Following on the heels of yesterday's post, it seems that J.R.R. Tolkien drew some of his inspiration for the Dwarves of Middle Earth from a rather unlikely place-- the Jews.
The Dwarves, especially in The Hobbit, are depicted as having been scattered from their homeland, much as the Jews were. The more martial aspects of their culture stem from Old Testament depictions of the fighting Israelites, and their skill with metallurgy comes both from the traditional Norse image of a dwarf and from a Medieval stereotype of Jews as "makers of beautiful and well-crafted things." There are even supposedly parallels between Tolkien's descriptions of Dwarf music and that of medieval Jewry.
I'm honestly not quite sure what to make of this.
The source of this information, according to Wikipedia, is The History of the Hobbit, John Rateliff, Harper Collins, 2011; a combination of Tolkein's notes and drafts and Rateliff's commentary. Google Books doesn't have the complete text, so I can't verify it, although everyone participating on the Wikipedia discussion page seems to accept it as truth.
Actually, I thought that the Hobbitry were lifted rather blatantly from Wagner's Ring Cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien%27s_influences).
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