Are elves real? I hope I will not disappoint you, dear reader, when I say that this question is immaterial to me. To be sure, my own ancestors of not so long ago believed in them, petitioned them, took precautions against them, and even considered the possibility of marrying and having children with them. I would like to believe that I myself have seen elves, but the more rational bits of my brain will concede only that elves are a fascinating subject, one worthy of a much deeper look than they are usually given today. Indeed, the elves have done so much to enrich our culture that it would be a little disingenuous, I think, to demand proof of their existence. If you yourself are a believer in elves, you might find my approach to them irreverent at times. I can only say that this is the attitude that comes naturally to me and that, so far, the elves, if they really are out there, have not had a problem with it.
Throughout this book, I have chosen the adjective “elven” 1 over “elfin” because “elfin” has never fallen out of popular use and has come to mean “delicate, diminutive,” a word used to describe small children. Elves are not small children, though they have, in isolated incidents, appeared as such. The further back one traces the elven lineage, the taller the elves become, the branches of their family tree eventually winding themselves around those of the radiantly beautiful giants of Norse mythology.
Are elves the same as fairies? They are. I prefer the term “elf” simply because as a “Disneyfied” American child, I was conditioned early on to think of fairies as tiny ballerinas with wings. I’ve since learned that the phenomenon can be either male or female and is far more complex, elusive and, yes, dangerous, than my coloring books had led me to believe. As a young adult, I continued to favor “elf” as I delved into the religious beliefs, literature, and archaeology of the ancient Germanic peoples. The word “elf” is of Germanic origin, while “fairy,” I learned, descends through French from the Latin fatum, “fate.” For speakers of Modern English, the terms overlap, but for the most part, “fairy” is the Celtic/Romance2 name for the being in question, and “elf” is the Germanic—a pleasingly tidy distinction and one I was able to enjoy for a long time.
As I dug a little deeper, like the dwarves3 who will also be appearing in these pages, my spade broke through the crust of language to reveal a confusing tangle of roots. It might have been simpler to leave them alone, but there were glittering jewels hidden among those hairy roots. “Fairy” ultimately comes from fatum, “fate,” but was supposedly formed more directly from fātā, “the Fates”—Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos of Greek mythology —supernatural figures who spun, wove, and cut the individual’s destiny from the loom and who look very much like the norns of Norse mythology. Fatum, as it turns out, comes from the Latin verb fārī, “to speak.” 4 I’m inclined to believe that “fairy,” rather than deriving from fātā, was spawned by the same Indo-European root as fārī, and that it came into being thousands of years before William the Conqueror imported a Latinate vocabulary to English shores. It may have appeared as early as the Bronze Age, for at some point in the mists of prehistory, that same root also gave birth (through consonantal shift) to peri, the ethereally beautiful, fire-blooded creatures of Persian lore.
Within the context of Middle-earth, J. R. R. Tolkien, who was first and foremost a philologist, or “lover of words,” calls an elf an elf, but in his other writings, he refers to a place or state of being he calls “Faërie.” What Tolkien calls “Faërie” I have chosen to call “Elfland.” Faërie and Elfland are not exactly the same thing; no two such realms ever are. My motive for writing this book is to share my own vision of that land beyond the billowing curtain and what I have discovered there.
In the introduction to his 1911 opus, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, anthropologist and adventurer W. Y. Evans-Wentz laments, “Books too often are written out of other books, and too seldom from the life of man.” In writing my own book, I have relied heavily on others. Much of my life is books, and books have helped to shape my concept of Elfland. Were I to defend myself to Mr. Evans-Wentz, I would argue that my preoccupation with the books and stories in which elves appear was not born from the books themselves but from a direct experience of that other world, imagined or otherwise. Was it that experience, which I will share in these pages, that eventually drew me to the subject of elves and their origins? I will probably never know, but it certainly has been an interesting journey.
One can hardly talk about elves without mentioning Tolkien, as I do throughout this book. When I was a child, it was his novels—in particular, The Hobbit—that spurred my imagination. As an adult eager to root out the “truth” about elves, I have been more likely to seek guidance in his academic observations, but that is not to say that the elves, dwarves, and hobbits of Middle-earth do not continue to inspire me. Tolkien was himself immersed in the northern European folk memory, so it can be hard at times to separate his visions from the “reality” of the Bronze Age, Viking Age, and medieval elf. Each time I happen upon the image of a dwarf-forged ring or magical sword in the literature or archaeology, I feel a little thrill, for I know that Professor Tolkien has also passed this way. I hope I will succeed in communicating some of that excitement to you.
A reader of my first book, Night of the Witches, complained that there were no spells in it. That reader would probably be disappointed with this book for the same reason, for I will not be instructing you in the intricacies of soliciting the elves. I will not even tell you whether or not you should try to engage them. Though you must use the crafts and recipes in this book as you will, they are not intended to help you summon the elves but to create a psychical crossroads at which you might meet them. I was able, on one occasion, to enter a sort of Elfland through an old wardrobe—more about that later, and no, I did not end up in Narnia—but more often one must create the world one wishes to visit. What better way to conjure the atmosphere of Elfland than with the glint of gold paint or an artfully cast shadow?
Besides, fine craftsmanship has long been a hallmark of elfkind. If you desire an experience of elves, try stepping into their finely crafted shoes. The elves do a fair amount of traveling—paying visits, moving house, and embarking on great migrations—so there’s a good chance that sooner or later their paths will cross with yours. If you can craft, decorate, and narrate your way into the proper frame of mind when they are passing, you might just be able to see them. But be warned: they might not look as you expect them to, and you might not realize who they are until long after they have traveled on.
If you are neither craftily nor culinarily inclined, feel free to skip over the crafts and recipes in this book, but do read the introduction to each project: there is valuable information there. There is also an elven herbal for those who want to know more about the ethnobotany of the other world and a “Guide to Elves, Elfkind, and Related Phenomena” to which you should feel free to skip whenever questions arise.
While I will not be teaching you any spells, I will be sharing, retelling and dissecting a handful of stories. As Tolkien was well aware, the Old English spel denoted both a tale and a spoken charm. When the speakers of proto-Germanic gathered on the hard-packed earth around the open hearth to hear what stories their elders might be inclined to tell, they understood that a web of magic was about to be woven around them. I am not referring to some vague “magic of storytelling” but to a belief that change could be affected in the here and now by the recounting of events that occurred in the mythic “before.”
Those spells are still working. Archaeology can tell us only so much about Elfland, even the physical region I call “Old Elfland” (southern Scandinavia around 1250 BC). Folktales help to fill in many of the gaps. Those who first wove the spells were not particularly interested in organizing them into a canon and most of them were not written down until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. You will find “spell breaks” throughout the book. Do sit down for a spell and listen to the story. It is not my intention to break the spells these old stories weave but to break them open in search of clues to the true nature of Elfland.
There are no fairy tales in this book. You may ask, what is the difference between a fairy tale and a folktale? Fairy tales are about princes and princesses; folktales are about dairymaids and charcoal burners. Fairy tales have titles like “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”; folk tales have titles like “The Drinking Horn Stolen from the Huldre-folk at Vellerhaug” or “She Whistled the Tune.” Fairy tales take place in nameless kingdoms in the vague and distant past; folktales take place in villages, on islands, and in the shadows of mountains you can find on a map, and they happen in the teller’s grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ day. There are no glass slippers or golden balls in the stories you will read here, only hooks, spoons, and storehouse keys and, oh yes, the occasional bridal crown. And, oddly enough, while fairy tales usually feature one fairy or elf per story, folktales often include whole families, dancing parties, and even folk migrations of elves.
The belief that there are preternatural beings going about their business right under our noses is all but universal, and there are countless tales of human/elven encounters. I gravitate toward the idiosyncratic story, the one that deviates from the usual course of the “tale type” to which it belongs. I am also drawn to stories associated with physical objects—a brass crown, a tobacco pouch, a door. Such stories share a certain quality that I have not yet been able to put my finger on. Could it be the ring of truth, or the ring of something so delightful, so almost true, that one longs for it to be so?
Tolkien, in his essay “On Fairy-stories” (not to be confused with fairy tales), observed that there are not many stories that hold elves as the main subject, and that those that do are “not very interesting.” (He would prove himself correct when he wrote The Silmarillion!) I agree, which is why this book is not so much about elves as it is about me, you, and our relations with the all but invisible race with whom we have been sharing the planet for as long as we have been human.
1. The standard spelling is “elvan,” but I have gone with “elven” because (a) I was long unaware of the standard spelling and (b) it’s closer to the German elfen, and many of the elves in this book inhabit Germanic-speaking lands.
2. I am not suggesting that “fairy” is a word of Celtic origin, only that it is the English word most commonly applied to the diversity of otherworldly folk of Britain and Ireland, just as the French fée is used for their brethren on the other side of the Channel.
3. “Dwarfs” is the correct form, as in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” but I cleave to the spelling made familiar to me in The Hobbit.
4. Because I have not studied Latin, these etymological revelations have come to me piecemeal over the years. I found them expressed most recently and most clearly on p. 85 of Tolkien On Fairy-Stories as part of the “Editors’ Commentary.” See Bibliography.