Kabouter
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Kabouter is the Dutch/Afrikaans word for gnome. In folklore and mythology, the Dutch Kabouters are akin to the Scandinavian kind, known as Tomte and the German kobold. The term kabouter was also adopted by a 1970s hippie movement in Amsterdam that sprang from the Provo movement. One of its best known representatives is Roel van Duijn.
In Dutch mythology and Dutch folklore, kabouters are tiny men who live underground, in mushrooms, or else are household 'spirits' helping in the home. The males have long, full beards (unlike dwarves, who don't always have full beards) and wear tall, pointed red hats. They are generally shy of humans.
There is a theory their appearance, little red pointy hats running through the forest, can be attributed to hallucinations from eating mushrooms. Though not associated with 'narcotics' by the general public, they still appear in the iconography of smart shops.
In the Legend of the Wooden Shoes, an old Dutch folktale, the kabouter teaches the Dutch man how to make piles and how to make wooden shoes.[1]
The Dutch illustrator Rien Poortvliet played an important part in modern Kabouter lore with his publication of "Leven en werken van de Kabouter" (English title "Lives and works of the Gnome"), later translated into English and published as "Gnomes".[2]
In popular culture today, the business Travelocity uses a Rien Poortvliet-style statue of a Kabouter for commercials calling him the Travelocity gnome.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Legend of the Wooden Shoes, as retold by William Elliott Griffis in Dutch Fairy Tales For Young Folks. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1918. (English). Available online by SurLaLane Fairy Tales.
- ^ (1977) Gnomes, Harry N. Abrams Inc., ISBN 0-8109-0965-0 (20th Anniv.) ISBN 0-8109-5498-2 (30th Anniv.)
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