In this series of posts (which begins here) we’re looking at Elves: what they are, where they come from, and why we as humans have legends of them. In the last post, we looked at elves and elflike creatures in stories and myths all over the world, and began to explore where these stories came from.
Before we go any further, though, two quick asides:
Aside 1: Are Elves Real?
The real vs. unreal distinction is one that gets drilled into us from a pretty early age, and many children want to be very clear about it. They will continually ask “Is this real? Is that real?”
But what is “real”?
I don’t know if this is the most useful distinction to draw when it comes to elves and spirits. “Real” can mean different things at different times. Let’s think this through.
- Do they affect our everyday experience? Certainly they can. Thoughts and abstractions like “democracy” and “the free market” may or may not be real, but peoples’ ideas of them affect our everyday lives.
- Ok, well, can they be seen by sober people in broad daylight? I haven’t, admittedly. But I know multiple trustworthy people who have.
- Ok fine. Do they need to eat and poop, participating in Earth’s ecology like dogs and dinosaurs? That I don’t know. I suspect not.
But I don’t think they’re some kind of half-real, half-dreamed thing created by our minds; I think it likely that humans and elves sort of co-create each other. Still, for the purpose of this series of posts, I’ll be taking the stance that our ideas about elves are deeply rooted in the human psyche. Even if elves are real in the same way dinosaurs were, our ideas about them are mainly what we’re going to dive into here.
Aside 2: I’m All Ears, Doctor
Across all the different incarnations of elves and elflike creatures in modern literature and shows, there’s one remarkable piece of consistency: pointed ears.
To be completely fair, this is probably more of a modern thing (as in, the last few hundred years) than a universal of elfishness. Ancient depictions of the xian don’t have pointed ears. Pointed ears aren’t mentioned in old Celtic physical descriptions of the sidhe. So it’s a newish thing, but it’s extremely popular now, and you see it everywhere from Santa’s and Tolkien’s elves to space elves like the Na’avi and Yoda and Mr Spock.
Spock is an interesting case. His ears and his eyebrows were actually intended to be “devilish” to drive home the point that Star Trek’s Federation of Planets does not discriminate on the basis of appearance. He was intended to look like a caricature of evil, and yet be a peaceful, logical, loyal officer on a human ship.
Which raises the question: why are pointed ears associated with the devil? These ears go back to medieval depictions of him, and they go along with his goat’s horns, representing the devil’s earthy, base, animalistic nature. You can also see this in Greek depictions of Pan, which had a big influence on medieval ideas about what the devil looked like.
Why, then, are these ears popping up on modern elves? My guess is that they continue to signal some kind of connection to animalistic nature. Yoda and the Na’avi live on jungle planets. Tolkien’s elves live in forests. Even though Spock is extremely logical and puritanical, every seven years the Vulcans go mad with lust and engage in ritual mating. Thus the ears do make sense.
All right! Now let’s return to the sources of these stories about elves.
The Ælf
In early English folklore, the ælf was a creature with five main characteristics (see eg Hall 2004).
- They were childlike or agelessly immortal. However, they were also related to humans somehow. Sometimes they were called ancestors; sometimes cousins. At that time, the Bible was the accepted source for all of prehistory, so scholars disputed the question of whether they were related to angels, devils, demons, nephilim, or some other obscure Biblical spirit.
- They were from some other world or plane of existence. One could not find “elfland” on a map; they lived elsewhere, and you needed magic of some kind to visit them.
- They caused magical illness and delusion. Of course at that time the causes of mundane diseases were obscure enough, but elves caused everything from hair loss to debilitating plague and madness. They also cast illusions, twisted perceptions, and deluded or mislead witless mortals.
- They were connected to the natural world. Sometimes this meant talking to animals, or causing plants to grow; other times it meant a deep connection to a particular hill or stream.
- They were wise, skillful, and benevolent. They generally meant humans no harm, unless provoked. They had deep knowledge of things far beyond humankind, and made artifacts of marvelous craft and beauty.
It’s important to bear in mind that “English folklore” is a term covering hundreds of years of history and a mix of English, Danish, Norse, French, Roman, and Brythonic peoples, most of whom wrote nothing down. We have a scattering of semi-obscure references and names; we hardly have any real stories. But these characteristics are fairly consistent.
Tolkien was, of course, extremely familiar with the Anglo-Saxon literature, and accordingly his elves have all these features (to one degree or another).
One More Small Aside: What about the word elf? Where does it come from, and what does it mean? It goes back to Proto-Germanic albiz , but beyond that the etymology is uncertain. It might most plausibly be from Proto-Indo-European albho, “white”. Why “whiteness” would be associated with these immortal otherworldly creatures can only be speculative, but white is one of three colors (along with black and red) that are particularly notable and sacred to humans around the world.
The Sidhe and the Alfár
Where did the English get this complex, multifaceted idea of the ælf? Most likely the English ælf is a combination of two creatures:
- The Norse alfár, earth spirits, who came in two varieties: dark elves and light elves. The dark elves, often translated as “dwarves”, lived in mines and created works of great craftsmanship. The light elves were nature spirits of farm, field, and forest, and were associated with the god Frey.
- The Celtic sidhe (modern Irish sí) whose name comes from aos sidhe, the “people of the sidhe“. Sidhe comes from Proto-Celtic sīdos and means both “mound” (especially a fairy mound) and “peace”. I don’t believe anyone knows if these two meanings are a coincidence (like mir meaning “peace” and “world” in Russian) or if the mounds were associated with peace in some way — perhaps contracts or treaties were traditionally signed there; or perhaps the elves were associated with peace. Celtic sidhe were noble beings who lived near or under these mounds, standing stones, and ancient springs.
The Elfkind
There are some among us who enjoy Venn diagrams. So I made one.
In this chart, I’ve taken the five main characteristics of the aelf and scattered the kinds of elflike creatures we’ve discussed among the ovoids. There are a few creatures that sit at the center of the diagram, having all the characteristics of the aelf: the sidhe, the North American Little People, Jung’s Gnomes, the Vulcans, and the dark elf of the Norse (Svartalfr).
Tolkien’s elves only lack the otherworldliness feature, but it’s worth noting that “worldliness” is a major theme of the Lord of the Rings. Elves are bound to the circles of the world for all of their eternal lives; while humans get the “Gift of Men,” and die and go… elsewhere. In fact, one Elvish word for humanity is Nathil, “the Guests”1. In that sense, Tolkien has turned the otherworldliness of the aelf on its head: we humans are really the otherworldly ones.
Yoda and the Norse Light Elves (Ljosalfar) are another interesting case. These folks are definitely otherworldly, but as far as I know, there’s no tale of them casting illusions or misleading humans in some way. Yoda has all sorts of powers, but deception isn’t really one. (Although his student, the human Luke Skywalker, famously in The Last Jedi (WARNING!! SPOILERS!!) casts an illusory form of himself across hundreds of light years. So maybe Yoda could do this too?)
Terry Pratchett’s elves are also fascinating. They’re deliberate satires of Tolkien’s elves, so they’re outliers: they are ageless illusionists from another world, but otherwise they’re not like elves at all. They cast glamours to make humans think they are beautiful, skilled, nature-loving, benevolent, etc., and then they steal food and children and enjoy wanton cruelty. Nasty pieces of work, and excellent villains. Their opposite, in the Tiffany Aching books, are the “Wee Free Men,” the pictsies, who are diminutive blue men who also like to steal but prefer not to hurt people unnecessarily while doing so. Pratchett assigns them the other features of the aelf: they are childlike (except for the lone female Queen who is mother to the whole tribe), have an affinity with nature, and are skilled and benevolent.
Across all these elves and elflike creatures, then, we have a scattering of features of the aelf, with various mixes and matches between them. Santa’s elves are not particularly connected with nature. Victorian fairies are not otherworldly. Rowling’s elves are neither.
But if you look at the diagram, there is one thing — exactly one thing — they all have in common: they are ageless or childlike.
The Eternal Child Archetype
So what are these ageless creatures? Why are there stories about them all over the world?
Perhaps it’s a kind of wish fulfillment. Some part of us, no doubt, wishes that we could be children forever. (Although children pretty much universally would prefer to be grown up.) And all of us would dearly love to remain healthy and live as long as we can. Perhaps we tell stories of these creatures to explore this yearning, to poke at it, turn it over, to deal with it and process it.
But Karl Jung thought something even deeper was going on. Jung suggested that all humanity shares a universal subconscious, a repository of symbols that are meaningful to us. The symbols, some of which he called archetypes, appear in dreams and myths worldwide. We are universally drawn to these archetypes because they tell us something fundamental about human nature.
So, what would an ageless, childlike creature have to tell us about human nature?
In the next post, we’ll try to answer that by looking at neoteny.
- From Sindarin nathal, “guest”, pluralized with a vowel mutation based on this research. ↩︎
