image source: https://www.reddit.com/r/fakehistoryporn/comments/7op4em/first_dwarf_in_the_bitcoin_mines_in_toronto/
As I run through each verse of Tolkien’s Dwarven Song of Old Wealth, popularized in Peter Jackson’s more recent film The Hobbit (2012), my mind is torn between prototypical myths of kings and mountain men. On the one hand, the Dwarven Song tells a tale of a mysterious King under the mountain who returns unto his hall. On the other, it’s the tale of an old powerful dwarf taken by madness after losing his mountain and his fathomless horde of gold. For me, the tale confounds and twists two popular mythical archetypes from very polar, yet both proto-Indo European cultures: the Old Man of the Mountain (or the Wildman, wodewose), and the King asleep in the Mountain who returns.
Continue reading “Goldmen and Dogefathers”
