Elf

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Today's episode is from a Wikipedia article titled,

Elf.

An elf,

Plural elves,

Is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic folklore.

Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology,

Being mentioned in Icelandic poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson prose Edda.

In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures,

Elves generally seem to have been thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty,

Ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them.

However,

The details of these beliefs have varied considerably over time and space and have flourished in both pre-Christian and Christian cultures.

Sometimes elves are,

Like dwarfs,

Associated with craftsmanship.

Wayland the Smith embodies this feature.

He is known under many names,

Depending on the language in which the stories were distributed.

The names include Völund in Old Norse,

Wieland in Anglo-Saxon,

And Wieland in German.

The story of Wayland is also to be found in the prose Edda.

The word elf is found throughout the Germanic languages and seems originally to have meant white being.

However,

Reconstructing the early concept of an elf depends largely on texts written by Christians in Old and Middle English,

Medieval German,

And Old Norse.

These associate elves variously with gods of Norse mythology,

With causing illness,

With magic,

And with beauty and seduction.

After the medieval period,

The word elf tended to become less common throughout the Germanic languages,

Losing out to the alternative native terms like zwerg,

Dwarf,

In German,

And huldra,

Hidden being,

In North Germanic languages,

And to loanwords like ferry,

Borrowed from French,

In most of the Germanic languages.

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 invisible alongside everyday human communities.

With urbanization and industrialization in the 19th and 20th centuries,

Belief in elves declined rapidly,

Though Iceland has some claim to continued popular belief in elves.

However,

Elves started to be prominent in the literature and art of educated elites from early modern period onwards.

These literary elves were imagined as tiny,

Playful things,

With William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream being a key development of this idea.

In the 18th 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 idea of elves came the elves of popular culture that emerged in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The Christmas elves of contemporary popular culture are a relatively recent creation,

Popularized during the late 19th century in the United States.

Elves entered the 20th century high fantasy genre in the wake of works published by authors such as J.

R.

R.

Tolkien.

These repopularized the idea of elves as human-sized and human-like beings.

Elves remain a prominent feature of fantasy media today.

Elves have,

In many times and places,

Been believed to be real beings.

Where enough people have believed in the reality of elves that those beliefs then had real effects in the world,

They can be understood as part of people's worldview and as a social reality.

A thing which,

Like the exchange value of a dollar bill or the sense of pride stirred up by a national flag,

Is real because of people's beliefs rather than as an objective reality.

Accordingly,

Beliefs about elves and their social functions have varied over time and space.

Even in the 21st century,

Fantasy stories about elves have been argued both to reflect and to shape their audience's understanding of the real world.

And traditions about Santa Claus and his elves relate to Christmas.

Over time,

People have attempted to demythologize or rationalize beliefs in elves in various ways.

Beliefs about elves have their origins before conversion to Christianity and associated Christianization of Northwest Europe.

For this reason,

Belief in elves has,

From the Middle Ages through into recent scholarship,

Often been labeled pagan and a superstition.

However,

Almost all surviving textual sources about elves were produced by Christians,

Whether Anglo-Saxon monks,

Medieval Icelandic poets,

Early modern ballad singers,

19th-century folklore collectors,

Or even 20th-century fantasy authors.

Attested beliefs about elves,

Therefore,

Need to be understood as part of Germanic speakers' Christian culture and not merely a relic of their pre-Christian religion.

Accordingly,

Investigating the relationship between beliefs in elves and Christian cosmology has been a preoccupation of scholarship about elves both in early times and modern research.

Historically,

People have taken three main approaches to integrate elves into Christian cosmology,

All of which are found widely across time and space.

They combine elves with the demons of Judeo-Christian Mediterranean tradition,

For example.

In English-language material,

In the Royal Prayer Book from circa 900,

Elf appears as a gloss for Satan.

In the early modern Scottish witchcraft trials,

Witnesses' descriptions of encounters with elves were often interpreted by prosecutors as encounters with the devil.

In medieval Iceland,

Snorri Sturluson wrote in his Prose Edda of Logisálfa and Dacálfa,

Light elves and dark elves,

The Logisálfa living in the heavens and the Dacálfa under the earth.

The consensus of modern scholarship is that Snorri's elves are based on angels and demons of Christian cosmology.

Elves appear as demonic forces widely in medieval and early modern English,

German,

And Scandinavian prayers.

Encountering elves as being more or less like people and more or less outside Christian cosmology.

The Icelanders who copied the poetic Edda did not explicitly try to integrate elves into Christian thought.

Likewise,

The early modern Scottish people who confessed to encountering elves seemed not to have thought of themselves as having dealings with the devil.

Nineteenth-century Icelandic folklore about elves mostly presents them as a human-agricultural community parallel to the visible human community which may or may not be Christian.

It is possible that stories were sometimes told from this perspective as a political act to subvert the dominance of the Church.

Integrating elves into Christian cosmology without identifying them as demons.

The most striking examples are serious theological treatises.

The Icelandic Tidfordrif,

1644,

By John Gjormundsson Laerdi or in Scotland,

Robert Kirk's Secret Commonwealth of Elves,

Fauns,

And Fairies,

1691.

This approach also appears in the Old English poem Beowulf,

Which lists elves among the races springing from Cain's murder of Abel.

The late thirteenth-century South English legendary and some Icelandic folktales explain elves as angels that sided neither with Lucifer nor with God and were banished by God to earth rather than hell.

One famous Icelandic folktale explains elves as the lost children of Eve.

Some nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars attempted to rationalize beliefs in elves as folk memories of lost indigenous peoples.

Since belief in supernatural beings is ubiquitous in human cultures,

Scholars no longer believe such explanations are valid.

Research has shown,

However,

That stories about elves have often been used as a way for people to think metaphorically about real-life ethnic others.

Scholars have at times also tried to explain beliefs in elves as being inspired by people suffering certain kinds of illnesses.

Elves were certainly often seen as a cause of illness,

And indeed the English word oaf seems to have originated as a form of elf.

The word elf came to mean changeling left by an elf,

And then,

Because changelings were noted for their failure to thrive,

To its modern sense,

A fool,

A stupid person,

A large clumsy man or boy.

However,

It again seems unlikely that the origin of beliefs in elves itself is to be explained by people's encounters with subjectively real people affected by disease.

The English word elf is from the Old English word most often attested as elf,

Whose plural would have been elfe.

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,

Linguistic siblings stemming from a common origin,

With medieval Germanic terms such as Old Norse alfr,

Old High German alp,

Burgundian halfs,

And Middle Low German alf.

These words must come from Proto-Germanic,

The ancestor language of the attested Germanic language.

The Proto-Germanic forms are reconstructed as alces and alsaz.

Germanic alces and alsaz is generally agreed to be a cognate with Latin albus,

Matt,

White,

Old Irish eilfin,

Flock,

Ancient Greek alphos,

Whiteness,

White leprosy,

And Albanian elb,

Barley.

And the Germanic word swan reconstructed as albud is often thought to be derived from it.

These all come from a Proto-Indo-European root,

Elb,

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 Jalsafar suggested that elves were divinities of light.

This is not necessarily the case,

However,

For example because the cognates suggest matt-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,

Specifically,

Feminine beauty.

Some scholars have argued that the names Albion and Alps may also be related,

Possibly through Celtic.

A completely different etymology,

Making elf a cognate with arbus,

Semi-divine craftsman and Indian mythology,

Was suggested by Adalbert Kuhn in 1855.

In this case,

All Cs would connote the meaning skillful,

Inventive,

Clever,

And would be a cognate the Latin labor in the sense of creative work.

While often mentioned,

This etymology is not widely accepted.

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,

Plural albace.

The most famous name of this kind is alboin.

Old English names in elf include the cognate of alboin,

Elfwine,

Literally elf-friend,

Elf-rick,

Elf-powerful,

Elf-weared,

Elf-guardian,

And elf-waru,

Elf-care.

A widespread survivor of these in modern English is Alfred,

Old English elfred,

Elf-advice.

Also surviving are the English surname Elgar,

Elf-gar,

Elf-spear,

And the name of St.

Alfegi,

Alfeyi,

Elf-tall.

German examples are Albrecht,

Alfart,

And Alfrey,

Father of Walter of Aquitaine.

An Icelandic example include Alfildur.

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 similar to gods.

Elves appear in some place names,

Though it is difficult to be sure how many of other words,

Including personal names,

Can appear similar to elf.

The clearest English examples are Elveden,

Elves' Hill,

Suffolk,

And Elvenden,

Elves' Valley,

Oxfordshire.

Other examples may be Elden Hill,

Elves' Hill,

Derbyshire,

And Alden Valley,

Elves' Valley,

Lancashire.

These seem to associate elves fairly consistently with woods and valleys.

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 most sharp internal pains and mental disorders.

The most famous of the medical texts is the metrical charm Vid Fierstis,

Against a Stabbing Pain,

From the 10th-century compilation Lachnunga,

But most of the attestations are in the 10th-century Bald's Leechbook and Leechbook 3.

This tradition continues into later English language traditions too.

Elves continue to appear in Middle English medical texts.

Belief in elves causing 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 sidon and sidza,

A cognate with the Old Norse sidr,

And also paralleled in the Old Irish sergligachon kulain.

By the 14th century,

They were also associated with the arcane practice of alchemy.

In one or two Old English medical texts,

Elves might be envisaged as inflicting illnesses with projectiles.

In the 20th century,

Scholars often labeled the illnesses elves caused as elf-shot,

But where from the 1990s onward 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,

Rowless Cursing,

From around 1500,

Where elf-shot 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 as well as projectile.

But in early modern Scotland,

Elf-shot and other terms like elf-arrowhead are sometimes used of Neolithic arrowheads,

Apparently thought to have been made by elves.

In a few witchcraft trials,

People attest that these arrowheads were used in healing rituals and occasionally allege that witches,

And perhaps elves,

Used them to injure people in cattle.

Considered with the following excerpt from a 1749-1750 ode by William Collins,

There every herd by sad experience Knows how,

Winged with fate,

Their elf-shot arrows fly.

When the sick ewe Her summer food forgoes,

Or,

Stretched on earth,

The heart-smeared heifers lie.

Because of elves' association with illness in the 20th century,

Most scholars imagine 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 Edwine 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,

21st-century scholarship suggests that Anglo-Saxon elves,

Like elves in Scandinavia or the Irish Eos Si,

Are 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 alfr is associated with æsir and Old Norse,

The Old English wyd fyrstis associates elves with æs.

Whatever this word meant by the 10th century,

Etymologically it denoted pagan gods.

In Old English,

The plural ælf,

Attested in Beowulf,

Is grammatically an ethnonym,

A word for an ethnic group,

Suggesting that elves were seen as people.

As well as appearing in medical texts,

The Old English word ælf and its feminine derivative ælben were used in glosses to translate Latin words for nymphs.

This fits well with the word ælfsign,

Which meant ælf-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 human-like beings.

They became associated with medieval chivalric romance traditions of fairies,

And particularly with the idea of a fairy queen.

A propensity to seduce people becomes increasingly prominent in the source material.

Around the 15th century,

Evidence starts to appear for the belief that elves might steal human babies and replace them with changelings.

By the end of the medieval period,

Ælf was increasingly being supplanted by the French loanword fairy.

An example is Geoffrey Chaucer's satirical tale Sertopus.

There,

The title character sets out in a quest for the ælf-queen who dwells in the country of the fairy.

Evidence for ælf beliefs in medieval Scandinavia outside Iceland is sparse,

But the Icelandic evidence is uniquely rich.

For a long time,

Views about elves in Old Norse mythology were defined by Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda,

Which talks about black elves,

Dark elves,

And light elves.

For example,

Snorri recounts how the black elves create new blonde hair for Thor's wife Sif after Loki had shorn off Sif's long hair.

However,

These terms are attested only in the Prose Edda and text based on it.

It is now agreed that they reflect traditions of dwarves,

Demons,

And angels,

Partly showing Snorri's paganization of a Christian cosmology learned from the ælucidarius,

A popular digest of Christian thought.

Scholars of Old Norse mythology now focus on references to elves in Old Norse poetry,

Particularly the Elder Edda.

The only character explicitly identified as an elf in classical Eddaic poetry,

If any,

Is Volundr,

The protagonist of Volundrkivida.

However,

Elves are frequently mentioned in the alliterating phrase æsir och ælfar,

Æsir and elves,

And its variants.

This was a well-established poetic formula indicating a strong tradition of associating elves with the group of gods known as the æsir,

Or even suggesting that the elves and æsir were one and the same.

The pairing is paralleled in the Old English poem with firstis and in the Germanic personal name system.

Moreover,

In the skaldic verse,

The word ælf is used in the same way as words for gods.

There does not seem to have been any clear-cut distinction between humans and gods.

Like the æsir,

Then elves were presumably thought of as being human-like,

And existing in opposition to the giants.

Many commentators have also,

Or instead,

Argued for conceptual overlap between elves and dwarves in Old Norse mythology,

Which may fit with trends in the medieval Germanic evidence.

There are hints that the god Freyr was associated with elves.

In particular,

Ælfheimr,

Literally ælf-world,

Is mentioned as being given to Freyr in Grimnismal.

Snorri Sturluson identified Freyr as one of the venir.

However,

The term venir is rare in Eddaic verse,

Very rare in skaldic verse,

And is not generally thought to appear in other Germanic languages.

Given the link between Freyr and the elves,

It has therefore long been suspected that ælfheimr and venir are,

More or less,

Different words for the same group of beings.

However,

This is not uniformly accepted.

A kenning poetic metaphor for the sun,

Ælferdil,

Literally ælf-disk,

Is of uncertain meaning,

But is to some suggestive of a close link between elves and the sun.

The appearance of elves in sagas is closely defined by genre.

The sagas of Icelanders,

Bishops' sagas,

And contemporary sagas whose portrayal of the supernatural is generally restrained,

Rarely mention ælfr,

And then only in passing.

But although limited,

These texts provide some of the best evidence of the presence of elves in everyday beliefs in medieval Scandinavia.

They include a fleeting mention of elves seen outriding in 1168,

Mention of an ælfablót,

Elves' sacrifice,

In Cormac's saga,

And the existence of the euphemism ganga ælfræk,

Goad to drive away the elves for going to the toilet,

In Erbegja's saga.

The king's sagas include a rather elliptical but widely studied account of an early Swedish king being worshipped after his death,

And being called ælfr,

The elf of Girstadr,

And a demonic elf at the beginning of Nornagust's Pater.

The legendary sagas tend to focus on elves as legendary ancestors.

Information of the land of ælfheimr is found in Heimskringla,

While Porsten's saga,

Vikinsonar,

Recounts a line of local kings who ruled over ælfheim,

Who,

Since they had elven blood,

Were said to be more beautiful than most men.

According to Hrolf's saga Krakke,

Hrolfr Krakke's half-sister Skald was the half-elven child of King Helgi,

And an elf-woman,

Ælfkona.

Skald was skilled in witchcraft.

Accounts of Skald in earlier sources,

However,

Do not include this material.

The Pidrex saga version of the Niblungen,

Niflungar,

Describes Hrgni as the son of a human queen and an elf,

But no such lineage is reported in the Eddas,

Volsunga saga,

Or the Nibelungalid.

The relatively few mentions of elves in the Silvaric sagas tend even to be whimsical.

In his Rerum Danicarum Fragmenta,

1596,

Written mostly in Latin,

With some Old Danish and Old Icelandic passages,

Arngrimur Jansson explains the Scandinavian and Icelandic belief in elves,

Called ælfvalfolk.

Most continental Scandinavian and Iceland have a scattering of mentions of elves in medical texts,

Sometimes in Latin and sometimes in the form of amulets,

Where elves are viewed as a possible cause of illness.

Most of them have Low German connections.

The Old High German word alp is attested only in a small number of glosses.

It is defined by the Altach-Deutsches Wörterbuch as a nature god or nature demon,

Equated with the fauns of classical mythology,

Regarded as eerie,

Ferocious beings.

As the mare he messes around with women,

Accordingly the German word alpdruck,

Literally elf-oppression,

Means nightmare.

There is also evidence associating elves with illness,

Specifically epilepsy.

In a similar vein,

Elves are in Middle High German most often associated with deceiving or bewildering people in a phrase that occurs so often,

It would appear to be proverbial.

Die Elben,

Der Alp trägt mich.

The elves,

Elf,

Are or is deceiving me.

The same pattern holds in Early Modern German.

This deception sometimes shows the seductive side apparent in English and Scandinavian material.

Most famously,

The early 13th century Heinrich von Mörringen's 5th Meinesang begins Von den Elben wird entsehen will mannek mann,

So bin ich von großer Liebe entsin.

Full many a man is bewitched by elves,

Thus I too am bewitched by great love.

Alpo was also used in this period to translate words for nymphs.

In later medieval prayers,

Elves appear as a threatening,

Even demonic,

Force.

For example,

Some prayers invoke God's help against nocturnal attacks by Alpa.

Correspondingly,

In the Early Modern period,

Elves are described in North Germany doing the evil bidding of witches.

Martin Luther believed his mother to have been afflicted in this way.

As in Old Norse,

However,

There are few characters identified as elves.

It seems likely that in the German-speaking world,

Elves were to a significant extent conflated with dwarves.

Thus,

Some dwarves that appear in German heroic poetry have been seen as relating to elves.

In particular,

19th century scholars tended to think that the dwarf Albrecht,

Whose name etymologically means elf-powerful,

Was influenced by early traditions of elves.

From around the late Middle Ages,

The word elf began to be used in English as a term loosely synonymous with the French loanword fairy.

In elite art and literature,

At least,

It also became associated with diminutive supernatural beings like Puck,

Hobgoblins,

Robin Goodfellow,

The English and Scots Brownie,

And the Northumbrian English Hob.

However,

In Scotland and parts of northern England,

Near the Scottish border,

Beliefs in elves remained prominent into the 19th century.

James VI of Scotland and Robert Kirk discussed elves seriously.

Elf beliefs are prominently attested in the Scottish witchcraft trials,

Particularly the trial of Isabel Gowdy,

And related stories also appear in folktales.

There is a significant corpus of ballads narrating stories about elves,

Such as Thomas the Rhymer,

Where a man meets a female elf,

Tom Lynn,

The Elf and Knight,

And Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight,

In which an Elf Knight seduces or abducts a woman.

And the Queen of Elflin's Norris,

A woman is abducted to be a wet nurse to the Elf Queen's baby,

But promised that she might return home once the child is weaned.

In Scandinavian folklore,

Many human-like supernatural beings are attested,

Which might be thought of as elves and partly originate in medieval Scandinavian beliefs.

However,

The characteristics and names of these beings have varied widely across time and space,

And they cannot be neatly categorized.

These beings are sometimes known by words descended directly from the Old Norse alfr.

However,

In modern languages,

Traditional terms related to alfr have tended to be replaced with other terms.

Things are further complicated because,

When referring to the elves of Old Norse mythology,

Scholars have adopted new forms based directly on the Old Norse word alfr.

The elves of Norse mythology have survived into folklore mainly as females,

Living in hills and mounds of stones.

The Swedish Alvor were stunningly beautiful girls who lived in the forest with an elven king.

The elves could be seen dancing over meadows,

Particularly at night and on misty mornings.

They left a circle where they had danced called alvdanser,

Elf dances,

Or alvringer,

Elf circles,

And to urinate in one was thought to cause venereal disease.

Typically elf circles were fairy rings consisting of a ring of small mushrooms,

But there was also another kind of elf circle,

In the words of the local historian Anne-Marie Hellström.

On lake shores where the forest met the lake,

You could find elf circles.

They were round places where the grass had been flattened like a floor.

Elves had danced there.

By Lake Tisnaren,

I have seen one of those.

It could be dangerous,

And one could become ill if one had trodden over such a place,

Or if one destroyed anything there.

If a human watched the dance of the elves,

He would discover that even though only a few hours seemed to have passed,

Many years had passed in the real world.

Humans being invited or lured to the elf dance is a common motif transferred from older Scandinavian ballads.

Elves were not exclusively young and beautiful.

In the Swedish folktale Little Rosa and Long Leda,

An elvish woman arrives in the end and saves the heroine,

Little Rose,

On the condition that the king's cattle no longer graze on her hill.

She is described as a beautiful old woman,

And by her aspect,

People saw that she belonged to the subterraneans.

Elves have a prominent place in several closely related ballads,

Which must have originated in the Middle Ages but are first attested in the early modern period.

Many of these ballads are first attested in Karen Brahe's Folio,

A Danish manuscript from the 1570s,

But they circulated widely in Scandinavia and northern Britain.

They sometimes mention elves because they were learned by heart,

Even though that term had become archaic in everyday usage.

They have therefore played a major role in transmitting traditional ideas about elves in post-medieva cultures.

Indeed,

Some of the early modern ballads are still quite widely known,

Whether through school syllabuses or contemporary folk music.

They therefore give people an unusual degree of access to ideas of elves from older traditional culture.

In folk stories,

Scandinavian elves often play the role of disease spirits.

The most common,

Though also the most harmless case,

Was various irritating skin rashes,

Which were called alveblast,

Elven puff,

And could be cured by a forceful counterblow,

A handy pair of bellows was most useful for this purpose.

Skælgropar,

A particular kind of petroglyph,

Pictogram on a rock,

Found in Scandinavia were known in older times as elfkarnar,

Elven mills,

Because it was believed elves had used them.

One could appease the elves by offering a treat,

Preferably butter,

Placed into an elven mill.

In order to protect themselves and their livestock against malevolent elves,

Scandinavians could use a so-called elf cross,

Which was carved into buildings or other objects.

It existed in two shapes.

One was a pentagram,

And it was still frequently used in early 20th century Sweden as painted or carved under doors,

Walls,

And household utensils to protect against elves.

The second form was an ordinary cross carved into a round or oblong silver plate.

The second kind of elf cross was worn as a pendant in a necklace,

And to have sufficient magic it had to be forged during three evenings with silver from nine different sources of inherited silver.

In some locations it also had to be on the altar of a church for three consecutive Sundays.

In Iceland,

Expressing the belief in the Holdafolk,

Hidden people,

Elves that dwell in rock formations,

Is still relatively common.

Even when Icelanders do not explicitly express their belief,

They are often reluctant to express disbelief.

A 2006 and 2007 study by the University of Iceland's Faculty of Social Sciences revealed that many would not rule out the existence of elves and ghosts,

A result similar to a 1974 survey by Erlandur Haraldsson.

The lead researcher of the 2006-2007 study,

Terry Gunnell,

Stated,

Icelanders seem much more open to phenomena like dreaming,

The future,

Forebodings,

Ghosts,

And elves than other nations.

Whether significant numbers of Icelandic people do believe in elves or not,

Elves are certainly prominent in national discourses.

They occur most often in oral narratives and news reporting in which they disrupt house and road building.

In the analysis of Valdemar T.

R.

Hofstein,

Narratives about the instructions of elves demonstrate supernatural sanction against development and urbanization.

That is to say,

The supernaturals protect and enforce religious values in traditional rural culture.

The elves fend off,

With more or less success,

The attacks and advances of modern technology palpable in the bulldozer.

Elves are also prominent in similar roles in contemporary Icelandic literature.

Folk stories told in the 19th century about elves are still told in modern Denmark and Sweden.

Still,

They now feature ethnic minorities in place of elves in essentially racist discourse.

In an ethnically fairly homogenous medieval countryside,

Supernatural beings provided the other through which everyday people created their identities.

In cosmopolitan industrial contexts,

Ethnic minorities or immigrants are used in storytelling to similar effect.

Early modern Europe saw the emergence for the first time of a distinctive elite culture,

While the Reformation encouraged new skepticism in opposition to traditional beliefs.

Subsequent Romanticism encouraged the fetishization of such beliefs by intellectual elites.

The effects of this on writing about elves are most apparent in England and Germany,

With developments in each country influencing the other.

In Scandinavia,

The Romantic movement was also prominent,

And literary writing was the main context for continued use of the word elf,

Except in France.