| I | ||
 |
 |
|
|
Group Tours 2007
Prices 2007 We highly reccomend!
The
charming guesthouse Alfholl (Elves’ House) invites you to stay in cosy
surroundings in central Reykjavik. |
What is and
Icelandic Elf
An elf is a mythical
creature of Norse mythology which survived in northern European folklore.
Originally a race of minor gods of nature and fertility, elves are often
pictured as youthful-seeming men and women of great beauty living in
forests and other natural places, underground, or in wells and springs.
They have been portrayed to be
long-lived or immortal and they have magical powers attributed to them. Following the success of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic The Lord of the Rings wherein a wise, angelic people named elves play a significant role they have become staple characters of modern fantasy.
Characteristics of traditional elves 1. Icelandic Elves in Norse mythology
2. The first elves in Icelandic history, by
Snorri Sturluson
3. Scandinavian
elves in Iceland 4. German elves in Iceland
1. Elves in Norse mythology
The earliest preserved description of elves comes
from Norse mythology. In Old Norse they are called álfar (singular,
nominative case: álfr), and although no older or contemporary
descriptions exist, the appearance of beings etymologically related to álfar
in various later folklore strongly suggests that the belief in elves were
common among all the Germanic tribes, and not limited solely to the ancient
Scandinavians.
Elves make
various appearances in Norse mythology.
Although the concept itself is never clearly defined
in our sources, elves appear to have been understood as powerful and
beautiful human-sized beings. They are commonly referred to collectively as
semi-divine beings associated with fertility as well as the cult of the
ancestors. As such, elves appear similar to the animistic belief in spirits
of nature and of the deceased, common to nearly all human religions;
something that, on a side note, is true also for the Old Norse belief in fylgjur
and vörđar ("follower" and "warden" spirits,
respectively). Arguably, elves are the Germanic equivalent to the
nymphs of Greek and Roman mythology, as well as the vili and rusalki of
Slavic mythology.
The
first elves in Icelandic history, by Snorri Sturluson
The Icelandic mythographer and historian Snorri Sturluson seems to have referred to dwarves (dvergar) as "dark-elves" (dökkálfar) or "black-elves" (svartálfar); whether this usage reflects wider medieval Scandinavian belief is uncertain. Elves who are not dark-elves are referred to by Snorri as "light-elves" (ljósálfar); this usage has often been connected with elves' etymological connection with whiteness. Snorri describes their differences like so:
There are many magnificent dwellings. One is there called Alfheim. There dwell the folk that are called light-elves; but the dark-elves dwell down in the earth, and they are unlike the light-elves in appearance, but much more so in deeds. The light-elves are fairer than the sun to look upon, but the dark-elves are blacker than pitch.
Evidence for elves in Norse mythology outside
Snorri's work, and in earlier evidence, comes from Skaldic poetry, the Poetic
Edda and legendary sagas. Here elves are linked with the Ćsir,
particularly through the common phrase "Ćsir and the elves",
which presumably means "all the gods". The elves have been
compared or identified with the Vanir (fertility gods) by some scholars
(e.g. Hall 2004, pp. 43-46). However, in the Alvíssmál ("The
Sayings of All-Wise"), the elves are considered distinct from both the
Vanir and the Ćsir, as revealed by a series of comparative names in which
Ćsir, Vanir, and elves are given their own versions for various words in a
reflection of their individual racial preferences.
Possibly, the words designate a difference in status
between the major fertility gods (the Vanir) and the minor ones (the
elves). Grímnismál relates that the Van Freyr was the lord of Álfheimr
(meaning "elf-world"), the home of the light-elves. Lokasenna
relates that a large group of Ćsir and elves had assembled at Ćgir's court
for a banquet. Several minor forces, the servants of gods, are presented
such as Byggvir and Beyla, who belonged to Freyr, the lord of the elves,
and they were probably elves, since they were not counted among the gods.
Two other mentioned servants were Fimafeng (who was murdered by Loki) and Eldir.
Some speculate that Vanir and elves belong to an
earlier Nordic Bronze Age religion of Scandinavia, and were later replaced
by the Ćsir as main gods. Others (most notably Georges Dumézil) argue that
the Vanir were the gods of the common Norsemen, and the Ćsir those of the
priest and warrior castes.
A poem from around 1020, the Austrfaravísur
('Eastern-journey verses') of Sigvatr Ţorđarson, mentions that, as a
Christian, he was refused board in a heathen household, in Sweden, because
an álfablót ("elves' sacrifice") was being conducted
there. However, we have no further reliable information as to what an álfablót
involved, but like other blóts it probably included the
offering of foods, and later Scandinavian folklore retained a tradition of
sacrificing treats to the elves (see below). From the time of year (close
to the autumnal equinox) and the elves' association with fertility and the
ancestors, we might assume that it had to do with the ancestor cult and the
life force of the family.
In addition to this, Kormáks saga accounts for how a sacrifice to elves was apparently believed able to heal a severe battle wound:
Ţorvarđ healed but slowly; and when he could get on his feet he went to see Ţorđís, and asked her what was best to help his healing.
"A hill there is," answered she, "not far away from here, where elves have their haunt. Now get you the bull that Kormák killed, and redden the outer side of the hill with its blood, and make a feast for the elves with its flesh. Then thou wilt be healed.
The Scandinavian elves were of human size. Full-sized
famous men could be elevated to the rank of elves after death, such as the
petty king Olaf Geirstad-Elf, and the smith hero Völund (titled as
"ruler of elves" in the Völundarkviđa). Even crossbreeding
was possible between elves and humans in the Old Norse belief. One case
appears in Hrólf Kraki's saga, where the Danish king Helgi finds an
elf-woman clad in silk who is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. He
rapes her and later she bears the daughter Skuld, who married Hjörvard,
Hrólf Kraki's killer.
Another case was the hero Högni, whose mother was a
human queen, and whose father, according to the Thidrekssaga, was an
elf by the name of Aldrian (though it should be noted that this text
is largely translated from German material).
There are also in the Heimskringla and in Ţorsteins saga Víkingssonar accounts of a line of local kings who ruled over Álfheim, corresponding to the modern Swedish province Bohuslän, and since they had elven blood they were said to be more beautiful than most men.
The land governed by King Alf was called Alfheim, and all his offspring are related to the elves. They were fairer than any other people ...
The last king in Alfheim was named Gandalf.
3. Scandinavian
elves in Iceland In Scandinavian folklore, which is a later blend of
Norse mythology and elements of Christian mythology, an elf is
called elver in Danish, alv in Norwegian, and alv or älva
in Swedish (the first is masculine, the second feminine). The Norwegian
expressions seldom appear in genuine folklore, and when they do, they are
always used synonymous to huldrefolk or vetter, a category of
earth-dwelling beings generally held to be more related to Norse dwarves
than elves.
In Denmark and Sweden, the elves appear as beings
distinct from the vetter, even though the border between them is diffuse.
The insect-winged fairies in the folklore of the British Isles are often
called "älvor" in modern Swedish or "alfer" in danish,
although the correct translation is "feer." In a similar vein,
the alf found in the fairy tale The Elf of the Rose by Danish
author H. C. Andersen is so tiny that he can have a rose blossom for home,
and has "wings that reached from his shoulders to his feet". Yet,
Andersen also wrote about elvere in The Elfin Hill.
The elves in this story are more alike those of
traditional Danish folklore, who were beautiful females, living in hills
and boulders, capable of dancing a man to death. Like the huldra in
Norway and Sweden, they are hollow when seen from the back. Small wingless
elves of British folklore also appear distinct thus Santa's Elves at called
"tomte" in Swedish or "nisse" in Danish.
The elves of Norse mythology have survived into
folklore mainly as females, living in hills and mounds of stones (cf. Galadriel's
account of what would happen to the Elves who remained in Middle-Earth).
The Swedish älvor (sing. älva) were stunningly beautiful
girls who lived in the forest with an elven king. They were long-lived and
light-hearted in nature.
The elves are typically pictured as fair-haired,
white-clad and like most creatures in the Scandinavian folklore can be
really nasty when offended. In the stories, they often play the role of
disease-spirits. The most common, though also most harmless case was
various irritating skin rashes, which were called älvablĺst (elven
blow) and could be cured by a forceful counter-blow (a handy pair of bellows
was most useful for this purpose). Skĺlgropar, a particular kind of petroglyph
found in Scandinavia, were known in older times as älvkvarnar (elven
mills), pointing to their believed usage. One could appease the elves by
offering them a treat (preferably butter) placed into an elven mill –
perhaps a custom with roots in the Old Norse álfablót.
The elves could be seen dancing over meadows,
particularly at night and on misty mornings. They left a kind of circle
were they had danced, which were called älvdanser (elf dances) or älvringar
(elf circles), and to urinate in one was thought to cause venereal diseases.
Typically, it consisted of a ring of small mushrooms, but there was also
another kind of elf circle:
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 Tisaren, 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. (This time phenomenon is retold in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings when the Fellowship of the Ring discovers that
time seems to have run more slowly in elven Lothlórien. It also has a
remote parallel in the Irish sídhe.) In a song from the late Middle Ages
about Olaf Liljekrans, the elven queen invites him to dance.
He refuses, he knows what will happen if he joins the
dance and he is on his way home to his own wedding. The queen offers him
gifts, but he declines. She threatens to kill him if he does not join, but
he rides off and dies of the disease she sent upon him, and his young bride
dies of a broken heart.
However, the elves were not exclusively young and
beautiful. In the Swedish folktale Little Rosa and Long Leda, an
elvish woman (älvakvinna) arrives in the end and saves the heroine,
Little Rose, on condition that the king's cattle no longer graze on her
hill. She is described as an old woman and by her aspect people saw that
she belonged to the subterraneans.
4. German
elves in Iceland
What remained of the belief in elves in German
folklore was that they were mischievous pranksters that could cause disease
to cattle and people, and bring bad dreams to sleepers. The German word for
nightmare, Albtraum, means "elf dream".
The archaic form Albdruck means "elf
pressure"; it was believed that nightmares are a result of an elf
sitting on the dreamer's chest. This aspect of German elf-belief largely
corresponds to the Scandinavian belief in the mara. It is also
similar to the legends regarding incubi and succubi.
As noted above, an elven king occasionally appears
among the predominantly female elves in Denmark and Sweden. In the German
middle-age epic the Nibelungenlied, a dwarf named Alberich
play an important role. Alberich literally translates as
"elf-sovereign", further contributing to the elf–dwarf confusion
observed already in the Younger Edda.
Via the French Alberon, the same name has
entered English as Oberon – king of elves and fairies in
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The legend of Der Erlkönig appears to have originated
in fairly recent times in Denmark and Goethe based his poem on "Erlkönigs
Tochter" ("Erlkönig's Daughter"), a Danish work translated
into German by Johann Gottfried Herder.
The Erlkönig's nature has been the subject of some
debate. The name translates literally from the German as "Alder
King" rather than its common English translation, "Elf King"
(which would be rendered as Elfenkönig in German). It has often been
suggested that Erlkönig is a mistranslation from the original Danish
ellerkonge or elverkonge, which does mean "elf
king".
According to German and Danish folklore, the Erlkönig
appears as an omen of death, much like the banshee in Irish mythology.
Unlike the banshee, however, the Erlkönig will appear only to the person
about to die. His form and expression also tell the person what sort of
death they will have: a pained expression means a painful death, a peaceful
expression means a peaceful death. This aspect of the legend was
immortalised by Goethe in his poem Der Erlkönig, later set to music
by Schubert. In the Brothers Grimm fairy tale Der Schuhmacher
und die Heinzelmännchen, a group of naked, one foot tall beings called Heinzelmännchen
help a shoemaker in his work.
When he rewards their work with little clothes, they
are so delighted, that they run away and are never seen again. Even though Heinzelmännchen
are akin to beings such as kobolds and dwarves, the tale has been
translated to English as The Shoemaker & the Elves, (probably
due to the similarity of the henzelmannchen to Scottish brownies) and is
echoed in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter stories.
5. English
elves in Iceland The word elf came into English as the Old
English word ćlf (pl. ćlfe, with regional and chronological
variants such as ylfe and ćlfen), and so came to Britain
originally with the Anglo-Saxons. Words for the nymphs of the Greek and Roman
mythos were translated by Anglo-Saxon scholars with ćlf and variants
on it.
Although our early English evidence is slight, there
are reasons to think that Anglo-Saxon elves (ćlfe) were similar to
early elves in Norse mythology: human-like, human-sized supernatural
beings, capable of helping or harming the people who encountered them. In
particular, the pairing of ćsir and álfar found in the Poetic
Edda is mirrored in the Old English charm Wiđ fćrstice and in
the distinctive occurrence of the cognate words os and ćlf in
Anglo-Saxon personal names.
In relation to the beauty of the Norse elves, some
further evidence is given by old English words such as ćlfsciene
("elf-beautiful"), used of seductively beautiful Biblical women
in the Old English poems Judith and Genesis A. Although
elves could be considered to be beautiful and potentially helpful beings in
some sections of English-speaking society throughout its history,
Anglo-Saxon evidence also attests to alignments of elves with demons, as
for example in line 112 of Beowulf. On the other hand, oaf is
simply a variant of the word elf, presumably originally referring to
a changeling or to someone stupefied by elvish enchantment.
Little documentation exists on English rustic beliefs
and terminology before the 19th century, but it seems that the term elf
was used, at least on some occasions or in some places, for various kinds
of uncanny wights, either human-sized or smaller. But other terms were also
used.
Elf-shot (or elf-bolt or elf-arrow)
is a word found in Scotland and Northern England, first attested in a
manuscript of about the last quarter of the 16th century. Although first
attested in the sense 'sharp pain caused by elves', it is later attested
denoting Neolithic flint arrow-heads, which by the 17th century seem to
have been attributed in Scotland to elvish folk, and which were used in
healing rituals, and alleged to be used by witches (and perhaps elves) to
injure people and cattle.
So too a tangle in the hair was called an elf-lock,
as being caused by the mischief of the elves, and sudden paralysis was
sometimes attributed to elf-stroke. Compare with the following
excerpt from an 1750 ode by Willam 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-smit heifers lie.
The elf makes many appearances in ballads of English
and Scottish origin, as well as folk tales, many involving trips to Elphame
or Elfland (the Álfheim of Norse mythology), a mystical realm which
is sometimes an eerie and unpleasant place.
The elf is often portrayed in a positive light, such
as the Queen of Elphame in the ballad Thomas the Rhymer, but
examples exist of the elf has a sinister character, as in the Tale of Childe
Rowland, or the ballad Lady Isabel of the Elf-Knight, in which
the Elf-Knight bears away Isabel to murder her. In none of these cases is
the elf a spritely character with pixie-like qualities.
English folktales of the early modern period
typically portray elves as small, elusive people with mischievous
personalities. They are not evil but might annoy humans or interfere in
their affairs.
They are sometimes said to be invisible. In this
tradition, elves became more or less synonymous with the fairies that
originated from native British mythology, for example, the Welsh Ellyll
(plural Ellyllon) and Y Dynon Bach Tęg.
Successively, the word elf, as well as
literary term fairy, evolved to a general denotation of various
nature spirits like pwcca, hobgoblin, Robin Goodfellow,
the Scots brownie, and so forth. These terms, like their relatives
in other European languages, are no longer clearly distinguished in popular
folklore.
Significant for the distancing of the concept of
elves from its mythological origins was the influence from literature. In Elizabethan
England, William Shakespeare imagined elves as little people. He apparently
considered elves and fairies to be the same race. In Henry IV, part 1,
act II, scene iv, he has Falstaff call Prince Henry, "you starveling,
you elfskin!", and in his A Midsummer Night's Dream, his elves
are almost as small as insects.
On the other hand, Edmund Spenser applies elf
to full-sized beings in The Faerie Queene.
The influence of Shakespeare and Michael Drayton made
the use of elf and fairy for very small beings the norm. In Victorian
literature, elves usually appeared in illustrations as tiny men and women
with pointed ears and stocking caps.
An example is Andrew Lang's fairy tale Princess
Nobody (1884), illustrated by Richard Doyle, where fairies are tiny people
with butterfly wings, whereas elves are tiny people with red stocking caps.
There were exceptions to this rule however, such as the full-sized elves
who appear in Lord
Dunsany's The King of Elfland's Daughter. Home |
|
| Goecco.com Travel Marketing Center | ||
HIDDEN
PEOPLE AND ELVES IN REYKJAVIK