I think it says a lot about my tremendous personal modesty that, on the rare occasions when I learn something I didn’t know about Scandinavian history and culture, I share it here in public, in front of our FBI surveillance team and everybody, instead of concealing it. And I did learn something new today, in the August issue of the Sons of Norway’s Viking Magazine.

Even better, there’s an Inkling connection. An adversarial connection, but a connection nonetheless.

C. S. Lewis wrote, in Surprised by Joy:, Chapter III

I fell deeply under the spell of Dwarfs—the old bright-hooded, snowy-bearded dwarfs we had in those days before Arthur Rackham sublimed, or Walt Disney vulgarized, the earthmen.

He wrote, further, in a 1939 letter to his friend A. K. Hamilton Jenkin, “Dwarfs ought to be ugly of course, but not in that way. And the dwarfs’ jazz party was pretty bad.”

Tolkien, it is reliably reported, rebuffed offers from Disney for film rights to the Lord of the Rings, based on similar feelings.

According to “The Art of Trolls,” an article by Rowdy Geirsson in the August Viking Magazine, the fault for this “vulgarization” of dwarfs lies solidly on the head of a Swedish artist, Gustaf Tenggren (1896-1970). Tenggren made his name as an artist in his native Sweden, becoming known for illustrations of fantastical subjects, becoming the featured artist for “Bland tomter och troll,” an annual publication devoted to fairy stories. In 1936 he went to work for Disney Studios, becoming their chief conceptual artist. It was in this capacity that he designed the characters for “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” as well as later productions like “Pinocchio,” “Fantasia” and “Bambi.”

Judging by his Swedish work (an example is posted above), I would guess that Lewis would have been equally displeased by Tenggren’s earlier dwarfs, considering them “sublimed” in the Rackham style. (Though Arthur Rackham was an artist whose Wagnerian work he cherished.)

There’s something in Lewis’ and Tolkien’s criticism, of course, and it’s grown more apparent with the years. Animation is subject to fashions over time. I believe I read somewhere that when “Snow White” first came out, critics admired Disney’s dwarfs but found the “human” characters rather bland. Today the human characters look far better than the dwarfs, who possess a rubbery quality that’s gone out of style. (I personally particularly dislike the works of Fleischer Studios. Except for Popeye. I likes me Popeye.)

It’s a rule that we Norwegians have understood for many centuries – you can never go wrong blaming the Swedes.