Why are fantasy Dwarves/Dwarfs often portrayed with a Scottish accent?

by toastinator

In many works of fiction, particularly video games, Dwarves usually have a Scottish accent. Is there any reason for this? I'd have thought since a lot of fantasy worlds are inspired by Tolkien that the Dwarves would be equally inspired by Norse mythology and by the Jewish people, as are Tolkien's.

If there's a better place to ask this, could you please point me in that direction?

grantimatter

I'm not sure you can get a really "historical" answer for this - /r/AskLiteraryStudies/ might be a better bet. But here's my two cents.

The "Scotch" in Scotch tape got there for the same reason that there's a Scottish Inn motel chain... there was a link between "Scottishness" and "thriftiness" in popular culture at the time.

See also Scrooge McDuck.

So, there's the miserliness/"prone to the dragon-sickness" thing there.

Also, Scottishness was linked to highlands or rugged mountain country, stubbornness, and (especially in late 19th and early 20th century Britain) engineering prowess - see James Watt (leading light of the Industrial Revolution), Alexander Graham Bell (ahoy! ahoy!), Robert Louis Stevenson's [lighthouse-building paternal grandfather](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stevenson_(civil_engineer)), [maternal great-grandfather](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Smith_(engineer)), father and the rest of the Lighthouse Stevensons... there may have been more engineers per capita elsewhere in the British Empire, but they would not have been quite so well known.

I don't know of any academic sources making the connection between Scottish stereotypes and Tolkien's dwarves (or later depictions of Tolkien's dwarves in other media), but the connections seem to be right there.

There might also be something about Norse sacking Lindisfarne and setting up shop in Northumbria (which would be "the rugged north" for most English people), leaving their runic inscriptions and whatnot from there up to the Norse Orkneys... there's even an Orkneyinga Saga... but I don't know if that would somehow have affected casting decisions directly or indirectly.