particular are not distinguished from dwarfs (Gylf. 34, Skáldsk. 35). Dwarfs
are often credited with the same kinds of antisocial behaviour as elves.
Dwarfs, however, are more especially associated with living underground,
beneath rocks, and with magical craftsmanship. In Nordic myth they make all
kinds of wonderful things, sometimes commissioned by the gods.^57 They can
make things for men too. German legends tell of a dwarf smith or smiths who
would work by night under his hill and leave finished ploughshares or other
articles to be found in the morning.^58 A parallel story from the Mediterranean
was recorded by Pytheas of Massalia in the fourth century : Hephaestus
was believed to live under Stromboli, where the roar of his furnace and
the clanging of his hammers could be heard; in former days a man could
leave unworked iron at the place, and the next day he would collect the sword
or whatever it was that he required, and pay for the work (sch. Ap. Rhod.
- 761–5a).
‘Hephaestus’ here must stand for a local smith figure, who may or may not
have been a dwarf in the sense of being small of physique. Certainly there is
a wider association between dwarfs and secret manufacturing or creative
labour. In Latvian folklore there is a dwarf Ru ̄k ̧is who lives under mountains
or tree roots and who comes out at night to advance the works of men.^59 The
Idaean Dactyls of Greek myth were conceived as wizards who lived on the
Phrygian or Cretan Mt Ida and invented iron-working (‘Hes.’ fr. 282, Phoronis
fr. 2). But these mountains took their name from a word for ‘timber forest’,
and the !δαι
οι ∆α ́ κτυλοι must originally have been the ‘forest Finger-people’,
dwarfs no bigger than a finger who lived in the wooded hills and worked with
metals.^60 Analogous names are borne by the Pygmaioi, ‘Fist-sized folk’, and by
the Tom Thumb and Däumling of folk-tale. The Lithuanian Barzdùkai,
dwarfs who lived underground or under elders, were according to Praetorius
‘about a finger tall’.^61
The artificer function is not altogether foreign to elves. Snorri, as we saw,
regarded the dwarfs as a category of elf. The mythical smith Volund (Weland)
is called ‘prince of elves’, as noted in Chapter 3, and the fact that one of the
(^57) Alvíssmál 3, cf. Vo ̨luspá 48; Ynglinga saga 12; Gylf. 34, Skáldsk. 35; de Vries (1956), i. 254;
Turville-Petre (1964), 233–5.
(^58) A. Kuhn, ZVS 4 (1855), 96–8. A similar legend, cited by Kuhn, attached to Wayland’s
Smithy on the Ridgeway above the Vale of the White Horse. Someone whose horse had lost a
shoe would take it there, put down some money, and withdraw for a while. When he returned
the money would be gone and the horse re-shod.
(^59) Biezais–Balys (1973), 438.
(^60) U. von Wilamowitz, Kl. Schr. v(2) (Berlin 1937), 31.
(^61) Cf. Grimm (1883–8), 449–51, 1412; Mannhardt (1936), 542. Albanian dwarfs too live
under mountains: Lambertz (1973), 507 f.
296 7. Nymphs and Gnomes