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Vulgar Swedish dwarfs

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An illustration by Gustaf Tenggren for “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” (1923)

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.

Fiction, Reading

Blogging through LOTR: Concerning dwarves

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Seven dwarfs

Continuing blogging my reading of The Lord of the Rings. Still on The Hobbit.

I have an idea that, if J. R. R. Tolkien had gotten the chance to see the Peter Jackson movies, he would have found the Lord of the Rings movies acceptable in parts. But he would have disliked the Hobbit movies intensely.

One of several things he would have hated in the Hobbit movies is the appearance of the dwarves. Both Tolkien and Lewis were keenly interested in dwarves (or dwarfs), and had definite opinions about them. Lewis writes (in Surprised by Joy, I think) about how he loved dwarfs as a boy, “before Disney vulgarized them.” He describes dwarfs as having long beards and wearing hoods. The dwarfs in the Narnia books are always dressed that way. Likewise, Tolkien’s dwarves always wear hoods except when they wear armor.

Peter Jackson, or his costume designers, apparently disliked hoods. Gimli never wears a hood in the movies. I think a hood or two shows up in the Hobbit films, but they’re gotten rid of fairly quickly. Maybe actors won’t wear them because they put their faces in shadow. Aragorn was supposed to wear a hood when traveling as Strider, too. But it’s almost never up.

Tolkien (and by Tolkien, I mean me, because I’m assuming he’d agree with me) would have hated the Dwarf-Elf romance, and the necessity of making one of the dwarfs “sexy” in order to achieve the unlikely goal of attracting a goddess-like Elf. I don’t think he wanted Thorin to look as heroic as the movies make him, either. Tolkien’s assessment of dwarves’ characters is interesting.

There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and Company, if you don’t expect too much.

That passage is interesting in light of the fact (I don’t know its source, but it’s commonly cited as authentic by Tolkien scholars) that Tolkien modeled his dwarves, at least in part, on the Jews. The passage above parallels pretty well the opinion of a broad-minded Englishman of Tolkien’s time, when pressed on the subject. It sounds condescending to us, but in that day it was commendably tolerant. It’s consistent with the Professor’s famous retort to German publishers when they queried him about his pure Aryan ancestry.

The Hobbit movies went wrong in so many ways. I’ve heard that somebody’s done a cut that reduces them to one movie, excising all Peter Jackson’s “Hobbit Helper” extensions. I’d love to see that. Tolkien and Lewis might even have tolerated it.