modern English one way or another (Celtic, Germanic, Greco-Roman and Norse myths through obvious channels, others through more hoops). It just so happens X from a mythology might actually resemble Y from another, but there are differences. Now D&D then has to come up with one meaning for each of these terms even though they could all mean a dozen different things already just by the pre-existing definitions. It wouldn't really be wrong to call most of the creatures in D&D gnomes but they could also be e.g. fae, goblins, elves or any number of monikers drawn from various sources. While we're talking about English here, the same would be mostly inevitable in most languages that have or have had a large speaker base (of course, myths vary based on geography so we'd have different creatures and different pools in different places, but the phenomenon would be the same)

[Susano-wo]

seconding the "mythological dwarves were not the stout warrior dwarves popularized by Tolkien" comments, and adding that if you want Tolkienesque dwarves, you oughta knock off "Scottish" and "drunkard," as it doesn't fit Tolkien's dwarves. :smallamused:

[Rainshine]

My preferred source for dwarven (and elves, if you're into that kindof thing) mythology stands as the Eddas -- part of the basis for Tolkien's writings as well.

[Willie the Duck]

I was having a conversation the other day with a friend who's a diehard fan of all things Dwarven, and I mentioned how amusing it would be to see a Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with proper LotR-esque Dwarves, fighting to reclaim a castle. He's furious about how Disney Dwarves are really essentially Gnomes, friendly and subterranean and somewhat charismatic and very much not the Scottish drunkards we know and love. I remarked that Santa's Elves are also Gnomes, short little tinkerers. Or the Elves and the Shoemaker, those are tiny little Gnomes too. So many real-world fantasy creatures are short, tricky, gritty men. It fits the description of a Gnome better than anything. Why is that so often the case? And for the sake of it, can anyone think of any other fantasy creature that's best described in D&D terms as a Gnome, even (or especially) if that's not what culture calls it?

Predominantly because those two depictions are of faerie tale creatures are (for children, of course) depictions of them as very physical helper spirit types, depicted in D&D as gnomes, or perhaps moreso as brownies. D&D dwarves are fairly Tolkein, (although as pointed out, the Scottish thing isn't in Tolkein), but that was a choice on the developer's part. They could have just as easily been the dwarves from (random example) Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain series, in which case dwarves would be inherently magical, instead of anti-magical.

Basically D&D gnomes, dwarves, elves, etc. are one specific selection of traits and distinctions between the races out of a rather large potential pool that is often self contradictory and confusing.

As for gnomes being everything from Santa's elves to Ferrengi, well, let's include both the Munchkins and the Wizard of Oz himself in that list, since there's a long literary tradition of odd little men , ridiculous and often squabbling if in large numbers, helping protagonists on their way.

[Winthur]

http://i.imgur.com/kDVlynB.png

At least you do not encounter these too often.

[Eldan]

In fact, can anyone think of a single mythological dwarf ever fighting anything? Especially with weapons?

[Honest Tiefling]

In fact, can anyone think of a single mythological dwarf ever fighting anything? Especially with weapons?

Well, I guess one could say that some dwarfs 'fought' Freya with some 'weapons' in exchange for a necklace, but other then that I honestly cannot think of any.

[nedz]

Well, I guess one could say that some dwarfs 'fought' Freya with some 'weapons' in exchange for a necklace, but other then that I honestly cannot think of any.

There was the Dwarf who killed lots of people, giants and all the gods with a simple gold ring — albeit indirectly. It depends upon what you mean by weapon I guess ?

[Aldrakan]

There was the Dwarf who killed lots of people, giants and all the gods with a simple gold ring — albeit indirectly. It depends upon what you mean by weapon I guess ?

Given that we're comparing mythological dwarves with D&D dwarves, I think about as indirect as you should count is if it involves a lever the dwarf pulls and a lot of boulders.

[Grinner]

There was the Dwarf who killed lots of people, giants and all the gods with a simple gold ring — albeit indirectly. It depends upon what you mean by weapon I guess ?

Was his name Alberich by any chance?

[nedz]

Was his name Alberich by any chance?

Of course

12345679

[Grinner]

Of course

There's actually been a couple dwarves named Alberich. I think you may be thinking of the one from Der Ring des Nibelungen, which was written by Richard Wagner in the 19th century.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding, and the OP is looking for any example of "manly" dwarves, not just premodern ones...?

[Honest Tiefling]

I think sometimes the guy who had the hoard who kicked off the events that inspired the Der Ring des Nibelungen was SOMETIMES a human, sometimes a dwarf...So maybe it half counts?

And if we want Manly Modern Dwarves, why is Varric from Dragon Age II not here? Sure, he's a bit lacking in the beard department, but he's got a manly chest carpet. This (http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/bros-before-hos) shows my point.


It depends upon what you mean by weapon I guess ?

Hrm. The rule that all singular pronouns refer to ding-dongs and all plural ones refer to mammaries has failed me. I was referring to dwarven ding-dong. Sleeping with Freya is probably dangerous enough, but trying to fight her would likely end very badly for the dwarf.

[nedz]

Well Wagner's thing was based on earlier work, though heavily re-worked.


I think sometimes the guy who had the hoard who kicked off the events that inspired the Der Ring des Nibelungen was SOMETIMES a human, sometimes a dwarf...So maybe it half counts?

The Duke of Burgundy - the original Gnome of Zurich perhaps ?