Hi I stumbled across your work only the other day and I must say it is deeply fascinating! My question is there are any books that you would recommend? Just as a good starting point to begin to understand the stout folk in general, I like having a good physical book to refer to. Also forgive the name it was made a long time ago. Thank you in advance. ☺️
Well met! And no need whatsoever to apologise for the name. 😄
Before looking at the mythology that helped inspire Tolkien’s Dwarves, however, I would actually recommend watching Tolkien’s own Dwarves evolve. Go back far enough and you meet characters such as Fangluin, literally “Bluebeard” (from The Book of Lost Tales), and a conception of Dwarves that can be remarkably unpleasant, something we still see reflected in parts of The Silmarillion, at times almost simply another variety of hostile fairy-tale creature. Then read The Hobbit, move through The Lord of the Rings, and finally compare those with the Dwarves we see in “The Quest of Erebor” in Unfinished Tales. You can practically watch them grow from creatures of folklore into a people: flawed, proud and sometimes dangerous, certainly, but also courageous, loyal, honourable, and possessed of their own history, beliefs and culture.
Apart from Tolkien himself, one book I will very happily recommend is H. A. Guerber’s Myths of the Norsemen: From the Eddas and Sagas. It is an old book, first published in the early twentieth century I believe, and obviously Norse scholarship has moved on considerably since then, but I still regard it as something of a mithril seam still worth mining when it comes to an enjoyable very basic introduction to Norse mythology.
For a Tolkien enthusiast, particularly one interested in the Dwarves, there is a very good reason to include it early on. Guerber takes you through the Eddas, the sagas, the Norse gods, dwarves, giants, Sigurd, and all the rest of that wonderful northern mythological world. These are traditions Tolkien himself knew extraordinarily well and drew upon extensively. Even names like Thorin, Dwalin, Gandalf, and many others ultimately come straight out of the Dvergatal, the “Catalogue of Dwarfs” in the Völuspá.
I should be clear that I don’t mean Tolkien simply copied things from her book. Tolkien was a philologist who could very easily work with the medieval source texts themselves. What makes Guerber useful is that she gives us a wonderfully accessible doorway into much of the same mythological landscape. If you want to understand some of the soil Tolkien’s Dwarves grew out of, getting acquainted with that landscape is a very good place to begin.
From there, I’d go to a good modern translation of the Poetic Edda itself. That is where you stop reading about much of this material and start encountering the medieval poetry directly. Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda is the obvious companion after that, although I would not say you absolutely need to tackle both immediately unless the subject has really caught you.
That said, tackling both Eddas back-to-back might be a bit much at first, feel free to move on and circle back to Snorri later. Fair warning though, the Eddas are dense, allusive stuff, and quite unlike modern narrative prose, so don't feel you need to catch every reference on a first pass. If you find it too much at once (which I would totally get), I'd point you specifically toward Carolyne Larrington's translation for Oxford World's Classics, it's the standard modern English version and comes with enough notes to keep you oriented without drowning you in footnotes.
Stunning title page of Olive Bray's English translation of the Poetic Edda.
For Tolkien specifically, Tom Shippey’s The Road to Middle-earth would absolutely be on my shelf. Shippey is himself a philologist, and he is particularly good at showing how Tolkien’s knowledge of old languages and medieval literature fed into Middle-earth.
And if The Hobbit and its Dwarves are your particular interest, Douglas A. Anderson’s The Annotated Hobbit and John D. Rateliff’s The History of The Hobbit are both tremendously useful. The latter especially lets you dig into how The Hobbit actually developed rather than merely discussing its influences from a distance.
There is something rather wonderful about reading the old stories, then reading about Tolkien’s treatment of that tradition, and afterwards returning to Middle-earth with all of that sitting in the back of your mind.
So if I were building a physical starter shelf specifically for someone wanting to understand Tolkien’s Dwarves, I’d probably go:
The Book of Lost Tales → The Hobbit → The Lord of the Rings → Unfinished Tales (especially “The Quest of Erebor”), with The Silmarillion alongside them for the broader First Age picture.
Then, to start digging into the older material and scholarship behind all of that:
Guerber → Poetic Edda / Prose Edda → Shippey → The Annotated Hobbit / The History of The Hobbit
That should keep you occupied for a while. And, fair warning, this is how “I’d just like one good reference book” turns into an entire bookcase. Sorry I don’t have a single book I can point you to that covers Tolkien’s Dwarves through all of this, by the way,… though perhaps one day I really ought to write that book myself. 😄
Ever at your service,
The Dwarrow Scholar
