The Old Norse List Behind Every Fantasy Dwarf Name

Sixty Names Wedged Into a Doom Poem

The interruption has a name of its own. The Dvergatal, the tally of dwarfs, is a catalogue of more than 60 dwarf names embedded in the Voluspa, the opening poem of the Poetic Edda. In Bellows' 1936 edition it occupies stanzas 10 through 16, and Bellows flags it bluntly as 'a clearly interpolated catalogue of dwarfs' names' that some editors omit entirely. It is the medieval equivalent of a cast list stapled into the middle of a prophecy.

The poem survives in two medieval manuscripts, the Codex Regius of about 1270 and the Hauksbok of about 1334, and Snorri Sturluson quotes practically the entire Dvergatal in the Prose Edda with the names in a somewhat changed order. Scribes kept copying the list even while editors sniffed at it, which suggests the names themselves were the point.

The catalogue even names its own authority. In stanza 10, Motsognir is 'the mightiest made of all the dwarfs, and Durin next,' and the dwarfs shape figures in man's likeness 'as Durin said.' Keep an eye on Durin. He gets the biggest promotion in the whole affair.

Thorin and Company, Preassembled Since the Middle Ages

Twelve of the thirteen dwarves in Thorin's company stand ready-made in the Dvergatal. Stanza 11 supplies Dvalin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Nori and Dain. Stanza 12 delivers Thrain, Thorin and Thror, the entire royal line in a single verse. Stanza 13 holds Fili, Kili and Fundin, whom Tolkien used as Balin's father. Stanza 15 finishes the roster with Gloin, Dori and Ori, Snorri's copy of the list supplies Oin, and the same catalogue carries Durin, Nain, Lofar and Andvari besides.

These were meaningful words before they were names. Thorin, Old Norse Thorinn, means 'darer' or 'bold one,' which is a fair one-word review of the character. Tolkien did not invent dwarf names that sound Norse. He took Norse names and let English readers feel the sound without the sense.

Gandalf Was a Dwarf First

Stanza 12 reads 'Vigg and Gandalf, Vindalf, Thrain, / Thekk and Thorin, Thror, Vit and Lit.' Gandalf sits in the middle of the dwarf tally like anyone else. Bellows glosses the name as 'Magic Elf,' and the standard etymology is gandr, a wand, staff or magic, plus alfr, an elf. A staff-elf on a list of dwarfs is a name wearing the wrong uniform.

Tolkien noticed. In the earliest six-page manuscript of The Hobbit, Gandalf was the name of the chief dwarf, and the wizard was called Bladorthin, an arrangement so settled that John D. Rateliff's The History of the Hobbit names the accompanying typescript 'The Bladorthin Typescript.' The name eventually migrated to the figure who actually carries a staff, which is what the etymology had been muttering all along.

Balin and Gimli, the Two Who Are Not on the List

Balin is the one member of Thorin's company, Bilbo aside, whose name is not in the Voluspa at all. It rhymes with Dwalin and has no apparent Old Norse meaning. Jim Allan, in An Introduction to Elvish (1978), suggested Old Norse bal, meaning fire, or Balyn, the knight of Le Morte d'Arthur. Either way, one of the most familiar dwarf names in fantasy is a phonetic stowaway, built to rhyme with a genuine list name.

Gimli is missing from the catalogue too, but not from the poem. The form appears once in the Voluspa as the dative of Gimle, the hall 'more fair than the sun, roofed with gold' where the righteous dwell after Ragnarok, stanza 64 in Bellows. Allan read the name as 'One-of-Gimle,' from gim, fire, plus hle, shelter, and Tolkien himself wrote in a draft letter that poetic Old Norse gim seems to have meant 'fire.' The gruffest dwarf in modern fantasy is named for a gold-roofed paradise.

The Rabble of Eddaic-Named Dwarves

Tolkien was privately embarrassed by the raid. On 14 December 1937 he wrote to G.E. Selby, 'I don't much approve of the Hobbit myself, preferring my own mythology... to this rabble of Eddaic-named dwarves out of the Voluspa, newfangled hobbits and gollums (invented in an idle hour) and Anglo-Saxon runes.' Christopher Tolkien thought the complaint worth preserving and quoted it in his Foreword to The Return of the Shadow.

In public he was more gracious about his sources. A letter printed in the Observer on 20 February 1938, Letter 25 in the collected letters, confirms that Gandalf's name and the dwarves' names come from the Elder Edda, and throws in a bonus etymology, Smaug being 'the past tense of the primitive Germanic verb smugan, to squeeze through a hole.'

And the rabble got upgraded. Durin, the list's internal authority, became the eldest ancestor of the Longbeards, and the royal line of Thror, Thrain and Thorin became Durin's Folk. A half-line of medieval verse ended up carrying a dynasty.

What Harald Bluetooth Has to Do With It

The surname half of the convention comes from how Norsemen actually addressed each other. A byname, a descriptive tag hung on the given name, did the work surnames do now. Harald Bluetooth, Old Norse Haraldr blatonn Gormsson, ruled Denmark from about 958 to 986, and the tag everyone remembers is the tooth, not the patronymic Gormsson.

The Dvergatal already contains one byname posing as a full name. Eikinskjaldi, 'Oak Shield' in Bellows' gloss, appears twice in the catalogue, in stanzas 13 and 16, as a standalone dwarf. Tolkien split the name off, translated it into English, and pinned it on his king in exile, so Thorin Oakenshield carries a given name and a surname lifted from the same eight stanzas.

Then he gave the byname a backstory in the proper Norse manner, earned by a deed on a specific day. At the Battle of Azanulbizar in Third Age 2799, Thorin's shield broke and he cut an oak bough to ward off blows. The account sits in a note to Appendix A of The Lord of the Rings, and a draft of that appendix printed in The Peoples of Middle-earth adds that he swore to bear a plain oak shield without device until he was hailed king. That is what a good byname is, a whole anecdote compressed into one compound word.

Ironfoot, Stonehelm, and the Template Everyone Copied

Tolkien then extended the pattern past anything in the Edda with epithets of his own invention, Dain Ironfoot and Thorin III Stonehelm. Material plus body part, material plus gear. Later fantasy copied that template rather than the catalogue itself, which is why generic dwarf surnames run to stone, iron and oak while the given names still echo stanzas 11 through 15. Even the beard strain of the convention has a pedigree, since Tolkien's own dwarf lineage was the Longbeards.

The recipe has two slots working in different registers. The given name is short, consonant-heavy and Norse, and once meant something plain, the way Thorin meant 'bold one.' The byname is an earned compound that implies an incident. Cue a batch on the dwarf name generator and you can watch both slots fill. The keepers are the ones where the surname makes you want to hear about the day it happened, because that is the test Oakenshield passes.