What's up with Scottish Dwarves?!?

[Sejs]

I seem to recall scottish dwarves back in the 80s as well.

Hmm. Dragonlance novels have their dwarves with any accent bias? I can't really remember.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

You'd like the Kogolor Dwarves in the Hollow World setting then, they live in forested hills/mountains and even wear lederhosen!

Don't you confuse this with Lederzwerge?


A bavarian dwarf surely is a disturbing image, though I can imagine their great clan gathering - the wiesn - where they all drink themselves silly.

Still, "Alois Kraxlhuber" doesn't really sound like a dwarven name, and "Saupreis, damischer!" isn't what I think of when pondering dwarven war cries.

 

[Maester Luwin]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions (1953). It was a strong influence on D&D in general and Hugi, the dwarf character, does seem to possess a Scottish (or strikingly similar) accent.

Hey Ivocaliban! What a great book that as. I still reread it from time to time. It also uses the D&D Troll if I remember right. Poul also wrote a another early book "The Broken Sword" where the Trolls & Dwarves seemed to be of Norse myth.

Raymond Fiest's dwarves from Midkeemia (sp?) were also portrayed like Scots. These books came out in the 80's. Thanks Maester Luwin

 

[Hussar]

The last dwarf I played had a Middle Ages Croatian name (Grgur Branamir) and swore in Croatian. Man, that is a GREAT language to swear in.

I dunno what his accent was, screwed up mostly.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

Hmmm. In my homebrew, dwarves have more of a Russkie accent, though there are a few clans that have an Indian accent.

 

[Zander]

Amusingly enough, while Tolkien's dwarves were originally named for Swedes and Saxons, he switched to a Hebrew inspired language for Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien's cultures were inspired by the blending of various real world languages. The Elvish languages, for example, are derived from Welsh and Finnish. Similarly, Dwarvish is inspired by Norwegian or Swedish and Hebrew. Tolkien said that in some regards he thought of dwarves as Jews.

 

[Zander]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions (1953). It was a strong influence on D&D in general and Hugi, the dwarf character, does seem to possess a Scottish (or strikingly similar) accent.

Although Anderson labels Hugi a "dwarf", he seems to have been more of an inspiration for 1E's gnome, not dwarf.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Hmmm. In my homebrew, dwarves have more of a Russkie accent, though there are a few clans that have an Indian accent.

Mmm, how about Pakistani dwarves? Or perhaps a gnome (named Abu) should run the Waterdeep Magic Quicki-Mart?

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Come on. Clans. Families. That sort of thing. It's obvious that they should have an italian accent. That's great for dwarves with coarse voices making you an offer you can't refuse.

 

[Dr Simon]

Imagine magazine, the TSR UK house mag of the 80s, featured a cartoon strip called The Sword of Alabron. This included a dwarf name of Auchter who was definitely Scottish.