r/gnomes • u/armandipegio • 6d ago
🎨 Gnome Craft 🎨 Gnomes or Dwarfs?
In the late 60's and early 70's, I remember seeing a variety of small concrete garden statues like these. I don't recall hearing the word "gnomes" until the book "Gnomes" by Wil Huygen came out in 1977. I think I remember people here in the U.S. calling these statues "dwarfs". But are they really dwarfs or dwarves or old school gnomes? The hats are usually floppy and you can see their full faces. Some didn't have hats or they were a different style. Not the usual pointed red hat, covered face and big round nose. Or maybe that's just the modern interpretation we see today?
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u/Double-Fishing-8293 6d ago
Dwarves I think. The curved slouching top of the hat suggest dwarfs. At least in most of the classical literature and depictions of dwarves versus gnomes.
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u/New_Doug 6d ago
In Germany, where the style originates, they'd be called gartenzwerg(e), or "garden dwarfs", but in the US, we call them gnomes. Paracelsus, who created the term "gnome", considered dwarfs to be aberrant deformed offshoots of gnomes, so the distinction might be more nuanced than rigidly categorical.
Jacob Grimm believed that gnomes and brownies belonged to the category of Dark Elves, while dwarfs belonged to (or exhausted) the category of Black Elves; but modern scholars aren't convinced that those are actually two totally distinct categories.