Dwarf (A.S. dweorg, dverg, or dweorh; cf. Icel. dvergr, Ger. zwerg) is a term applied to any organised being, but especially to the human species, whose height is much less than the average height of their race. The word is often restricted to those cases where there has been a uniform and general arrest of growth, except perhaps in the nervous system, which is often fully developed in dwarfs. See DEFORMITIES.
The ancients believed not only in dwarfs, but in nations of them. Aristotle declared that the report of trustworthy witnesses testified to the existence of a minute race of men, with minute horses, living in caves which are washed by the waters of the Nile; and Pliny gives details as to their habits and geographical position. There were also, according to later writers, pygmies (Gr. pyx, 'the fist') in Thule and beyond the Ganges. Greek fancy delighted to paint their Lilliputian dimensions: they cut down every corn-car with axes; when Hercules came into their country, they climbed by help of ladders up to his goblet, to drink from it.
Of dwarf races of man, the most notable are the Bushmen (q.v.), 4 feet 7 inches high; the Akkas (q.v.) in Central Africa, about 4 feet 10 inches high, with whom Emin's men identified the hordes of forest dwarfs ('a venomous, cowardly, and thievish race, and very expert with their arrows') by whom Stanley's march in 1888 was so harassed; the Obongos on the Gaboon, and the still smaller Batwas, 4 feet 3 inches (see AFRICA); a tribe called M'Kabba, near Lake Ngami, reported as only 4 feet 1 inch; also the Andaman Islanders (under 5 feet), the Aetas in the Philippines, the Malayan Samangs, the Javan Kalangs. The Lapps, Ainos, Fuegians, and Veddahs are somewhat taller.
Dwarfs play a large part in the mythology of the ancient Germanic nations. They had their own kings, and dwelt in caves and rocky cavities in the interior of the earth, wherein are priceless treasures, metal, and wondrous works of art. It is they who forge for the gods their armour, who gave Odin his spear, and Thor his hammer Mjölnir. Some of the attributes of the dwarfs are supposed to have been derived from an actual race of small stature—the Lapps, who occupied part of the Scandinavian peninsula before the immigration of the Gothic Scandinavian peoples (see SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY, and Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie). British tradition tells of a 'Tom Thumb' at King Arthur's court; and Gulliver's Lilliputians are amongst the most familiarly known of all dwarfs.
Dwarfs were not infrequently retained as court favourites or toys down until the 18th century; more recently they have been popular as curiosities exhibited in shows. Of ancient dwarfs, Philetas of Cos, tutor of Ptolemy Philadelphus, was said to have worn weights in his pockets to keep him from being blown away, and a niece of Augustus had two dwarfs said to have been only 2 feet 4 inches. Gibson and his wife, dwarfs of Queen Henrietta Maria, had a united height of 7 feet 2 inches. Geoffrey Hudson (called Sir Geoffrey, and known to us from Peveril of the Peak) was 3 feet 9 inches. 'Bébé,' dwarf of King Stanislaus of Poland, was only 23 inches in height, and died aged ninety in Paris in 1858. Count Borowlaski, a Pole of birth and accomplishments, was at thirty years of age but 3 feet 3 inches in height; he died in England in 1837. Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838-83), the American dwarf known as General Tom Thumb, was exhibited in England by Barnum in 1844. In 1863, when 31 inches in height, he married Lavinia Warren, aged twenty-one, and 32 inches in height. They, with their child and a dwarf called Commodore Nutt, visited England in 1864. The so-called 'Aztecs,' and Flynn, a New Yorker called General Mite, and only 21 inches high, are among dwarfs who have been exhibited in England. Many jockeys are practically dwarfs; and means are taken to keep down the stature of youths intended for this calling. Unlike giants, who are usually feeble in body and mind, ill-proportioned and short-lived, many dwarfs are strong for their size, well-proportioned, active, and intelligent. Some have spoken four or more languages. See E. J. Wood's Giants and Dwarfs (1868), and Tyson's Pygmies of the Ancients (1896).