On the Alleged Dwarven Aversion to Open Sky

It is frequently said that Dwarves dislike open spaces because generations of subterranean life have made them psychologically dependent upon ceilings. This is nonsense. Many Dwarven populations have lived above ground for centuries, and entire agricultural regions, ports, and trading cities are overwhelmingly Dwarven while containing quite ordinary streets, fields, courtyards, and public squares.

What does exist is a mild but measurable tendency among Dwarves raised underground to prefer enclosed spaces and low visual horizons. This is no more mysterious than a coastal Human finding the interior of a deep forest claustrophobic or a lifelong city resident finding empty plains unsettling. The effect is strongest in childhood and weakens rapidly with exposure, and a Dwarf born in a mountain city may find a vast open landscape uncomfortable at first only because he has never before seen distance behave that way.

I once accompanied a young Dwarven student on his first journey across the central grasslands. He spent nearly an hour staring at the horizon and eventually said, “It seems unfinished.” I asked what he meant. He gestured vaguely and said, “There should be something there.”

Within a week he had ceased commenting on it, and within two months he complained that the mountain valleys felt cramped. Adaptation is less romantic than ancestral instinct, but rather more common.