Editing Elf (section)

== Relationship with reality ==

=== Reality and perception ===

Elves have in many times and places been believed to be real beings.{{sfnp|Hall|2007|pp=8–9}} Where enough people have believed in the reality of elves that those beliefs then had real effects in the world, they can be understood as part of people's [[worldview]], and as a [[social reality]]: a thing which, like the exchange value of a dollar bill or the sense of pride stirred up by a national flag, is real because of people's beliefs rather than as an objective reality.{{sfnp|Hall|2007|pp=8–9}} Accordingly, beliefs about elves and their social functions have varied over time and space.<ref>{{harvp|Jakobsson|2006}}; {{harvp|Jakobsson|2015}}; {{harvp|Shippey|2005}}; {{harvp|Hall|2007|pp=16–17, 230–231}}; {{harvp|Gunnell|2007}}.</ref> Even in the twenty-first century, fantasy stories about elves have been argued both to reflect and to shape their audiences' understanding of the real world.<ref name="Poor">{{Cite journal|last=Poor|first=Nathaniel |s2cid=147432832|date=September 2012|title=Digital Elves as a Racial Other in Video Games: Acknowledgment and Avoidance|journal=Games and Culture|volume=7|issue=5|pages=375–396 |doi=10.1177/1555412012454224}}</ref>{{sfnp|Bergman|2011|pp=215–29}} Over time, people have attempted to [[Demythologization|demythologise]] or [[Rationalization (sociology)|rationalise]] beliefs in elves in various ways.{{sfnp|Hall|2007|pp=6–9}}

=== Integration into Christian cosmologies ===

[[File:James I; Daemonologie, in forme of a dialogue. Title page. Wellcome M0014280.jpg|thumb|upright|Title page of ''Daemonologie'' by [[James VI and I]]. It tried to explain traditional Scottish beliefs in terms of Christian scholarship.]]

Beliefs about elves have their origins before the [[conversion to Christianity]] and associated [[Christianization]] of northwest Europe. For this reason, belief in elves has, from the Middle Ages through into recent scholarship, often been labelled "[[paganism|pagan]]" and a "[[superstition]]." However, almost all surviving textual sources about elves were produced by Christians (whether Anglo-Saxon monks, medieval Icelandic poets, early modern ballad-singers, nineteenth-century folklore collectors, or even twentieth-century fantasy authors). Attested beliefs about elves, therefore, need to be understood as part of [[Christianisation of the Germanic peoples|Germanic-speakers' Christian culture]] and not merely a relic of their [[Germanic paganism|pre-Christian religion]]. Accordingly, investigating the relationship between beliefs in elves and [[Christian cosmology]] has been a preoccupation of scholarship about elves both in early times and modern research.<ref>{{harvp|Jolly|1996}}; {{harvp|Shippey|2005}}; {{harvp|Green|2016}}.</ref>

Historically, people have taken three main approaches to integrate elves into Christian cosmology, all of which are found widely across time and space:

* Identifying elves with the [[demon]]s of Judaeo-Christian-Mediterranean tradition.<ref>e.g. {{harvp|Jolly|1992|p=172}}</ref> For example:
** In English-language material: in the [[Royal Prayer Book]] from c. 900, ''elf'' appears as a [[Gloss (annotation)|gloss]] for "Satan".{{sfnp|Hall|2007|pp=71–72}} In the late-fourteenth-century ''[[The Wife of Bath's Tale|Wife of Bath's Tale]]'', [[Geoffrey Chaucer]] equates male elves with [[incubus|incubi]] (demons which rape sleeping women).{{sfnp|Hall|2007|p=162}} In the [[Witch trials in early modern Scotland|early modern Scottish witchcraft trials]], witnesses' descriptions of encounters with elves were often interpreted by prosecutors as encounters with the [[Devil]].{{sfnp|Hall|2005|pp=30–32}}
** In medieval Iceland, [[Snorri Sturluson]] wrote in his ''[[Prose Edda]]'' of [[Dökkálfar and Ljósálfar|''ljósálfar'' and ''dökkálfar'']] ('light-elves and dark-elves'), the ''ljósálfar'' living in the heavens and the ''dökkálfar'' under the earth. The consensus of modern scholarship is that Snorri's elves are based on angels and demons of Christian cosmology.<ref name="ReferenceA">{{harvp|Shippey|2005|pp=180–81}}; {{harvp|Hall|2007|pp=23–26}}; {{harvp|Gunnell|2007|pp=127–28}}; {{harvp|Tolley|2009|loc=vol. I, p. 220}}.</ref>
** Elves appear as demonic forces widely in medieval and early modern English, German, and Scandinavian prayers.<ref>{{harvp|Hall|2007|pp=69–74, 106 n. 48 & 122}} on English evidence</ref><ref name=schulz/><ref>{{harvp|Þorgeirsson|2011|pp=54–58}} on Icelandic evidence.</ref>
* Viewing elves as being more or less like people and more or less outside Christian cosmology.{{sfnp|Hall|2007|pp=172–175}} The Icelanders who copied the ''[[Poetic Edda]]'' did not explicitly try to integrate elves into Christian thought. Likewise, the early modern Scottish people who confessed to encountering elves seem not to have thought of themselves as having dealings with the [[Devil]]. Nineteenth-century Icelandic folklore about [[Huldufólk|elves]] mostly presents them as a human agricultural community parallel to the visible human community, which may or may not be Christian.{{sfnp|Shippey|2005|pp=161–68}}<ref name=alver&selberg/> It is possible that stories were sometimes told from this perspective as a political act, to subvert the dominance of the Church.{{sfnp|Ingwersen|1995|pp=83–89}}
* Integrating elves into Christian cosmology without identifying them as demons.{{sfnp|Shippey|2005|p={{page needed|date=September 2020}}}} The most striking examples are serious theological treatises: the Icelandic ''Tíðfordrif'' (1644) by [[Jón Guðmundsson lærði]] or, in Scotland, [[Robert Kirk (folklorist)|Robert Kirk]]'s ''Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies'' (1691). This approach also appears in the Old English poem ''[[Beowulf]]'', which lists elves among the races springing from [[Cain and Abel|Cain's murder of Abel]].{{sfnp|Hall|2007|pp=69–74}} The late thirteenth-century ''[[South English Legendary]]'' and some Icelandic folktales explain elves as angels that sided neither with [[Lucifer]] nor with God and were banished by God to earth rather than hell. One famous Icelandic folktale explains elves as the lost children of Eve.<ref>{{harvp|Hall|2007|p=75}}; {{harvp|Shippey|2005|pp=174, 185–86}}.</ref>

=== Demythologising elves as indigenous peoples ===

Some nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars attempted to rationalise beliefs in elves as folk memories of lost indigenous peoples. Since belief in supernatural beings is ubiquitous in human cultures, scholars no longer believe such explanations are valid.{{sfnp|Spence|1946|pp=53–64, 115–131}}{{sfnp|Purkiss|2000|pp=5–7}} Research has shown, however, that stories about elves have often been used as a way for people to think [[metaphor]]ically about real-life ethnic others.{{sfnp|Hall|2007|pp=47–53}}<ref name=tangherlini/><ref name="Poor"/>

=== Demythologising elves as people with illness or disability ===

Scholars have at times also tried to explain beliefs in elves as being inspired by people suffering certain kinds of illnesses (such as [[Williams syndrome]]).<ref>{{cite book |last1=Westfahl |first1=Gary |last2=Slusser |first2=George Edgar |title=Nursery Realms: Children in the Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror |date=1999 |publisher=University of Georgia Press |isbn=9780820321448 |page=153 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lrdhYWzpSDkC&pg=PA153 |language=en}}</ref> Elves were certainly often seen as a cause of illness, and indeed the English word ''oaf'' seems to have originated as a form of ''elf'': the word ''elf'' came to mean '[[changeling]] left by an elf' and then, because changelings were noted for their failure to thrive, to its modern sense 'a fool, a stupid person; a large, clumsy man or boy'.<ref>"[https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/129456 oaf, n.1.]{{Dead link|date=December 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}", "[https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/13053 auf(e, n.]{{Dead link|date=December 2018 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}" , ''OED Online, Oxford University Press'', June 2018. Accessed 1 September 2018.</ref> However, it again seems unlikely that the origin of beliefs in elves itself is to be explained by people's encounters with objectively real people affected by disease.{{sfnp|Hall|2007|pp=7–8}}