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Old 03-02-2019, 09:05 PM   #1
hcobb
 
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Default Why are dwarves Scottish?

The closest historical human analogs to a dwarven race are the Tibetans or especially the Inca. Try Inca but with advanced metalworking to freak out the players in your next campaign.
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Old 03-02-2019, 10:38 PM   #2
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Default Re: Why are dwarves Scottish?

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The closest historical human analogs to a dwarven race are the Tibetans or especially the Inca. Try Inca but with advanced metalworking to freak out the players in your next campaign.
How do you figure that? I don't associate either of those cultures with mining, smithing, or mechanical artifice.

I don't know why the dwarves are stereotyped as Scots. Clannishness, maybe? I don't even know how I picked up the cliché. I'm only sure that it was familiar enough in 1983 that I could write an article about it for the magazine of the UNSW Role-Players' Association then.
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Old 03-02-2019, 10:40 PM   #3
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Default Re: Why are dwarves Scottish?

Inca: Short, broad chested, a civilization based on pathways carved through mountains that prizes gold.
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Old 03-03-2019, 03:57 AM   #4
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Default Re: Why are dwarves Scottish?

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How do you figure that? I don't associate either of those cultures with mining, smithing, or mechanical artifice.

I don't know why the dwarves are stereotyped as Scots. Clannishness, maybe? I don't even know how I picked up the cliché. I'm only sure that it was familiar enough in 1983 that I could write an article about it for the magazine of the UNSW Role-Players' Association then.
Now that you mention it ... there are people who argue that the dwarves of The Hobbit draw on stereotypes about Jews. Its worth noticing that if so it is subtle enough that the same cues were read differently by the 1980s (whereas the stereotypes in say "Shadows in Zamboula" are still all too familiar). There are some things like that in Heinlein's juveniles, where he thought he was striking a great blow for equality by hinting that a character was Jewish or Filippino or that a relationship was interracial, but today we need a footnote or an essay to lay the signals in order and explain what they mean.

Scots are stereotypically thrifty and warlike and good with clever devices, other than that I am drawing a blank.
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Old 03-03-2019, 04:32 AM   #5
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Default Re: Why are dwarves Scottish?

Because most actors find a consistent Welsh accent too difficult, look you.
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Old 03-03-2019, 05:57 AM   #6
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Default Re: Why are dwarves Scottish?

I blame Poul Anderson. Hugi the Dwarf in Three Hearts Three Lions has a Scottish accent, and that book is a heavy influence on original D&D and hence the entire roleplaying (and later videogame and fantasy film) community.
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Old 03-03-2019, 07:48 AM   #7
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There are some things like that in Heinlein's juveniles, where he thought he was striking a great blow for equality by hinting that a character was Jewish or Filippino or that a relationship was interracial, but today we need a footnote or an essay to lay the signals in order and explain what they mean.
It's pretty clear that Morrie Abrams is Jewish. Pierre Armand is from Ganymede, but his name is French and he uses a clichéd French saying. There are a couple of Chinese characters in Between Planets, one a weasel and one heroic. Henry Kiku is overtly Kenyan with a British education, and Carolyn Mshiyeni is Zulu, and Alfred McNeil and his great-niece are black South African. Mei-ling Jones is explicitly stated to be Chinese-Peruvian (the last name is pronounced "Ho-nace") and ends up married to a probably white American named Travers. And Juan Rico's being Filipino isn't very concealed; he talks about Ramon Magsaysay in a conversation with a friend who talks about being raised to admire Simon Bolivar. So I'd say that Heinlein didn't always "hint." Reportedly he got pushback on Morrie Abrams and insisted that if his publisher wanted the book they had td accept a Jewish character.

The ethnic relations in Tunnel in the Sky are a bit of a puzzle. It's suggested that Carolyn Mshiyeni and Rod Walker are a potential couple (which doesn't seem to be on either of their minds; Rod is startled by the idea, and then offended by his father's thinking she's not acceptable), and that that makes it necessary for Rod to be black; but Rod DOES take an interest in Jack Daudet, once he figures out she's a girl, and if she's white (she might be black West Indian, I suppose) that would be an interracial pair, and if she's black too then her marriage to Rod's friend Jimmie Throxton, a redheaded Irishman, is interracial. All I can say is that Alice Dalgliesh must not have thought it through.
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Old 03-03-2019, 08:02 AM   #8
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Because most actors find a consistent Welsh accent too difficult, look you.
Apparently the actor who played Gimli in the films has a native Welsh accent and was asked to assume a Scots accent for the part. I always figured it was Peter Jackson who popularized the idea, sometimes to the point of silliness; that's where I first remember encountering it.
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Old 03-03-2019, 09:29 AM   #9
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Default Re: Why are dwarves Scottish?

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I blame Poul Anderson. Hugi the Dwarf in Three Hearts Three Lions has a Scottish accent, and that book is a heavy influence on original D&D and hence the entire roleplaying (and later videogame and fantasy film) community.
My copy of Three Hearts and Three Lions is back in the old country, but I think you could be right. Is there anything in the Disney Snow White or the few fantasy films before 2000? I don't remember the BBC Prince Caspian presenting Doctor Cornelius, Nikabrik and Trumpkin as Scottish, but I think "Dwarves as Scots" was an existing trope when Peter Jackson encountered it.

In Order of the Stick Durkon is a Scottish Dwarf.

There are some British stereotypes about different regions and accents in the British Isles which can be hard for us foreigners to see.

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It's pretty clear that Morrie Abrams is Jewish. Pierre Armand is from Ganymede, but his name is French and he uses a clichéd French saying. There are a couple of Chinese characters in Between Planets, one a weasel and one heroic. Henry Kiku is overtly Kenyan with a British education, and Carolyn Mshiyeni is Zulu, and Alfred McNeil and his great-niece are black South African. Mei-ling Jones is explicitly stated to be Chinese-Peruvian (the last name is pronounced "Ho-nace") and ends up married to a probably white American named Travers. And Juan Rico's being Filipino isn't very concealed; he talks about Ramon Magsaysay in a conversation with a friend who talks about being raised to admire Simon Bolivar. So I'd say that Heinlein didn't always "hint." Reportedly he got pushback on Morrie Abrams and insisted that if his publisher wanted the book they had td accept a Jewish character.
Good points about Between Planets and Mr. Kiku in Star Beast

I would like to have a trustworthy guide to Heinlein's time at Scribner and relationship with Alice Dalgliesh. Most of what I have heard comes from him and his partisans, or is hearsay from people like James Davis Niccole who I don't trust on this topic. The letter to F.M. Busby from his Story Notes file upset a lot of things which I thought I knew about his thinking.

Mostly, I try to remember him as the author of some awesome short stories and short novels from 1939 until circa 1957, and for the ideals in his public writing from that period.
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Last edited by Polydamas; 03-03-2019 at 09:39 AM.
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Old 03-03-2019, 10:13 AM   #10
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Scots are stereotypically thrifty and warlike and good with clever devices, other than that I am drawing a blank.
Big red beards? Large consumption of alcoholic beverages?

The clannishness and propenity to ferocity has already been mentioned but there is also the holding of grudges for extremely long times.
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