A man was plowing
his field close to the forest when he caught the sweet scent of someone baking
a cake. He mentioned how tasty the cake smelled and that he would like a piece
and continued plowing. When he returned to near the location he’d been when he
smelled the cake, he found a pewter bowl with a beautiful fruity cake waiting
for him.
The zwerg, often
translated into dwarf in fairy tales such as Snow White, were perhaps the most
common fairy of Germany, and were commonly neighbors with the humans.
Encounters with dwarves (and similar fairies) sharing cakes or asking for them
or breaking into people’s homes to borrow their ovens to bake them is a staple
of fairy tales. Although the zwerg could be dangerous and thievish, they were
just as likely in recorded tales to be decent neighbors.
For example, in
one tale a zwerg constantly came to borrow a pot for boiling food from a
farmer. When the farmer noticed that she was pregnant he offered to stand as
godfather for the child, but then became worried. He went to his pastor to seek
council, and the pastor told him that once such a promise was made he had to
keep it, but warned him to do everything as instructed by the dwarves. After
the baby zwerg’s baptism the man was given some garbage and told to take it
home, he did this and discovered that it had turned to gold when he got there.
In this story
there is the ever present and underlying fear that existed between human and
fairy. And make no mistake, the zwerg were kin to the fairies. According to
Claude Lecouteux, they “subsumed a variety of very different creatures, which
is the reason for the difficulty affecting all studies of this subject.”
That is, the
zwerg were a synchronization of the mythological dwarves we think of, but also
possibly the fairies of the Celts who once made Germany their home, and
possibly that of other people’s.
In other words,
the zwerg acted in many of the same ways we would expect fairies to act. They
had red hats that allowed them to turn invisible, their children would steal
peas from people’s gardens – causing much antagonism with their human
neighbors.
They were often
seen dancing and celebrating, for example, in one story they would be seen
dancing around old pear trees, and they would dance near weddings at others.
One dwarf danced and sang so exuberantly that he lost his magical hat in a
river. Thankfully some peasants help him recover it, for which he rewarded them
handsomely.
As with fairies the dwarves were dualistic and dangerous figures. They would kidnap human babies and replace them with changelings.
One of the oldest
written mentions of dwarves is a Saxon charm, meant to keep a dwarf from coming
in the form of a spider to cause nightmares. People had good reason to fear the
dwarves of mythology for these might have occasionally helped or hindered the
gods, like the jottin that eventually became the trolls. The dwarves in
mythology rarely if ever helped humans frequently giving humans some a cursed
item or caused some harm.
Indeed, one could
argue that dwarves exist just outside the realm of men and deities, not so far
as the jottin who would bring about Ragnarök, but still they are dangerous
beings.
The zwerg in “Dorste were cruel and dangerous. They loved to frighten and hurt people, they kidnapped young ladies and children. But most particularly they would destroy the farmers’ fields. One farmer discovered that they’d been destroying his pea fields and grew furious and went into town to get some advice. Here he learned that if the zwerg lost their hats they would become visible, so he hired a bunch of men to wait in is fields with long rods. Then when he heard the sound of the zwerg rushing about he had the men beat the rods about until one of them struck the zwerg’s hat off its head. Now visible the zwerg begged for mercy and promised to pay for the damage he’d done, so the farmer let him go. Later he went up to the hill to retrieve the promised payment where the zwerg offered him a dead horse. Furiously he cut a few chunks off it thinking it would be good food for his dogs but nothing else. When he got home he was delighted to discover that the meat had turned to gold."
It’s important to keep in mind that humans had caused the zwerg harm as well. For humans, being greedy were known to steal from the zwerg. What’s more, the humans had taken over the land on which the zwerg lived.
"In Launenberg there was a farmer named Koch. He had several horses that were always sick and many of them died. The farmer didn’t understand what was wrong, but at last he discovered that the zwerg resented him. For his stable had been built above the zwerg’s home, and the horses urine flowed down through the ground into the zwerg’s home. Realizing this the man moved his stable and the zwerg were so grateful they gave him some flax string that never ended"
As with the
fairies people could both fear to encounter the zwerg, but also long to do so,
to be a part of their world. One memorate from the 19th century states that; A
young woman in Braderup had a very hard job like most women on the Frisian
Islands. She felt unhappy and envied the zwerg who were always happy and had to
do very little work. Once she went with her neighbor over the hill to where the
Önnerersken were dancing. “Oh,” She cried. “I would love to marry one of them,
wouldn’t you?”
Her friend
replied that she would. A zwerg heard this and came and courted the women the
next day and soon the two of them were married. She lives with him in his
mountain where they have several children.
There are also memorates of women living happily with a zwerg husband and giving rich gifts to their human nieces and nephews.
There are also stories of the zwerg standing as godfathers to humans who are too poor to find a good godparent or of them giving gifts to people who are on the verge of suicide in order to help alleviate their suffering.
All of this is opposed by stories such as one in which a poor girl is wandering through the freezing snow when she discovers a zwerg home. The zwerg demand that she sleep with one of them in return for shelter. After she complies a woman from the nearby human village bursts into the zwerg's home, rude as can be. While she wished to trade with the zwerg she thinks of them as garbage and is furious to discover a human woman with them. Later she brings back the villagers to murder all the zwerg in the hut.
This story casts the zwerg as self-centered in their demands on their human neighbors, but also as outcasts from society, whom the humans can and will slaughter at any time. It wasn’t uncommon for the zwerg in stories to act as such outcasts, fleeing their homes to new lands, sometimes because of a dragon or giants, but most often because of the actions of humans.
So with this bit of background on the zwerg, let’s consider “Snow White”
Snow White’s first introduction to the zwerg is their little house in the wild forest.
“Everything in the cottage was small, but neater and cleaner than can be told.”
"When it was quite dark the owners of the cottage came back. They were seven dwarfs who dug and delved in the mountains for ore."
"The dwarfs said, if you will take care of our house, cook, make the beds, wash, sew and knit, and if you will keep everything neat and clean you can stay with us and you shall want for nothing."
You will notice that this contrasts greatly with the cartoon, because in lore fairies were obsessed with cleanliness. Fairies too are obsessed with hard work, seeing it as a moral imperative. Many is the person who is punished for being lazy and rewarded for working hard by them. British fairies would leave coins in the shoes of hardworking servants, for example.
Still, the dwarf’s mining profession does tie these zwerg to Germanic traditions about dwarfs, but most dwarfs from sagas and eddas lived underground rather than deep in the forest. The idea of a cottage in the forest makes them seem more like "lords of the land," "kings of the forest" rather than dwarfs or Western European fairies. Such lords of the forest often wanted human servants and or slaves to do work for them. Working for them for a set number of years was often a condition of their granting a person some wish. Yet the small size, and the neatness of the zwerg in “Snow White” makes them seem to be similar to the Celtic and possibly other fairies of pre-Germanic Germany.
It is also
interesting to note that while Snow White ran to the cottage in a single day
through the woods, with no mention of mountains, the Wicked Queen had to walk
over seven mountains to get to it. This is the sort of thing that happens a lot
with fairyland, in which one person might accidently stumble into it, while another
has to walk for weeks or even years to get there, traveling over many
mountains, wastes, rivers, kingdoms etc. Most often such events happen,
however, when someone has to rescue a person from dangerous fairies, this might
be the only mention of someone doing all this so that they can murder someone
who has found themselves ‘lost in fairyland.’
Again, it is difficult to know exactly what is going on in this story is alluding to because the dwarves are made up of multiple motifs which likely represent many ideas that have been stitched together.
Specifically, we
have the motifs of;
Mining dwarves
Spirits who live
in some distant other world
Forest spirits
who dwell in a cottage in the woods and desire a human to work for them.
Fairies who are
extremely neat and clean and tend to be kindly to those in need.
In other words the zwerg aren't just the dwarfs of Germanic mythology, they are also likely the fairies of the Celtic peoples who lived in parts of Germany before the Germanic migration, and the many other fairies that existed in the Alpine regions throughout Central Europe.
As shown in the following fairy tales many of the zwerg were beautiful, and their lifestyle was often believed to be freer, happier than that of humans.
Woman Marries a Zwerg
A young woman in Braderup had a very hard job like most women on the Frisian Islands. She felt unhappy and envied the zwerg who were always happy and had to do very little work. Once she went with her neighbor over the hill to where the Önnerersken were dancing. “Oh,” She cried. “I would love to marry one of them, wouldn’t you?”
Her friend replied that she would.
A zwerg heard this and came and courted the women the next day and soon the two of them were married. She lives with him in his mountain where they have several children.
Yet at the same time, zwerg didn't always have the best relationship with humans. In another story a poor girl is wondering through the freezing snow when she discovers a zwerg home. The zwerg demand that she sleep with one of them in return for shelter. After she complies a woman from the human village bursts into the zwerg's home, rude as can be. While she wished to trade with the zwerg she thinks of them as garbage and is furious to discover a human woman with them. Later she brings back the villagers to murder all the zwerg in the hut.
This is a very different story from the above where a human girl marries a zwerg, or a number of short memories of human women being married to zwerg and living happily with them. In one of these stories a woman and a zwerg are happily married as they discuss what to give as a wedding gift to a human couple they know who is getting married.
People's memories of zwerg are interesting because they paint a picture of people living next door to the fairies. For example:
"In Westerberge the zwerg would enter a house at the far end of a village and bake their bread, using their invisibility caps to remain unseen. Every time they did this they always left some bread to thank the owners of the oven."
"In Launenberg there was a farmer named Koch. He had several horses that were always sick and many of them tied. The farmer didn’t understand what was wrong, but at last he discovered that the zwerg resented him. For his stable had been built above the zwerg’s home, and the horses urine flowed down through the ground into the zwerg’s home. Realizing this the man moved his stable and the zwerg were so grateful they gave him some flax string that never ended"
"The zwerg near the village of Dorste were cruel and dangerous. They loved to frighten and hurt people, they kidnapped young ladies and children. But most particularly they would destroy the farmers’ fields. One farmer discovered that they’d been destroying his pea fields and grew furious and went into town to get some advice. Here he learned that if the zwerg lost their hats they would become visible, so he hired a bunch of men to wait in is fields with long rods. Then when he heard the sound of the zwerg rushing about he had the men beat the rods about until one of them struck the zwerg’s hat off its head. Now visible the zwerg begged for mercy and promised to pay for the damage he’d done, so the farmer let him go. Later he went up to the hill to retrieve the promised payment where the zwerg offered him a dead horse. Furiously he cut a few chunks off it thinking it would be good food for his dogs but nothing else. When he got home he was delighted to discover that the meat had turned to gold."
It becomes clear from the dizzying array of stories about zwerg, that there are indeed a lot of regional fairy traditions about them. So, the fairies in "Snow White" are likely made up of multiple traditions, and may also be fairly unique. In general the zwerg seem to be similar to me a mix of Celtic/Western European fairy ideads. They are generally small, though not always, they love to dance and sing on hills, live in courts, replace human children with changelings, and seem to be refugees from the human invasion. At the same time they are very often clearly Germanic,as they often live in mines and are amazing blacksmiths.
To begin to understand the fairy traditions surrounding these fairies let's examine their introduction in the story: Rather than repeat the whole story here I will, however, simply provide what I believe are the most important quotes about the fairies and their home within.
"Everything in the cottage was small, but neater and cleaner than can be told."
"When it was quite dark the owners of the cottage came back. They were seven dwarfs who dug and delved in the mountains for ore."
"The dwarfs said, if you will take care of our house, cook, make the beds, wash, sew and knit, and if you will keep everything neat and clean you can stay with us and you shall want for nothing."
What should be clear form this is that the zwerg are small, neat, miners, who live in the woods rather than underground, and while they were kind they demanded hard work.
Their mining profession does tie these zwerg to Germanic traditions about dwarfs, but most dwarfs from sagas and eddas lived underground rather than deep in the forest. Indeed, very few fairies lived in cottages in the woods. The idea of a cottage in the forest makes them seem more like "lords of the land," "kings of the forest" rather than dwarfs or Western European fairies. Such lords of the forest often wanted human servants and or slaves to do work for them. Working for them for a set number of years was often a condition of their granting a person some wish. Yet the small size, and the neatness of the zwerg makes them seem to be similar to the Celtic and possibly other fairies of pre-Germanic Germany. These fairies were generally obessed with hard work and would give coins to those who worked hard, often leaving these in a persons boot, while punishing those who didn't. The problem is that many of these are also features that the Romantacist Grimm Brother's may have added or at least focused on. Even so it was common for the zwerg and other fairies to obsess over cleaneliness, kindness, and hardwork so it is likely that these were part of the original fairy tale.
Given the nature of the zwerg as miners, who live in a cottage, and seem to act a bit like Western European small fairies, I would say that there may be three traditions mixed into this story. Either that or the fairies in this story represent a unique local tradition that was intermixed with the Germanic idea of dwarfs.
Article by Ty Hulse
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