Why might dwarves be black skinned in a medieval fantasy world?

Question

In a classic medieval fantasy world (e.g. LotR), with elves, human, orcs, dwarves, etc., why would a population (or a few individuals) belonging to the dwarf race have black skin, while the vast majority of dwarves are white-skinned?

In this world, dwarves spend their days digging and drinking beer and they live underground in stone houses. Some of them go out, but they are usually not at ease with the outside world, and outside people often bash them. If some dwarves go out, it is mainly for commercial reasons (sell precious stones, buy food/beer...). Of course some of them can be banished from their people and have to spend the rest of their lives outside (or in another cave), and a few go out on quests and adventures, in order to earn money and fame.

I don't want to twist the answer, but since black skin in humans is an evolution made to protect them from UV, it seems hard to me to have underground living people with a black skin. But another explanation than "natural evolution" is completely acceptable.

PS: This world also includes magic, but dwarves usually are not familiar with it and don't like it.

Answer 1

If the caves the dwarves live in are not pitch black, maybe due to natural light or glowing rocks, then animals that lived in the caves when a particular species of dwarf first evolved could have hunted these prehistoric dwarves by sight. The rocks in the caves and mountains could conceivably be black in colour giving the prehistoric dwarves a camouflage advantage if they are black. The black colour is a leftover genetic reminder from that time and appears only in dwarfs from that particular mountain.

Alternatively there is some form of rock that they mined which emits a glow on a wavelength other than visible light. The dwarves evolved special vision to see the glow and had to sacrafice colour vision in the process making black skin the only appropriate colour so that the dwarves can see each other more easily. Alternatively their skin reflects mostly on this wavelength meaning to non-dwarves they appear black but to each other they do not. (Thanks to @Captain Man for this idea.)

Answer 2

Skin colour in humans is, as you say related to protection from the sun, essentially lighter skin = less light for the production of the vitamin D.

If dwarves don't need to produce vitamin D (maybe their food is high in vitamin D or it's just not part of their make-up) then there isn't an evolutionary pressure for skin colour to diverge to take up more light. It would then be a case of suiting your environment to avoid predators (as another answer states) and mating choices. However mating choices can result in sexual dimophism

Answer 3

Melanin protects from sunburn -- so it's entirely possible that Dwarves could evolve the same protection, although not from the sun.

As Dwarves are regularly portrayed as metal smiths, it's entirely possible that they would have developed darker skin as a protection against the light and radiation coming from the forge.

It may be that only certain bloodlines (clans?) have developed the protection, and it's not a widespread thing.

Answer 4

Here's a few ideas:

Mutation: Maybe dwarfish albinos are black skinned instead of white skinned.

Mythology: On a quest to seek the Source of All Fire, he (or an ancestor) strayed too close to flame, and his skin was burned black for ever after.

Sci-Fi: The dwarves are actually an experiment in genetic engineering by The Ancient Ones, who have long since vanished into the mists of time, leaving only ruins to hint at their presence.

Magic: A wizard did it: "I curse you, that your skin be as black as your heart, so that all may know your villainy on sight!"

Heredity: Your dwarf is actually half-drow, and inherited their skin color.

Handwave: "Why is his skin black?" "Because... look over there!" whoosh

Culture: Once a month, he painstakingly daubs indelible dye over every inch of his body, representing his dedication to the God of the Dark. Or make it a tattoo, so it's permanent.

Answer 5

You can utilize the same evolutionary selection pressure as surface dwellers if you have the dwarves living in an area of radiation emitting minerals. Melanin absorbs a specific wavelength but this does not have to be the case. Perhaps the pigmented granules the dwarves have protect against beta particles (for example, the pigment binds iron or lead to help shield against radiation), which can penetrate the skin. Beta particles travelling though water cause it to glow (cherenkov radiation) so this could be how the dwarves illuminate their underground realm. Numerous minerals emit beta particles (as well as alpha particles, but those can be blocked easily enough).

There is also social selection. Much like previous questions similar to this, if a dark skinned ruler or influential dwarf came to power, they could drive sexual selection towards dark skin. Over time, especially if this preference was hard coded into religious text or political favor, the vast majority of the population could be dark skinned despite there not being any biological pressure to do so.

Answer 6

Though it does not explain how or why (I'm assuming "cuz magic"), dwarves in the D&D world tend to have darkish skins: quoting from the D&D V edition Player's Handbook:

Dwarven skin ranges from deep brown to a paler hue tinged wilh red, but lhe most common shades are light brown or deep tan, like certain tones of earth. Their hair, worn long but in simple styles, is usually black, gray, or brown, though paler dwarves often have red hair. Male dwarves value their beards highly and groom them carefully.

Same goes with dark elves, which in the Forgotten Realms setting, live underground. Dark skin, in the tones of earth, in the case of the dwarves, could have been developed as a mimesis technique. It's much harder to spot a short brown skinned humanoid when the whole area is the same colour.

Answer 7

Melanism in the jaguar (Panthera onca) is conferred by a dominant allele, and in the leopard (Panthera pardus) by a recessive allele. Close examination of the color of these black cats will show that the typical markings are still present, but are hidden by the excess black pigment melanin, giving an effect similar to that of printed silk. This is called "ghost striping". Melanistic and non-melanistic animals can be littermates. It is thought that melanism may confer a selective advantage under certain conditions since it is more common in regions of dense forest, where light levels are lower. Recently, preliminary studies also suggest that melanism might be linked to beneficial mutations in the immune system.

the Black Jaguar was literally the first thing I though about after reading your question....

There's also the eel that lives all time time hidden between rocks and corals but it's still black in color, though I don't really know why.

Answer 8

...but since black skin in humans is an evolution made to protect them from UV...

I think that's your answer: just find some underground UV-emitting source (possibly regionally specific), and you're good to go. Maybe some odd mutation of fungus, or some underground radiation source (e.g., long lost insanely powerful magical artifact), or whatnot.

One specific example might be a specific kind of rare (and radioactive) ore that they use to smelt handwavium. Given enough untold generations of dwarves (so-and-so, son of such-and-such, son of etc.), the dwarves of that region have evolved that way. It's not enough radiation to be truly dangerous ("trust me") to those who wear armor or wield weapons made from it - but it's enough to have changed those who live in that section of the underworld.

Answer 9

Melanism is a genetic mutation that change the color of the skin, feather or hair. That's the mutation of the black panther. It doesn't exist on human but with your dwarves you can do whatever you want.

Melanism is genetic so children has also a chance to be black. If you have at a moment for a reason or another a group of black dwarves isolated (for example because of dwarves with pointy white hoods and torches) they will develop a population of exclusively black dwarves (with maybe some white kids randomly)

Answer 10

OP stated in a comment that one of the guy he played with wanted to be a black dwarf, but most of the dwarves were white. So I'm taking it as an exception amongst dwarves.

So even if you stated that dwarves live in cave, there can still be an exception...

In my last D&D campaign, the main city was in the middle of the desert. There were huge rocks going from deep underground to the surface, full of precious materials ( especially gems ), which attracted a lot of dwarves, and the city was built around this. So most dwarves in the city were pretty dark skinned.

Other people have already given evolutionnary explanation, I'm going through the path of another of my answer: it's artifical ( How can I explain alien skin being different colors? ) It can be self-inflicted, to represent its belonging to a certain tribe/nation. Made like a giant tatoo, or a ritual were the dwarf is burn in a special fire that blacken the skin, or made with a spell that has skin color modification as a side effect (maybe not always black), or a special decoction that has unique side effects on each people that drinks them.

It can also be a virus/bacteria/fongus, or a genetic disorder (just like albinism, but reversed). I prefer the genetic disorder because you would have small patches of black dwarves under the mountains that live together, excluded from the rest, and they would continue to transmit their genetic disorder this way. (just saw that Rigop already stated that in his answer)

You said dwarves didn't like magic, but still. I remember from a D&D manual that black dwarves were the results of magic experimentations by black elves (or maybe it was another race). A curse would be my best guess, because if it's the only black dwarf ever, he is gonna be suspicious.

(4 edits after rereading the question and other answer, I really need to read more carefully ...)

Answer 11

You are thinking inside the box: fantasy worlds are not beholden to real world science.

The simplest answer is that dwarves were created from clay by the gods and their broad phenotypical traits were determined by what type of clay was used.

Since evolution does not exist in this fantasy world because the gods did not include it, dwarves will never become albino in response to their subterranean environment.

Answer 12

Given that this is a magical universe in which the various intelligent species were created by the appropriate god, then the skin color would be part of that creation. In this case, dwarves are usually created by a blacksmithing type god and would be linked to stones. The black dwarves would perhaps have been created using granite and be linked to the black stones at the root of the mountains.

Answer 13

Genes for the black skin may be passed down from half dwarves - half black humans. The way they could stay strong enough in the natural selection to have significant portion of the dwarvish population black after those genes would be for one time brought to otherwise just dwarvish population, even when it would be biologically not benefitial to have black skin underground, it could be taken as a sign of nobility among the dwarves. You'd need to create a story behind why is that, but there has been a lot of different, sometimes even quite ridiculous traits which were taken as a sign of nobility in our history.

Answer 14

Let's start with human evolution

As some commenters pointed out, the evolution of light skin in humans had as much to do with vitamin D as it had with sexual selection. Extremely white skin seems to be seen as beautiful in at least three pre-colonial cultures: Europe, Japan and India (before Western beauty standards were exported to the rest of the world). Lower UV radiation in higher latitudes made fair skin less of a disadvantage and therefore enabled this trait to exist. Also, it is rather universal across Eurasian cultures to associate lighter skin with nobility (those who spend time indoors and don't work) and darker skin with poverty (those who work in the fields).

Evolving the dwarves with sexual selection

Knowing that gives us some ideas to work from. For example, since dwarves are very different from humans, perhaps they have a preference for darker skin despite not having an evolutionary reason for liking it. Actually, if dwarves rarely leave their caves and mines but still require at least some vitamin D from the sun, darker skin would be a disadvantage and sexual selection paradoxically selects for less-adjusted individuals, because survival of their genes proves their resilience and child-rearing possibilities. Of course, this is not something your dwarfs would think consciously or even subconsciously. It's an evolutionary explanation why the "gene for liking darker skin" could persist in the dwarven population. Honestly, I wouldn't even mention this detail in the media itself, maybe in an interview or a blog post if the topic of black dwarves not being realistic is brought up.

Mixing in the aspects of the dwarven culture

Going further with our parallel with humans, I think it's hard to justify skin not getting darker when a dwarf spends more time outside. If you want to put cultural significance on the tone of the skin, you need to use some imagination. Cultures are not very logical, so you can go wild with it. Maybe noble dwarves spend most of their time at leisure on the surface or are forced to stay outside as they perform their diplomatic duties with other races. Maybe trade-dwarves are incredibly rich and richness became associated with having a good tan. Maybe it's not about being rich but dangers and inconveniences of leaving the safety of the caves, so those who often venture outside out of necessity or adventurousness are seen as brave heroes. Maybe alcohol or a certain type of popular dwarven drug causes their skin to darken and the dwarf with the strongest head is admired. I'd like to point out, that you cannot go on a raid without going outside and if your dwarves are proud warriors, they certainly love raids. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination here.

So how are the fair-skinned dwarves still the majority?

In your question, you want most of the dwarves in your world to be white and only a minority to be black. This is easy enough. You mentioned yourself that it doesn't make sense biologically for dwarves to have a darker tone of skin, and that's true. The thing about sexual selection is that it forces evolution in a direction that doesn't make sense and is often quite rapid compared to other evolutionary pressures. It biologically doesn't make sense for humans to have white skin (not olive, but completely white skin like in Scandinavia). Our love for white skin is the reason why white people get sunburns and skin cancer even in the area where white skin originally evolved.

You need to spread the dwarves geographically as far away as possible, depending on the interconnectedness of your world. If the technological level of your world allows for the presence in your setting of dwarves from a distant continent separated by an ocean or untraversable terrain (like Sahara + Kongo in our world), this would be the best. Then a preference for black skin can evolve in one group and not the other. You can also do to your dwarves what likely happened to humans, but in reverse - first species of dwarves evolve far north/south with fair skin, but with a preference for darker skin, which doesn't evolve, because dark-skinned dwarves suffer from vitamin D deficiency at that altitude and have lower rates of survival. Then they migrate towards the equator and suddenly dark skin becomes less of a disadvantage, so sexual preference takes its course and, over the course of 2000 generations or so, drastically changes the skin of the population in the hotter climates. This gives us a nice opportunity for world-building interactions, where light-skinned dwarves are shown being enamoured with their darker-skinned counterparts from distant lands. Compare this with human fair-skinned maidens from our medieval ballads.

For the sake of realism, it would be best if there were distant and preferably vast lands, where dark-skinned dwarves are the majority. If you really have an important reason for making dark-skinned dwarves a significant minority in the entire world, it's better to limit their population density and keep the lands they inhabit at least comparable to the rest of the world. I wouldn't go lower than 20% of the world being the land of black dwarves, and if we assume there is a good reason for dark-skinned dwarves to exist in the first place, that's already a very, very low figure.

Answer 15

Too long for a comment, so let it be an answer.

@Joe mentioned light radiation coming from the forge.

Well, historical timespan usually wouldn't be long enough for evolutionary changes to kick in, especially in a society. Something that kills majority of specimen without desired trait / does not allow them to reproduce would be needed.

In medieval times, childbirth was really dangerous procedure and giving birth in sterile-ish environment would be a good thing to do. I mean, they would quickly notice that it simply works, no matter how they explain that to themselves.

For example, take a look at black banya. Birch wood contains tar and so does birch smoke, so insides of black banya were covered with soot and tar. It was pretty germ-less space so people would give birth there and it worked (also access to hot water).

What if some group of dwarves for whatever reason tried giving birth near the forge? If they have some cult of those then forge would be cleanest place around and UV radiation and high temperature would wipe out all germs on a regular basis. Giving birth there would give a higher survival rates than, say, in bedroom. Also, having clan of proud "forgeborn" dwarves is pure awesome!

Minor problem though: subjecting newborns to intense UV may not be a great idea because cancer. If dwarves also have higher regeneration rates than humans, cancer would be even more of a problem. And it won't kick in immediately so they'll notice how their custom is actually killing them.

Maybe simply make them sterile, that would work too. You only need to sterilise one gender. Immune system actually finds and kills majority of cancerous cells, and kids' immune systems are really powerful. If some cells crucial to reproduction are the most suspectible to cancer and are close to skin then irrepairable damage would be done, but specimen may survive and not even notice that something is wrong. Of course, you will need higher levels of UV than dwarves were naturally accustomised to.

Only dwarves that woudld pass on their genes would be really thick-skinned ones - against UV, too. Having high melanin in your skin would be an obvious way to go - and very likely, too (since that's the thing that evolution "cares" about). A ten generations or so of purge like this and there would be very, very little traces of non-black dwarven blood among this group.

Since digging a tunnel to a neighbouring mountain is way slower and harder than going by surface, dwarves would travel less than surface-dwellers. Thus, their rates of cultural exchange would be even slower. Some clans can practice forgebirth and other clans - some alternatives, like the thing with banyas.

You will have both black and white dwarves that way, perfectly genetiaclly compatible.

Answer 16

Do the dark skinned dwarves have to be purely dwarves? perhaps they are half breeds, part human part dwarf.

maybe a dwarf mated with a dark skinned human with dwarfism (or not, love doesn't discriminate) and this lead to a genetic line containing the dark skinned trait.

often dark skinned individuals who don't venture outside tend to be lighter than others although it doesn't take long in the sun to develop darker.

It's why you'll see them hiding from the sun, by staying in the shade, using tons of sunscreen or becoming nocturnal, to be more fair skinned (or because skin cancer, nobody wants cancer)

Answer 17

Is it permissible to point out that actual dwarves in the real world, such as Kalahari San "Bushmen" and Congolese Pygmies, actually are black?

If the question is "Is there an evolutionary reason why a subterranean race of troglodytes might have a high level of melatonin?", which is a good question, as most cave-dwelling species lose all coloring, we could speculate that perhaps melatonin or another skin-darkening agent of some kind could provide some protection from certain kinds of radioactivity from ores that they are mining.

Answer 18

Most underwater creatures, and creatures living in dark places are white, just because they need no pigments. So they are likely to be white, but white is not a necessary condition. Cells walls are made by fat, and fat has a very bright color, so that's why most creatures have white skin if there are no things that gives it a darker color. Skin is made of cells, and cells are made of fat.

• Maybe your dwarves have a very short and dark fur: a real example of that are bats. Fur helps a lot to stabilize body temperature.
• Maybe your dwarves have a very dark blood: living in deep mines requires a blood able to carry more oxygen so it could actually be blue like blood of octopus (note that the blue is given by copper not by oxygen): infact many deep sea creatures have a color similiar to black.
• Maybe the dwarves skin evolved to catalyze metals in order to remove them from body making dwarves effectively sweat dust and metal particles. Living in mines is highly deadly to humans because of dust which is poisonous to body. A metal skin would also help beacause certain metals just burn when they touch flammable gases.
• Simple evolution, since in the dark most creatures are white, predators may just hunt white creatures, and dwarves are not hunted by predators (also a plausible reason to not have human in caves).

Dwarf's dictum:

when a dwarf glow have everyone away flown

Answer 19

They don't have black skin but have impregnated coal dust. Yorkshire coal miners are notorious for looking like black men despite being white. Just have even more fine powders and everyone will never get that out of their skin. Babies will get coal baths to fit in with their adults.