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105-805: An elf ( pl. : elves ) is a type of humanoid supernatural being in Germanic folklore . Elves appear especially in North Germanic mythology , being mentioned in the Icelandic Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda . In medieval Germanic -speaking cultures, elves were thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them. Beliefs varied considerably over time and space and flourished in both pre-Christian and Christian cultures . The word elf

210-416: A humanoid of dinosaur origin. Over geologic time, Russell noted that there had been a steady increase in the encephalization quotient or EQ (the relative brain weight when compared to other species with the same body weight) among the dinosaurs. Russell had discovered the first Troodontid skull, and noted that, while its EQ was low compared to humans, it was six times higher than that of other dinosaurs. If

315-638: A branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe , North America , Oceania , and Southern Africa . The most widely spoken Germanic language, English , is also the world's most widely spoken language with an estimated 2 billion speakers. All Germanic languages are derived from Proto-Germanic , spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia , Iron Age Northern Germany and along

420-454: A cause of 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

525-453: A circle where they had danced, called älvdanser (elf dances) or älvringar (elf circles), and to urinate in one was thought to cause venereal diseases. 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

630-522: A couple of verse spells, including the Bergen rune-charm from among the Bryggen inscriptions . 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 álfar , and then only in passing. But although limited, these texts provide some of the best evidence for

735-413: A few witchcraft trials, people attested that these arrow-heads were used in healing rituals, and occasionally alleged that witches (and perhaps elves) used them to injure people and cattle. A 1749–50 ode by William Collins includes the lines: 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,

840-641: 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 * albeis ). The most famous name of this kind is Alboin . Old English names in elf - include the cognate of Alboin Ælfwine (literally "elf-friend", m.), Ælfric ("elf-powerful", m.), Ælfweard ("elf-guardian", m.), and Ælfwaru ("elf-care", f.). A widespread survivor of these in modern English

945-405: A generally humanoid shape is likely, though octopus- or starfish-like bodies are also possible. An opposing view is given by Mike Wall, who argues that intelligent extraterrestrials able to contact Humans would most likely have reached a phase allowing them to develop themselves into machines. Several in-universe explanations have been offered for the abundance of humanoids. One of the more common

1050-494: A hierarchy of cooperating systems that make up any organism . Luis Villazon points out that animals that move necessarily have a front and a back; as with animals on Earth , sense organs tend to gather at the front as they encounter stimuli there, forming a head . Legs reduce friction, and with legs, bilateral symmetry makes coordination easier. Sentient organisms will, Villazon argues, likely use tools, in which case they need hands and at least two other limbs to stand on. In short,

1155-544: A hypothetical Proto-Germanic , united by subjection to the sound shifts of Grimm's law and Verner's law . These probably took place during the Pre-Roman Iron Age of Northern Europe from c.  500 BC . Proto-Germanic itself was likely spoken after c.  500 BC , and Proto-Norse from the 2nd century AD and later is still quite close to reconstructed Proto-Germanic, but other common innovations separating Germanic from Proto-Indo-European suggest

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1260-661: A key development of this idea. In the eighteenth 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 notion came the elves of modern popular culture. Christmas elves are a relatively recent creation, popularized during the late 19th century in the United States. Elves entered the twentieth-century high fantasy genre in

1365-581: A major role in transmitting traditional ideas about elves in post-medieval 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. The ballads are characterised by sexual encounters between everyday people and humanlike beings referred to in at least some variants as elves (the same characters also appear as mermen , dwarves, and other kinds of supernatural beings). The elves pose

1470-608: A minority language by immigrant communities in North America, South America, Central America, Mexico and Australia. A German dialect, Pennsylvania Dutch , is still used among various populations in the American state of Pennsylvania in daily life. A group of Alemannic German dialects commonly referred to as Alsatian is spoken in Alsace , part of modern France. Dutch is an official language of Aruba , Belgium, Curaçao ,

1575-610: A misunderstanding: the image proves to be a conventional illustration of God's arrows and Christian demons. Rather, twenty-first century scholarship suggests that Anglo-Saxon elves, like elves in Scandinavia or the Irish Aos Sí , were 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 álfar is associated with Æsir in Old Norse,

1680-720: A multitude of worlds toward a humanoid form. In the television series Stargate SG-1 , the Jaffa are explained as being a hundred-thousand year offshoot of humanity bred by the Goa'uld to suit their purposes, hence their almost-human appearance and physiology, while many other "alien" characters are actually the descendants of human- slaves who were removed from Earth by the Goa'uld. Any humans isolated on multiple planets after 100k+ years of adaptations would most certainly seem "alien" to Earthlings. Similarly, in its spin-off show Stargate Atlantis ,

1785-626: A native language of some 11 to 13 million people, remains in use by some 1.5 million speakers in Jewish communities around the world, mainly in North America, Europe, Israel, and other regions with Jewish populations . Limburgish varieties are spoken in the Limburg and Rhineland regions, along the Dutch–Belgian–German border. In addition to being the official language in Sweden, Swedish

1890-410: A navel, as a placenta aids the development of a large brain case. However, it would not have possessed mammary glands and would have fed its young, as birds do, on regurgitated food. He speculated that its language would have sounded somewhat like bird song . Russell's thought experiment has been met with criticism from other paleontologists since the 1980s, many of whom point out that his Dinosauroid

1995-519: A real person as possible, although these words are frequently perceived to be synonymous with a humanoid. While there are many humanoid robots in fictional stories, some real humanoid robots have been developed since the 1990s, and some real human-looking android robots have been developed since 2002. Similarly to robots, virtual avatars may also be called humanoid when resembling humans. Deities are often imagined in human shape (also known as " anthropotheism "), sometimes as hybrids (especially

2100-498: A result of similar evolutionary pressures. American psychologist and Dinosaur intelligence theorist Harry Jerison suggested the possibility of sapient dinosaurs. In a 1978 presentation at the American Psychological Association , he speculated that dromiceiomimus could have evolved into a highly intelligent species like human beings. In his book, Wonderful Life , Stephen Jay Gould argues if

2205-607: A separate collection of unstandardized dialects, with roughly 4.35–7.15 million native speakers and probably 6.7–10 million people who can understand it (at least 2.2 million in Germany (2016) and 2.15 million in the Netherlands (2003)); Yiddish , once used by approximately 13 million Jews in pre- World War II Europe, now with approximately 1.5 million native speakers; Scots , with 1.5 million native speakers; Limburgish varieties with roughly 1.3 million speakers along

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2310-471: A threat to the everyday community by lure people into the elves' world. The most famous example is Elveskud and its many variants (paralleled in English as Clerk Colvill ), where a woman from the elf world tries to tempt a young knight to join her in dancing, or to live among the elves; in some versions he refuses, and in some he accepts, but in either case he dies, tragically. As in Elveskud , sometimes

2415-454: A threatening, even demonic, force. For example, some prayers invoke God's help against nocturnal attacks by Alpe . 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

2520-634: A trait of primates , crows , and dolphins , at some point. In 1982, Dale Russell , curator of vertebrate fossils at the National Museum of Canada in Ottawa , conjectured a possible evolutionary path that might have been taken by the dinosaur Troodon had it not perished in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago, suggesting that it could have evolved into intelligent beings similar in body plan to humans, becoming

2625-399: Is Alfred (Old English Ælfrēd , "elf-advice"). Also surviving are the English surname Elgar ( Ælfgar , "elf-spear"), and the name of St Alphege ( Ælfhēah , "elf-tall"). German examples are Alberich , Alphart and Alphere (father of Walter of Aquitaine ) and Icelandic examples include Álfhildur . These names suggest that elves were positively regarded in early Germanic culture. Of

2730-471: Is a robot that is based on the general structure of a human, such as a robot that walks on two legs and has an upper torso, or a robot that has two arms, two legs and a head. A humanoid robot does not necessarily look convincingly like a real person, for example, the ASIMO humanoid robot has a helmet instead of a face. An android (male) or gynoid (female) is a humanoid robot designed to look as much like

2835-543: 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 trieget mich ("the elves/elf are/is deceiving me"). The same pattern holds in Early Modern German. This deception sometimes shows

2940-594: Is also spoken natively by the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, which is a large part of the population along the coast of western and southern Finland. Swedish is also one of the two official languages in Finland, along with Finnish , and the only official language in Åland . Swedish is also spoken by some people in Estonia. Danish is an official language of Denmark and in its overseas territory of

3045-595: Is also the official language in the overseas territories of Norway such as Svalbard , Jan Mayen , Bouvet island , Queen Maud Land , and Peter I island . Icelandic is the official language of Iceland . Faroese is the official language of the Faroe Islands, and is also spoken by some people in Denmark. Germanic languages by share (West Germanic in yellow-red shades and North Germanic in blue shades): All Germanic languages are thought to be descended from

3150-641: Is also to be found in the Prose Edda . The Old High German word alp is attested only in a small number of glosses. It is defined by the Althochdeutsches 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

3255-784: Is difficult to be sure how many of other words, including personal names, can appear similar to elf , because of confounding elements such as al- (from eald ) meaning "old". The clearest appearances of elves in English examples are Elveden ("elves' hill", Suffolk) and Elvendon ("elves' valley", Oxfordshire); other examples may be Eldon Hill ("Elves' hill", Derbyshire); and Alden Valley ("elves' valley", Lancashire). These 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

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3360-459: Is found throughout the Germanic languages . It seems originally to have meant 'white being'. However, reconstructing the early concept depends largely on texts written by Christians, in Old and Middle English , medieval German, and Old Norse . These associate elves variously with the gods of Norse mythology , with causing illness, with magic, and with beauty and seduction. After the medieval period,

3465-411: 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. A completely different etymology, making elf a cognate with

3570-429: Is now southern Sweden. 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 humanlike 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 German evidence. There are hints that

3675-401: Is often thought to be derived from it. These all come from a Proto-Indo-European root *h₂elbʰ- , 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 ljósálfar , suggested that elves were divinities of light. This

3780-541: Is one of the 11 official languages in South Africa and is a lingua franca of Namibia. It is used in other Southern African nations, as well. Low German is a collection of very diverse dialects spoken in the northeast of the Netherlands and northern Germany. Some dialects like East Pomeranian have been imported to South America. Scots is spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster (where

3885-468: Is ongoing. The noun elf-shot is first attested in a Scots poem, "Rowlis Cursing," from around 1500, where "elf schot" 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". But in early modern Scotland, elf-schot and other terms like elf-arrowhead are sometimes used of neolithic arrow-heads , apparently thought to have been made by elves. In

3990-531: Is overly anthropomorphic. Gregory S. Paul (1988) and Thomas R. Holtz, Jr. , consider it "suspiciously human" (Paul, 1988) and Darren Naish has argued that a large-brained, highly intelligent troodontid would retain a more standard theropod body plan, with a horizontal posture and long tail, and would probably manipulate objects with the snout and feet in the manner of a bird, rather than with human-like "hands". (Although bipedal dinosaurs often do have hands , if they don't turn them into wings.) A humanoid robot

4095-535: 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 Erlendur Haraldsson . The lead researcher of the 2006–2007 study, Terry Gunnell , stated: "Icelanders seem much more open to phenomena like dreaming

4200-404: Is that authors use the only example of intelligent life that they know, humans. In live-action television and films, using humanoid aliens makes it easier to cast human actors to portray alien characters. A study by the zoologist Sam Levin suggests that aliens might indeed resemble humans, given that they are presumably subject to natural selection . Levin argues that this can be expected to produce

4305-529: Is that the humanoids in the story have evolved on an Earth-like planet or natural satellite , totally independently from Humans on Earth . However, some works have offered alternative explanations: In Star Trek , the explanation is given that a primordial humanoid civilization, the Ancient humanoids , seeded the Milky Way Galaxy with genetically engineered cells to guide the evolution of life on

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4410-584: Is to say, the supernaturals protect and enforce religious values and 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 nineteenth 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 homogeneous medieval countryside, supernatural beings provided

4515-697: Is unknown as some of them, especially the East Germanic languages, disappeared during or after the Migration Period . Some of the West Germanic languages also did not survive past the Migration Period, including Lombardic . As a result of World War II and subsequent mass expulsion of Germans , the German language suffered a significant loss of Sprachraum , as well as moribundity and extinction of several of its dialects. In

4620-493: The Ṛbhus , semi-divine craftsmen in Indian mythology, was suggested by Adalbert Kuhn in 1855. In this case, * ɑlβi-z would connote the meaning 'skilful, inventive, clever', and could be a cognate with 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

4725-571: The British Isles and Scandinavia, originating in the medieval period, describe elves attempting to seduce or abduct human characters. With modern urbanisation and industrialisation, belief in elves declined rapidly, though Iceland has some claim to continued popular belief. Elves started to be prominent in the literature and art of educated elites from the early modern period onwards. These literary elves were imagined as tiny, playful beings, with William Shakespeare 's A Midsummer Night's Dream

4830-563: The Dutch – Belgian – German border; and the Frisian languages with over 500,000 native speakers in the Netherlands and Germany. The largest North Germanic languages are Swedish , Danish , and Norwegian , which are in part mutually intelligible and have a combined total of about 20 million native speakers in the Nordic countries and an additional five million second language speakers; since

4935-465: The Elder Edda . The only character explicitly identified as an elf in classical Eddaic poetry, if any, is Völundr , the protagonist of Völundarkviða . However, elves are frequently mentioned in the alliterating phrase Æsir ok Álfar ('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

5040-522: The Faroe Islands , and it is a lingua franca and language of education in its other overseas territory of Greenland , where it was one of the official languages until 2009. Danish, a locally recognized minority language, is also natively spoken by the Danish minority in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein . Norwegian is the official language of Norway (both Bokmål and Nynorsk ). Norwegian

5145-707: The Late Middle Ages , the word elf began to be used in English as a term loosely synonymous with the French loan-word 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

5250-581: The North Sea and Baltic coasts. The West Germanic languages include the three most widely spoken Germanic languages: English with around 360–400 million native speakers; German , with over 100 million native speakers; and Dutch , with 24 million native speakers. Other West Germanic languages include Afrikaans , an offshoot of Dutch originating from the Afrikaners of South Africa , with over 7.1 million native speakers; Low German , considered

5355-651: The Other through which everyday people created their identities; in cosmopolitan industrial contexts, ethnic minorities or immigrants are used in storytelling to similar effect. Humanoid Although this usage was common in the sciences for much of the 20th century, it is now considered rare. More generally, the term can refer to anything with distinctly human characteristics or adaptations, such as possessing opposable anterior forelimb - appendages (i.e. thumbs), visible spectrum - binocular vision (i.e. having two eyes), or biomechanic plantigrade - bipedalism (i.e.

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5460-513: The chivalric sagas tend even to be whimsical. In his Rerum Danicarum fragmenta (1596) written mostly in Latin with some Old Danish and Old Icelandic passages, Arngrímur Jónsson explains the Scandinavian and Icelandic belief in elves (called Allffuafolch ). Both Continental Scandinavia and Iceland have a scattering of mentions of elves in medical texts, sometimes in Latin and sometimes in

5565-538: The consonant change known as " Grimm's law ." Early varieties of Germanic entered history when the Germanic tribes moved south from Scandinavia in the 2nd century BC to settle in the area of today's northern Germany and southern Denmark. English is an official language of Belize , Canada, Nigeria, Falkland Islands , Saint Helena , Malta , New Zealand, Ireland, South Africa, Philippines, Jamaica, Dominica , Guyana , Trinidad and Tobago , American Samoa , Palau , St. Lucia , Grenada , Barbados , St. Vincent and

5670-592: The gods of Ancient Egyptian religion ). A fragment by the Greek poet Xenophanes describes this tendency, ...Men make gods in their own image; those of the Ethiopians are black and narrow-nosed, those of the Thracians have blue eyes and red hair. In animism in general, the spirits innate in certain objects (like the Greek nymphs ) are typically depicted in human shape, e.g. spirits of trees ( Dryads ), of

5775-630: 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 Brahes 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

5880-549: 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 sīden and sīdsa , a cognate with the Old Norse seiðr , and paralleled in the Old Irish Serglige Con Culainn . By the fourteenth century, they were also associated with

5985-623: The svartálfar create new blond 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 texts based on it. It is now agreed that they reflect traditions of dwarves , demons , and angels , partly showing Snorri's "paganisation" of a Christian cosmology learned from the Elucidarius , a popular digest of Christian thought. Scholars of Old Norse mythology now focus on references to elves in Old Norse poetry, particularly

6090-588: The Æsir , or even suggesting that the elves and Æsir were one and the same. The pairing is paralleled in the Old English poem Wið færstice and in the Germanic personal name system; moreover, in Skaldic verse the word elf is used in the same way as words for gods. Sigvatr Þórðarson 's skaldic travelogue Austrfaravísur , composed around 1020, mentions an álfablót ('elves' sacrifice') in Edskogen in what

6195-409: The 21st century, German dialects are dying out as Standard German gains primacy. The common ancestor of all of the languages in this branch is called Proto-Germanic, also known as Common Germanic, which was spoken in about the middle of the 1st millennium BC in Iron Age Scandinavia . Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, notably has a number of unique linguistic features, most famously

6300-581: The Black Lagoon , made in 1954 by Jack Arnold . Germanic languages Pontic Steppe Caucasus East Asia Eastern Europe Northern Europe Pontic Steppe Northern/Eastern Steppe Europe South Asia Steppe Europe Caucasus India Indo-Aryans Iranians East Asia Europe East Asia Europe Indo-Aryan Iranian Indo-Aryan Iranian Others European The Germanic languages are

6405-544: The Elf-Knight , in which the Elf-Knight bears away Isabel to murder her, or the Scandinavian Harpans kraft . In The Queen of Elfland's Nourice , 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 folk stories, Scandinavian elves often play the role of disease spirits. The most common, though the also most harmless case

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6510-471: The German-speaking world, elves were to a significant extent conflated with dwarves ( Middle High German : getwerc ). Thus, some dwarves that appear in German heroic poetry have been seen as relating to elves. In particular, nineteenth-century scholars tended to think that the dwarf Alberich, whose name etymologically means "elf-powerful," was influenced by early traditions of elves. From around

6615-912: The Grenadines , Puerto Rico, Guam , Hong Kong, Singapore, Pakistan, India, Papua New Guinea , Namibia , Vanuatu , the Solomon Islands and former British colonies in Asia, Africa and Oceania. Furthermore, it is the de facto language of the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia, as well as a recognized language in Nicaragua and Malaysia. German is a language of Austria, Belgium, Germany, Liechtenstein , Luxembourg and Switzerland; it also has regional status in Italy, Poland, Namibia and Denmark. German also continues to be spoken as

6720-612: The Middle Ages, however, these languages have been strongly influenced by Middle Low German , a West Germanic language, and Low German words account for about 30–60% of their vocabularies according to various estimates. Other extant North Germanic languages are Faroese , Icelandic , and Elfdalian , which are more conservative languages with no significant Low German influence, more complex grammar and limited mutual intelligibility with other North Germanic languages today. The East Germanic branch included Gothic , Burgundian , and Vandalic , all of which are now extinct. The last to die off

6825-428: The Netherlands, Sint Maarten , and Suriname . The Netherlands also colonized Indonesia , but Dutch was scrapped as an official language after Indonesian independence . Today, it is only used by older or traditionally educated people. Dutch was until 1983 an official language in South Africa but evolved into and was replaced by Afrikaans , a partially mutually intelligible daughter language of Dutch. Afrikaans

6930-613: The Old English Wið færstice associates elves with ēse ; whatever this word meant by the tenth century, etymologically it denoted pagan gods. In Old English, the plural ylfe (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 ælbinne were used in glosses to translate Latin words for nymphs . This fits well with

7035-440: The Old Norse word álfr . The following table summarises the situation in the main modern standard languages of Scandinavia. The elves of Norse mythology have survived into folklore mainly as females, living in hills and mounds of stones. The Swedish älvor 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

7140-525: The Rhymer , where a man meets a female elf; Tam Lin , The Elfin Knight , and Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight , in which an Elf-Knight rapes, seduces, or abducts a woman; and The Queen of Elfland's Nourice , 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 humanlike supernatural beings are attested, which might be thought of as elves and partly originate in medieval Scandinavian beliefs. However,

7245-401: The Scottish border, beliefs in elves remained prominent into the nineteenth 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 Issobel Gowdie ; and related stories also appear in folktales, There is a significant corpus of ballads narrating stories about elves, such as Thomas

7350-900: The ability to walk on heels and metatarsals in an upright position). Humanoids may also include human-animal hybrids (where each cell has partly human and partly animal genetic contents) and human-animal chimeras (where some cells are human and some cells are animal in origin). Science fiction media frequently present sentient extraterrestrial lifeforms as humanoid as a byproduct of convergent evolution . Humanoid characters are defined by their human-like physical characteristics and forms, which can vary. These characters may appear entirely human, predominantly human-like (e.g., Saiyans from Dragon Ball Z , Martians and Kryptonians from DC Comics ), or they may possess general non-human traits while still having human-like physical characteristics (e.g., human-like Pokémon , ThunderCats characters, various characters from The Amazing World of Gumball ). In

7455-453: The ancestor-language of the attested Germanic languages ; the Proto-Germanic forms are reconstructed as * ɑlβi-z and * ɑlβɑ-z . Germanic *ɑlβi-z~*ɑlβɑ-z is generally agreed to be a cognate with Latin albus ('(matt) white'), Old Irish ailbhín ('flock'), Ancient Greek ἀλφός ( alphós ; 'whiteness, white leprosy';), and Albanian elb ('barley'); and the Germanic word for 'swan' reconstructed as *albit- (compare Modern Icelandic álpt )

7560-401: The arcane practice of alchemy . In one or two Old English medical texts, elves might be envisaged as inflicting illnesses with projectiles. In the twentieth century, scholars often labelled the illnesses elves caused as " elf-shot ", but work from the 1990s onwards showed that the medieval evidence for elves' being thought to cause illnesses in this way is slender; debate about its significance

7665-600: The belief that elves might afflict humans and livestock with illnesses: apparently mostly sharp, internal pains and mental disorders. The most famous of the medical texts is the metrical charm Wið færstice ("against a stabbing pain"), from the tenth-century compilation Lacnunga , but most of the attestations are in the tenth-century Bald's Leechbook and Leechbook III . This tradition continues into later English-language traditions too: elves continue to appear in Middle English medical texts. Belief in elves as

7770-466: The characteristics and names of these beings have varied widely across time and space, and they cannot be neatly categorised. These beings are sometimes known by words descended directly from the Old Norse álfr . However, in modern languages, traditional terms related to álfr 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

7875-481: 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 ( älvakvinna ) 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

7980-568: The elf of Geirstaðir'), and a demonic elf at the beginning of Norna-Gests þáttr . The legendary sagas tend to focus on elves as legendary ancestors or on heroes' sexual relations with elf-women. Mention of the land of Álfheimr is found in Heimskringla while Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar recounts a line of local kings who ruled over Álfheim , who since they had elven blood were said to be more beautiful than most men. According to Hrólfs saga kraka , Hrolfr Kraki 's half-sister Skuld

8085-505: 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 ( Alfkors , Älvkors or Ellakors ), 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 onto doors, walls, and household utensils to protect against elves. The second form

8190-649: The everyday person is a man and the elf a woman, as also in Elvehøj (much the same story as Elveskud, but with a happy ending), Herr Magnus og Bjærgtrolden , Herr Tønne af Alsø , Herr Bøsmer i elvehjem , or the Northern British Thomas the Rhymer . Sometimes the everyday person is a woman, and the elf is a man, as in the northern British Tam Lin , The Elfin Knight , and Lady Isabel and

8295-648: The explanation offered for the humanoid appearance of the Wraith is that the Wraith evolved from a parasite which incorporated human DNA into its own genome after feeding on humans, giving the Wraith their present form. In the field of ufology , humanoid refers to any of the claimed extraterrestrials which abduct human victims, such as the Greys , the Reptilians , Nordics , and Martians . In fantasy settings

8400-712: The form elf during the Middle English period. During the Old English period, separate forms were used for female elves (such as ælfen , putatively from Proto-Germanic * ɑlβ(i)innjō ), but during the Middle English period the word elf routinely came to include female beings. The Old English forms are cognates – having a common origin – with medieval Germanic terms such as Old Norse alfr ('elf'; plural alfar ), Old High German alp ('evil spirit'; pl. alpî , elpî ; feminine elbe ), Burgundian * alfs ('elf'), and Middle Low German alf ('evil spirit'). These words must come from Proto-Germanic ,

8505-548: The form of amulets, where elves are viewed as a possible cause of illness. Most of them have Low German connections. Sometimes elves are, like dwarves , 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, Wēland in Anglo-Saxon and Wieland in German. The story of Wayland

8610-466: 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 Valdimar Tr. Hafstein , "narratives about the insurrections of elves demonstrate supernatural sanction against development and urbanization; that

8715-717: The god Freyr was associated with elves. In particular, Álfheimr (literally "elf-world") is mentioned as being given to Freyr in Grímnismál . Snorri Sturluson identified Freyr as one of the Vanir . However, the term Vanir 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 álfar and Vanir are, more or less, different words for

8820-426: 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

8925-473: The heart-smit heifers lie. Because of elves' association with illness, in the twentieth century, most scholars imagined 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 Eadwine Psalter , in an image which became well known in this connection. However, this is now thought to be

9030-447: The idea of a Fairy Queen . A propensity to seduce or rape people becomes increasingly prominent in the source material. Around the fifteenth 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, elf was increasingly being supplanted by the French loan-word fairy . An example is Geoffrey Chaucer 's satirical tale Sir Thopas , where

9135-486: The latter case, they often overlap with anthropomorphic characters, with humanoid characters being a subtype of anthropomorphism, specifically in terms of physical characteristics. Although there are no known humanoid species outside the genus Homo , the theory of convergent evolution speculates that different species may evolve similar traits, and in the case of a humanoid these traits may include intelligence and bipedalism and other humanoid skeletal changes , as

9240-515: The local dialect is known as Ulster Scots ). Frisian is spoken among half a million people who live on the southern fringes of the North Sea in the Netherlands and Germany. Luxembourgish is a Moselle Franconian dialect that is spoken mainly in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , where it is considered to be an official language. Similar varieties of Moselle Franconian are spoken in small parts of Belgium, France, and Germany. Yiddish, once

9345-483: 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 to be similar to gods. In later Old Icelandic, alfr ("elf") and the personal name which in Common Germanic had been * Aþa(l)wulfaz both coincidentally became álfr~Álfr . Elves appear in some place names, though it

9450-412: The poem is to rape Böðvildr , the poem associates elves with being a sexual threat to maidens. The same idea is present in two post-classical Eddaic poems, which are also influenced by chivalric romance or Breton lais , Kötludraumur and Gullkársljóð . The idea also occurs in later traditions in Scandinavia and beyond, so it may be an early attestation of a prominent tradition. Elves also appear in

9555-697: The presence of elves in everyday beliefs in medieval Scandinavia. They include a fleeting mention of elves seen out riding in 1168 (in Sturlunga saga ); mention of an álfablót ("elves' sacrifice") in Kormáks saga ; and the existence of the euphemism ganga álfrek ('go to drive away the elves') for "going to the toilet" in Eyrbyggja saga . The Kings' sagas include a rather elliptical but widely studied account of an early Swedish king being worshipped after his death and being called Ólafr Geirstaðaálfr ('Ólafr

9660-488: The same group of beings. However, this is not uniformly accepted. A kenning (poetic metaphor) for the sun, álfröðull (literally "elf disc"), is of uncertain meaning but is to some suggestive of a close link between elves and the sun. Although the relevant words are of slightly uncertain meaning, it seems fairly clear that Völundr is described as one of the elves in Völundarkviða . As his most prominent deed in

9765-438: The seductive side apparent in English and Scandinavian material: most famously, the early thirteenth-century Heinrich von Morungen 's fifth Minnesang begins "Von den elben wirt entsehen vil manic man / Sô bin ich von grôzer liebe entsên" ("full many a man is bewitched by elves / thus I too am bewitched by great love"). Elbe was also used in this period to translate words for nymphs. In later medieval prayers, Elves appear as

9870-403: The tape of life were re-wound and played back, life would have taken a very different course. Simon Conway Morris counters this argument, arguing that convergence is a dominant force in evolution and that since the same environmental and physical constraints act on all life, there is an "optimum" body plan that life will inevitably evolve toward, with evolution bound to stumble upon intelligence,

9975-595: The term humanoid is used to refer to a human-like fantastical creature, such as a dwarf , elf , gnome , halfling , goblin , troll , orc or an ogre , and Bigfoot . In some cases, such as older versions of the game Dungeons & Dragons , a distinction is made between demi-humans , which are relatively similar to humans, and humanoids, which exhibit larger differences from humans. Animals that are humanoid are also shown in fantasy. Humanoids are also used in some old horror movies, for example in Creature From

10080-593: The title character sets out in a quest for the "elf-queen", who dwells in the "countree of the Faerie". Evidence for elf 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 svartálfar , dökkálfar and ljósálfar ("black elves", "dark elves", and "light elves"). For example, Snorri recounts how

10185-651: The trend in Troodon evolution had continued to the present, its brain case could by now measure 1,100 cm ; comparable to that of a human. Troodontids had semi-manipulative fingers, able to grasp and hold objects to a certain degree, and binocular vision. Russell proposed that this " Dinosauroid ", like most dinosaurs of the troodontid family, would have had large eyes and three fingers on each hand, one of which would have been partially opposed . As with most modern reptiles (and birds), he conceived of its genitalia as internal. Russell speculated that it would have required

10290-463: The wake of J. R. R. Tolkien 's works; these re-popularised the idea of elves as human-sized and humanlike beings. Elves remain a prominent feature of fantasy media today. The English word elf is from the Old English word most often attested as ælf (whose plural would have been * ælfe ). Although this word took a variety of forms in different Old English dialects, these converged on

10395-406: The woodlands (the hybrid fauns ), of wells or waterways ( Nereids , Necks ), etc. With regard to extraterrestrials in fiction , the term humanoid is most commonly used to refer to alien beings with a body plan that is generally like that of a human, including upright stance and bipedalism , as well as intelligence. In much of science fiction , humanoid aliens are abundant. One explanation

10500-586: The word elf became less common throughout the Germanic languages, losing out to terms like Zwerg ('dwarf') in German and huldra ('hidden being') in North Germanic languages , and to loan-words like fairy (borrowed from French). 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 invisibly, alongside human communities. They continued to be associated with causing illnesses and with sexual threats. For example, several early modern ballads in

10605-402: The word ælfscȳne , which meant "elf-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 humanlike beings. They became associated with medieval chivalric romance traditions of fairies and particularly with

10710-543: Was Crimean Gothic , spoken until the late 18th century in some isolated areas of Crimea . The SIL Ethnologue lists 48 different living Germanic languages, 41 of which belong to the Western branch and six to the Northern branch; it places Riograndenser Hunsrückisch German in neither of the categories, but it is often considered a German dialect by linguists. The total number of Germanic languages throughout history

10815-465: Was an ordinary cross carved onto a round or oblong silver plate. This 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 belief in the huldufólk ("hidden people"), elves that dwell in rock formations,

10920-613: Was the half-elven child of King Helgi and an elf-woman ( álfkona ). Skuld was skilled in witchcraft ( seiðr ). Accounts of Skuld in earlier sources, however, do not include this material. The Þiðreks saga version of the Nibelungen (Niflungar) describes Högni as the son of a human queen and an elf, but no such lineage is reported in the Eddas, Völsunga saga , or the Nibelungenlied . The relatively few mentions of elves in

11025-400: Was various irritating skin rashes , which were called älvablåst (elven puff) and could be cured by a forceful counter-blow (a handy pair of bellows was most useful for this purpose). Skålgropar , a particular kind of petroglyph (pictogram on a rock) found in Scandinavia, were known in older times as älvkvarnar (elven mills), because it was believed elves had used them. One could appease

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