The name Inwe or Ingwë (in the first draft Ing), given by Tolkien to the eldest of the elves and his clan, [T 5] is similar to the name found in Norse mythology as that of the god Ingwi-Freyr, a god who is gifted the elf-world Álfheimr. Terry Gunnell finds the relationship between beautiful ships and the Elves reminiscent of the god Njörðr and the god Freyr's ship Skíðblaðnir. [19] He also retains the usage of the French derived term "fairy" for the same creatures. [20] 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 " 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 Germanic-speakers' Christian culture and not merely a relic of their 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. [8] 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. [98] [99] According to Hrólfs saga kraka, Hrolfr Kraki's half-sister Skuld 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. [100] The relatively few mentions of elves in the chivalric sagas tend even to be whimsical. [101] Drout, Michael D. C.; Hitotsubashi, Namiko; Scavera, Rachel (2014). "Tolkien's Creation of the Impression of Depth". Tolkien Studies. 11 (1): 167–211. doi: 10.1353/tks.2014.0008. ISSN 1547-3163. S2CID 170851865. 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; [60] debate about its significance is ongoing. [61]

Jakobsson, Ármann (2015). "Beware of the Elf! A Note on the Evolving Meaning of Álfar". Folklore. 126 (2): 215–223. doi: 10.1080/0015587X.2015.1023511. S2CID 161909641. Likewise, in Middle English and early modern Scottish evidence, while still appearing as causes of harm and danger, elves appear clearly as humanlike beings. [73] They became associated with medieval chivalric romance traditions of fairies and particularly with the idea of a Fairy Queen. A propensity to seduce or rape people becomes increasingly prominent in the source material. [74] Around the fifteenth century, evidence starts to appear for the belief that elves might steal human babies and replace them with changelings. [75] Decline in the use of the word elf The 1977 Rankin-Bass version of The Hobbit depicts the wood-elves in what Austin Gilkeson calls a weird way, quite unlike the elves in any other adaptation, not even resembling the film's depiction of Elrond. Gilkeson describes them as "like Troll dolls that have been left out in the rain too long, and a little like Yzma from The Emperor's New Groove. They have gray skin, pug faces, and blond hair. It’s frankly bizarre". [30]

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Tolley, Clive (2009). Shamanism in Norse Myth and Magic. Folklore Fellows' Communications. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica. pp.296–297, 2 volumes. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: postscript ( link) 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. [90] [91] 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 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. [124] Tolkien, J. R. R. (1984). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). The Book of Lost Tales. Vol.1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-35439-0. Historically, people have taken three main approaches to integrate elves into Christian cosmology, all of which are found widely across time and space:

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). [28] 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'. [29] 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. [30] Etymology A chart showing how the sound of the word elf has changed in the history of English [31] [32]Khmer culture in Cambodia includes the Mrenh kongveal, elfish beings associated with guarding animals. [161] Green, Richard Firth (2003). "Changing Chaucer". Studies in the Age of Chaucer. 25: 27–52. doi: 10.1353/sac.2003.0047. S2CID 201747051. Elfish beings appear to have been a common characteristic within Indo-European mythologies. [150] In the Celtic-speaking regions of north-west Europe, the beings most similar to elves are generally referred to with the Gaelic term Aos Sí. [151] [152] The equivalent term in modern Welsh is Tylwyth Teg. In the Romance-speaking world, beings comparable to elves are widely known by words derived from Latin fata ('fate'), which came into English as fairy. This word became partly synonymous with elf by the early modern period. [119] Other names also abound, however, such as the Sicilian Donas de fuera ('ladies from outside'), [153] or French bonnes dames ('good ladies'). [154] In the Finnic-speaking world, the term usually thought most closely equivalent to elf is haltija (in Finnish) or haldaja (Estonian). [155] Meanwhile, an example of an equivalent in the Slavic-speaking world is the vila (plural vile) of Serbo-Croatian (and, partly, Slovene) folklore. [156] Elves bear some resemblances to the satyrs of Greek mythology, who were also regarded as woodland-dwelling mischief-makers. [157] Asia and Oceania

In 1937, having had his manuscript for The Silmarillion rejected by a publisher who disparaged all the "eye-splitting Celtic names" that Tolkien had given his Elves, Tolkien denied the names had a Celtic origin: [T 7] 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. [24] [25] Research has shown, however, that stories about elves have often been used as a way for people to think metaphorically about real-life ethnic others. [26] [27] [5] Demythologising elves as people with illness or disabilityScholars of Old Norse mythology now focus on references to elves in Old Norse poetry, particularly the Elder Edda. The only character explicitly identified as an elf in classical Eddaic poetry, if any, is Völundr, the protagonist of Völundarkviða. [79] 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 the Æsir, or even suggesting that the elves and Æsir were one and the same. [80] [81] The pairing is paralleled in the Old English poem Wið færstice [69] and in the Germanic personal name system; [68] moreover, in Skaldic verse the word elf is used in the same way as words for gods. [82] Sigvatr Þórðarson's skaldic travelogue Austrfaravísur, composed around 1020, mentions an álfablót ('elves' sacrifice') in Edskogen in what is now southern Sweden. [83] 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. [84] 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. [85]