Elf
An elf is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic folklore. Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology, being mentioned in the Icelandic Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda.
In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves were thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people, and capable of either helping or hindering them. Beliefs varied considerably over time and space and flourished in both pre-Christian and Christian cultures. The word elf is found throughout the Germanic languages. It seems originally to have meant 'white being'. However, reconstructing the early concept depends largely on texts written by Christians, in Old and Middle English, medieval German, and Old Norse. These associate elves variously with the gods of Norse mythology, with causing illness, with magic, and with beauty and seduction.
After the medieval period, the word elf became less common throughout the Germanic languages, losing out to terms like Zwerg in German and huldra in North Germanic languages, and to loan-words like fairy. Still, belief in elves persisted in the early modern period, particularly in Scotland and Scandinavia, where elves were thought of as magically powerful people living, usually invisibly, alongside human communities. They continued to be associated with causing illnesses and with sexual threats. For example, several early modern ballads in the British Isles and Scandinavia, originating in the medieval period, describe elves attempting to seduce or abduct human characters.
With modern urbanisation and industrialisation, belief in elves declined rapidly, though Iceland has some claim to continued popular belief. Elves started to be prominent in the literature and art of educated elites from the early modern period onwards. These literary elves were imagined as tiny, playful beings, with William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream a key development of this idea. In the eighteenth century, German Romantic writers were influenced by this notion of the elf, and re-imported the English word elf into the German language. From the Romantic notion came the elves of modern popular culture. Christmas elves are a relatively recent creation, popularized during the late 19th century in the United States. Elves entered the twentieth-century high fantasy genre in the wake of J. R. R. Tolkien's works; these re-popularised the idea of elves as human-sized and humanlike beings. Elves remain a prominent feature of fantasy media today.
Etymology
The English word elf is from the Old English word most often attested as ælf. Although this word took a variety of forms in different Old English dialects, these converged on the form elf during the Middle English period. During the Old English period, separate forms were used for female elves, but during the Middle English period the word elf routinely came to include female beings.The Old English forms are cognates – having a common origin – with medieval Germanic terms such as Old Norse alfr, Old High German alp, Burgundian *alfs, and Middle Low German alf. These words must come from Proto-Germanic, the ancestor-language of the attested Germanic languages; the Proto-Germanic forms are reconstructed as *ɑlβi-z and *ɑlβɑ-z.
Germanic *ɑlβi-z~*ɑlβɑ-z is generally agreed to be a cognate with Latin albus, Old Irish ailbhín, Ancient Greek ἀλφός, and Albanian elb ; and the Germanic word for 'swan' reconstructed as *albit-. These all come from a Proto-Indo-European root *h₂elbʰ-, and seem to be connected by the idea of whiteness. The Germanic word presumably originally meant 'white one', perhaps as a euphemism. Jakob Grimm thought whiteness implied positive moral connotations, and, noting Snorri Sturluson's ljósálfar, suggested that elves were divinities of light. This is not necessarily the case, however. For example, because the cognates suggest matte white rather than shining white, and because in medieval Scandinavian texts whiteness is associated with beauty, Alaric Hall has suggested that elves may have been called 'the white people' because whiteness was associated with beauty.
A completely different etymology, making elf a cognate with the Ṛbhus, semi-divine craftsmen in Indian mythology, was suggested by Adalbert Kuhn in 1855. In this case, *ɑlβi-z would connote the meaning 'skilful, inventive, clever', and could be a cognate with Latin labor, in the sense of 'creative work'. While often mentioned, this etymology is not widely accepted.
In proper names
Throughout the medieval Germanic languages, elf was one of the nouns used in personal names, almost invariably as a first element. These names may have been influenced by Celtic names beginning in Albio- such as Albiorix.Personal names provide the only evidence for elf in Gothic, which must have had the word *albs. The most famous name of this kind is Alboin. Old English names in elf- include the cognate of Alboin Ælfwine, Ælfric, Ælfweard, and Ælfwaru. A widespread survivor of these in modern English is Alfred. Also surviving are the English surname Elgar, and the name of St Alphege. German examples are Alberich, Alphart and Alphere and Icelandic examples include Álfhildur. These names suggest that elves were positively regarded in early Germanic culture. Of the many words for supernatural beings in Germanic languages, the only ones regularly used in personal names are elf and words denoting pagan gods, suggesting that elves were considered to be similar to gods.
In later Old Icelandic, alfr and the personal name which in Common Germanic had been *Aþawulfaz; coincidentally, both became álfr~Álfr.
Elves appear in some place names; however, it is difficult to be sure how many because other words, including personal names, can appear similar to elf, such as al- meaning "old". The clearest appearances of elves in English examples are Elveden and Elvendon ; other examples may be Eldon Hill ; and Alden Valley. These associate elves fairly consistently with woods and valleys.
In medieval texts
Medieval English-language sources
As causes of illnesses
The earliest surviving manuscripts mentioning elves in any Germanic language are from Anglo-Saxon England. Medieval English evidence has, therefore, attracted quite extensive research and debate. In Old English, elves are most often mentioned in medical texts which attest to the belief that elves might afflict humans and livestock with illnesses: apparently mostly sharp, internal pains and mental disorders. The most famous of the medical texts is the metrical charm Wið færstice, from the tenth-century compilation Lacnunga, but most of the attestations are in the tenth-century Bald's Leechbook and Leechbook III. This tradition continues into later English-language traditions too: elves continue to appear in Middle English medical texts.Belief in elves as a cause of illnesses remained prominent in early modern Scotland, where elves were viewed as supernaturally powerful people who lived invisibly alongside everyday rural people. Thus, elves were often mentioned in the early modern Scottish witchcraft trials: many witnesses in the trials believed themselves to have been given healing powers or to know of people or animals made sick by elves. Throughout these sources, elves are sometimes associated with the succubus-like supernatural being called the mare.
While they may have been thought to cause diseases with magical weapons, elves are more clearly associated in Old English with a kind of magic denoted by Old English sīden and sīdsa, a cognate with the Old Norse seiðr, and paralleled in the Old Irish Serglige Con Culainn. By the fourteenth century, they were also associated with the arcane practice of alchemy.
"Elf-shot"
In one or two Old English medical texts, elves might be envisaged as inflicting illnesses with projectiles. In the twentieth century, scholars often labelled the illnesses elves caused as "elf-shot", but work from the 1990s onwards showed that the medieval evidence for elves' being thought to cause illnesses in this way is slender; debate about its significance is ongoing.The noun elf-shot is first attested in a Scots poem, "Rowlis Cursing," from around 1500, where "elf schot" is listed among a range of curses to be inflicted on some chicken thieves. The term may not always have denoted an actual projectile: shot could mean "a sharp pain". But in early modern Scotland, elf-schot and other terms like elf-arrowhead are sometimes used of neolithic arrow-heads, apparently thought to have been made by elves. In a few witchcraft trials, people attested that these arrow-heads were used in healing rituals, and occasionally alleged that witches used them to injure people and cattle. A 1749–50 ode by William Collins includes the lines:
Size, appearance, and sexuality
Because of elves' association with illness, in the twentieth century, most scholars imagined that elves in the Anglo-Saxon tradition were small, invisible, demonic beings, causing illnesses with arrows. This was encouraged by the idea that "elf-shot" is depicted in the Eadwine Psalter, in an image which became well known in this connection. However, this is now thought to be a misunderstanding: the image proves to be a conventional illustration of God's arrows and Christian demons. Rather, twenty-first century scholarship suggests that Anglo-Saxon elves, like elves in Scandinavia or the Irish Aos Sí, were regarded as people.Like words for gods and men, the word elf is used in personal names where words for monsters and demons are not. Just as álfar is associated with Æsir in Old Norse, the Old English Wið færstice associates elves with ēse; whatever this word meant by the tenth century, etymologically it denoted pagan gods. In Old English, the plural ylfe is grammatically an ethnonym, suggesting that elves were seen as people. As well as appearing in medical texts, the Old English word ælf and its feminine derivative ælbinne were used in glosses to translate Latin words for nymphs. This fits well with the word ælfscȳne, which meant "elf-beautiful" and is attested describing the seductively beautiful Biblical heroines Sarah and Judith.
Likewise, in Middle English and early modern Scottish evidence, while still appearing as causes of harm and danger, elves appear clearly as humanlike beings. They became associated with medieval chivalric romance traditions of fairies and particularly with the idea of a Fairy Queen. A propensity to seduce or rape people becomes increasingly prominent in the source material. Around the fifteenth century, evidence starts to appear for the belief that elves might steal human babies and replace them with changelings.