All Aboard!
W hy elves? In this book, I’ve shared with you my own personal take on and fascination with the elves and with the once flesh-and-blood people whose forgotten lives gave rise to so much of what my ancestors believed about the elves inhabiting their own neck of the woods. But elves are universal. Every culture has its own branch of elfkind, a diminutive or merely spectral people whose lives rattle along parallel to our own. They raise children, move house, mourn their dead, and protest when unwelcome changes are wrought in their environment. They are our neighbors on the other side of the veil.
Elves fulfill a human need by making us feel less alone in the world and reminding us from time to time that there is more to it than our eyes can see. They also offer us a glimpse into the kind of existence we might enjoy once we leave this world, making even more ominous the lines from a traditional English ballad: “That is the road to fair Elfland, / Where you and I must go.”
If the elves really are the dead, they’ve since taken on new lives independent of the ones they led before. They may be experiencing second childhoods, for they seem most willing to engage with the young and they don’t hesitate to play dress-up. The forms in which we see them are certainly not their true forms, just what they happen to be “wearing” that day or the glamour we have cast over them with our own imaginations.
There’s little to be gained—and much to be lost—by imagining a witch around every corner, but I think we could all benefit from a belief in elves. Having read this book, you might now keep your eyes peeled for bobbing lights on New Year’s Eve or be on the lookout for prospective elven in-laws when fetching rye crisps from the pantry at Christmastime. But those are just the little things. The Scandinavian peasant understood that any stranger he met on the forest track could very well be a member of elfkind. On the one hand, this made him wary; on the other, if the stranger asked him for a light or for help with a particularly thorny musical problem, the peasant would be quick to offer him his pipe or to whistle a tune for him. In other words, he treated everyone he met with dignity and kindness, because you just never know.
An elf might be anyone on either side of the counter the next time you order a cup of coffee or the woman with the annoyingly large suitcase looking for a seat on the train. You should know that the railroad is now the most reliable route into Elfland. Winding as they do past thickets and backyards, the tracks are not properly part of civilization, nor are they full-on wilderness. They are somewhere in between.
For better or for worse, the days when elven princes were expected to travel aboard lapstrake longboats, with golden shields hung all along the gunwale, are over. Yes, I’m quite sure that trains are now the preferred conveyance of the elves, as evinced by J.K. Rowling’s Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and its literary predecessor, Eva Ibbotson’s Platform 13. Even Jack Finney’s Third Level of Grand Central Station which—like the islands of Sandflesa and Hy Brasil, has only a very tenuous existence in our world—smacks of Elfland.
At some point, I know that someone, perhaps even you, dear reader, is going to try to pin me down and ask, “Do you believe in elves?” to which I, a twenty-first-century woman who recognizes the value of the scientific method, will have to answer, “No.” But that doesn’t mean I don’t hope to become an elf myself someday or to meet one much sooner in the mists swirling round Ellendor Station.