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[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I was listening to a Viking song in Old Norse. It sounded like one of Swerwer's works.

Also, Vikings are warlike.

...continue listing the similarities, Bay12!

[PTTG??]

You mean, besides everything?

[Salmeuk]

Dwarves like sailing longships and pillaging Saxon sheep farmers, and discovering new continents while rarely obtaining quality steel from trade partners centered in . . . no. I don't really see any similarities, I mean vikings were vikings and dwar-


wait a second. I have forgotten the most important point.

beards.

beards?

beards!


in the end, though, I think this sort of disproves any similarity.

[Silverthrone]

Considering how much of the traditional Dwarf mythology comes from old Norse culture, it's no wonder at all that they tend to be portrayed as vaguely Norse. The core traits of the mythos remain the same. They're small, fairly ugly creatures living in the hills and mountains doing marvellous metalwork. Believe you me, when you're out in the woods, you can easily imagine the faint sounds of hammer strikes from within the cliffs.

But that said, I think the best thing about DF is that the D0rfs are what you imagine them to be. Since so much of the game is up to your imagination, you can colour the scene precisely as you want. When I embarked to a desert in a young world, I imagined them as ancient Egyptians. When I embarked on a warm river valley rich in iron, I pretended they were Babylonians, and built and equipped the militia with that in mind. It's great fun.

The DF Dwarves are Norse in the sense that the mythological creature they are based on mostly derives from Norse culture. What culture they are actually "supposed" to be in game is entirely up to the player, at least in my opinion.

[vjmdhzgr]

Dwarves aren't actually very warlike. I think they actually are incapable of assaulting enemies, they only defend. This is quite different from Viking age Scandinavia when everybody was expected to carry a weapon of some sort on them, and going off and raiding for a few months or something was a thing ordinary people would do.

[Imic]

Dwarves aren't actually very warlike. I think they actually are incapable of assaulting enemies, they only defend. This is quite different from Viking age Scandinavia when everybody was expected to carry a weapon of some sort on them, and going off and raiding for a few months or something was a thing ordinary people would do.

You could just go into adventure mode and lead their armies to war.

[pikachu17]

Dwarves aren't actually very warlike. I think they actually are incapable of assaulting enemies, they only defend. This is quite different from Viking age Scandinavia when everybody was expected to carry a weapon of some sort on them, and going off and raiding for a few months or something was a thing ordinary people would do.

OK, I admit I am not a historian, nor did I check google, but I'm fairly certain that "everybody was expected to carry a weapon of some sort on them, and going off and raiding for a few months or something was a thing ordinary people would do." is a cliché. Vikings were traders and craftsmen(dwarfy), not just savage barbarians.

Sidenote: in the Norse myths, it is stated that when the sun comes up, like trolls, dwarves turn to stone. they also are not far removed from the dead, having the wisdom that only the dead can have, and hold up the four corners of the world. Also they are greedy and horny, as can be seen in the story of the Brising(not sure how it's spelled, though) Necklace. They made numerous and sundry artifacts most notably Thor's hammer and Odin's spear, but they also created a number of intentionally cursed swords,

[Silverthrone]

It's less about savageness, I believe, and more that life in iron-age Scandinavia was rather tough. It was sparesly populated and didn't have much in the way of resources, coupled with the long winters. Going off raiding or trading was one way of building a better life for yourself, if, for example, you didn't have a decent inheritance to look forward to. That sort of environment does grow a kind of warlikeness; not for its own sake, but because it'd often be neccessary to defend yourself, without a strong rule of law to help you.

That doesn't sound very dwarfy, though. Why bother stealing some stranger's pathetic baubles when you can rip them out of the very earth?

[Vattic]

OK, I admit I am not a historian, nor did I check google, but I'm fairly certain that "everybody was expected to carry a weapon of some sort on them, and going off and raiding for a few months or something was a thing ordinary people would do." is a cliché. Vikings were traders and craftsmen(dwarfy), not just savage barbarians.

There is argument about this due to questions over the motives of the historians. Most sources are either: angry raided Christian histories, Norse family history with an eye on glory, Norse writings about the barbarous time before Christianity, and later nationalistic Norwegian histories again with an eye to glory.

According to the sagas Norse men were rarely far from a weapon. Mostly this was because of how their honour system worked with duels to the death and revenge attacks against you aimed at other men in your family. Status was a big deal and even the farmers and craftsmen fought amongst themselves. From what I gather only a small percentage of the population would be raiders and even then it was not a full time job. Youths would do it to gain renown, but were expected to settle in later life.

[PopTart]

The key to understanding who dwarfs are is to view their relationship with their enemies. So the question is, who are the goblins? The way I see it, goblins represent anarchic raiders—think Asiatic tribes from the early medieval period. Huns or something. They have no central loyalty. They're just evil, opposed to civilization, opposed to good. This positions dwarfs as civilized, centrally-governed outposts with a proper religion. Dwarfs would correspond to southern Germanic tribes brought under the Christianized rule of Charlemagne (the Mountainhomes).

I'm not too knowledgeable on Toady's dwarven historical ages (or actual history either), but isn't there a previous Age of Myth or Age of Heroes or something? That could correspond to the fact that the tribes appropriated the Roman religion (Christianity).

So yeah, early medieval Europe. They're definitely not Vikings. If anything, goblins are Vikings.

[PopTart]

Another possibility: dwarfs are stocky, darker-skinned Southern Europeans of the late Bronze Age. After exhausting their ancestral mines, they migrated to Central and Northern Europe where they encountered fair-skinned, tall Elves and Humans. This game offers us the fantasy that these stocky folk discovered steel weapons thousands of years early, thus rewriting all history since the Iron Age—no Roman Empire, no Christianity, just a pagan paradise.

[pikachu17]

You can't really compare dwarves to Vikings that much to dwarves, when they don't even have boats, can you?

[PopTart]

I'm not even sure you can compare Vikings to Vikings...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHHLFFy6CWs