Looking for a coffee table sized book about dwarves

May 15, 2014 1:34 PM

I remember reading this book on dwarves as a kid and I am unable to find any hide or hair of via google. It was something along the lines of a field report from the uncovering of a city of tunnels somewhere in Europe.

I remember the book being large, although this may be due to me being small at the time. The people doing the report had images of the dwarves as reconstructed from the tunnels, details about their lives, etc. There was one person on the team who was very short, I remember there being mention of him feeling at home in the tunnels, while everyone else had to bend. They closed them up at the end of the book, but this man had gone missing, with the implication that he'd stayed behind.

From what I can tell, this was not the Gnomes book that I keep seeing, but I can't find anything that actually fits this.

posted by Hactar to Society & Culture (4 answers total)

Oh, I just came here to say it was gnomes. I'm pretty sure it was, as I recall the field report aspect too. Not on Amazon -- something from the 1970s, so maybe you could find it through Powells or something?
posted by acm at 3:35 PM on May 15, 2014 [2 favorites]

I think it was probably Gnomes by Rien Poortvliet and Wil Huygen or The Complete Gnomes by Wil Huygen.
posted by belladonna at 4:09 PM on May 15, 2014 [4 favorites]

The Gnomes book does not have anything about excavations in the editions I've seen.
posted by Harald74 at 4:30 AM on May 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Any chance it was The Troll Book? They live in trees, though, not underground.

Or I wonder if was something by the Frouds? They made their name with "Faeries," but have written many books about fantastic creatures including trolls and elves.
posted by underthehat at 5:53 AM on May 16, 2014 [1 favorite]