Editing Elf (section)

==Myths And Evolution==
To sum up the history: "Everyone in the northern Old World kinda maybe sorta had the same creature, but evolved their own variations on it, then kept swapping ideas and offshooting other mythological creatures until we wound up with [[gnomes|toymakers]], [[fey|fairies]], [[dwarves|bearded drunks]], and perfect assholes who shoot arrows".

For the long version: Elves are one of the oldest western European myths, having roots in Germainic folklore (meaning "pretty much all of the northern half of Europe") which extends into the pre-Christian era, and at the earliest points of the written record there was already some fairly distinct differences in everyone's version. Thus its almost impossible to pinpoint an origin or original variation due to most Europeans not being big into writing shit down before the Romans, most of them having incomplete languages so they pretty much abandoned whatever they had before being introduced to the Greek alphabet, and the few that could write down their folklore rarely wrote shit down on anything lasted being buried for a few centuries in some forgotten bog aside from the rare grave marker or weapon inscription. 
While the name is synonymous with Germanic/Scandanavian folklore, the archetype is quite common under different names, such as nymphs, faeries, and other creatures that tend to get lumped together under the name "fair folk." Of note, unlike most modern incarnations, they weren't called this JUST [[Mary Sue|because they were pretty]], but because you should call them nice things lest they [[Asdrubael Vect|fuck]] [[Malus Darkblade|your shit up]] [[Eldrad|with dickery]]. Generally speaking, if it's a magical human-like being from folklore of a country touching the Baltic Sea (as opposed to a talking animal or somewhere like the Mediterranean or whatever), it probably goes back to Elves.

Of some note: It's widely speculated that the idea of the Elf is a combination of two real world phenomena: People finding stone arrowheads from the stone age, which would inspire the question "why would you use stone if you had access to even low-quality metal?" (RL answer: "Because at the time, any metal was too valuable to use on something you could lose easily, and was too hard to work with") and distorted memories of other tribes and hominids, similar to what happened to turn a Rhino into the [[Unicorn]]--in particular, Neanderthals were historically claimed to be the inspiration behind elves by some naive folklorists.

The basic evolution of the idea as far as we are aware goes like this: 
* ''Roman:'' Some historians connect the origins of Elf myths to the Romans, who had myths about the spiritual explanation for misfortune and guerilla warfare they dealt with in the far northwestern reaches of Europe (kind of like World War 2 "gremlins" being blamed for malfunctions in aircraft among superstitious pilots). Some further connect it to a tactic possibly used by the Celts against the Romans, dressing children and small adults in mud and leaf camouflage and using them to sneak into Roman camps to steal supplies and weapons to use against them.
* ''Scandinavia:'' In Norse mythology, the nature of Elves changed wildly based on the author's use of them, and the gradual evolution of the viking myths as they became more and more influenced by the groups they raided certainly doesn't help. We basically know all of the small details and none of the big ones, and the things they can be but not the things that they cannot be. In most texts, they are similar to how the Greeks used the word [[Daemon]], a reference to most kinds of non-god spiritual beings that tells you very little about what said being is or does other than it not being human. In some texts, Elves includes the Vanir gods and not humans, or humans and not gods, made even more complicated by the fact some Vanir (nature gods) are also Aesir (human-centric) gods. One text divides them into svartálfar (Black Elves), dökkálfar (Dark Elves), and ljósálfar (Light Elves). The lord of the land of the Elves is the god Freyr, one of the most popular Norse gods and the twin brother of Odin’s wife Freya (which throws some water on Odin and Thor as a [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] gods, with Thor’s uncle being one of his close friends). Some humans are reincarnated as Elves when they die, some Elves are demigods who are worshiped as someone more likely to answer your prayers than the gods themselves (this actually persisted even after vikings largely converted to Christianity; imagine praying to Legolas because Jesus is too busy for your shit). Elves are sometimes a type of Dwarf, or Dwarves are a type of Elves. There are references to paying tribute to Elves, the sun being an Elven creation, Elves wander the countryside and can be seen in mornings, and Elf men lust after human women while human men lust after Elf women and the descendants of such unions are often heroes. Unfortunately Elves aren't actually the focus of any surviving stories, and as a result, there are only minor references to them that we no longer have much context for. The only thing that's really concrete about viking Elves is they're pretty, all have magic, and are great to have on your side. 
* ''Germany:'' German myths use Elves as tricksters who are a blight on humanity, causing mischief and disease like a type of fairy rat. Elves also behave like several Greek countryside feyfolk by seducing or raping human men and women. Dwarves are distinct from Elves, but Dwarves can behave like them and use Elf magic against humans. According to the viking writings about German folklore, Dwarves and Elves are basically the same thing and are powerful magical beings that play major parts in heroic stories; in particular the character Alfrikr/Alberich is a Dwarf who's name translates to a connection to Elves (there's interpretation on the meaning shared between the translation of his Old Norse and German names; he could be "power of Elves" or "Elf power", meaning he could be their king or a magician trained in their magic) who appears in a number of heroic poems (we'll discuss him more below). That being said, the vast majority of German Elf myth keeps them as humanoid evil magical beings in league with Satan, being described the same way that the Greek [[Satyr]] was albeit with the ultimate evil as their leader. They have are the servants and lovers of witches, they are among the beings you can blame for everything from milk turning sour to mental/physical illness to bestiality (maybe all three at once if they're doing it right!).  Dwarvish-Elves had a lot better reputation in Germany before the works of Richard Wagner, who made them both very Jewish and very evil (there’s a reason the Nazis loved him so much). Although love of Wagner’s orchestrations persists, the cultural perception of the stories he adapted have shifted back towards the earlier versions with the Dwarf-Elf as a sidekick rather than instigating antagonist. 
* ''Britain/Ireland/Scotland:'' Elves in British folklore are fairly synonymous with fairy myths. Elves are often trickster spirits like in Germany, and breed with humans like in the Norse accounts, but British Elves are gone into in depth as having their own kingdoms and politics, using humans as wet-nurses for Elf royalty and Elf nobility forcibly abducting/raping/marrying human maidens. Thus British Elves are less trickster spirits or types of lesser divine beings and more another race of mortals living in the realm of fairies and playing by fairy rules. Scottish and Irish folklore both kept Elves in the trickster fey position. The Brits took the ljósálfar/dökkálfar distinction one step further by creating the [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Seelie]] and [[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Unseelie]] courts; elves of the Seelie Court were [[Eldar|“generally” nicer]], as in they'd reward you if you did them a favor and would warn you if you accidentally offended them (assuming your stupidity, pride, or short-sightedness doesn’t turn the reward into an accidental punishment), and would play mostly harmless, lighthearted pranks. <s>Sort of like [[Eldrad|that one knife eared...]]</s> ''No, not really...'' Elves of the Unseelie court were usually assholes that would visit harm on travelers and would hurt you just because they felt like it. [[Dark Eldar|Sort of like these knife eared little shits]]. The Scottish also had the Sidhe, which both refers to various magical beings as well as being the word for the places that the Aos Sí feyfolk live. Sidhe/Aos Sí myths influenced the British heavily in regards to Elves/fairies, which they spread back to the French and Germans. 
* ''Slavs:'' Pan-slavic mythology is a bit problematic due to two major reasons - one is the fact that the Slavs were/are a diverse group of ethnicities and cultures that were/are connected broadly by only some cultural elements and language, thus one can't exactly pinpoint a "slavic elf" and because many myths and beliefs were shared with the germanic tribes. The second reason it's relatively difficult to distinguish the slavic elves is because their mythology generally folded them with other mythological beings - a good (and closest clear equivalent) would be "Vila" - which had the characteristics of fairies (but without the diminutive size), nymphs and elfettes whilst also having a penchant for living in sky-castles and fighting alongside human heroes (Slavs know where it's at - magical fairy-elf warrior monster girls ftw!).  Additionally, many beings that could be designated an elf were also tutelary deities, muddling the issue even further. However, the male of the species - "vilenjak" could be understood as basically an elf (and is usually translated as such when dealing with english). It is interesting to note that among the slavs, the more north one goes, the more various elven and fay beings become weird and outright malicious, while the southern slavs seem to sway towards the image of the elves and fairies that became the fantasy standard today.

In most myths Elves were seen as pagan, repelled by Christianity (like Vampires). The sign of the Pentagram was considered the "Elf Cross" and could be used as a symbol on jewelry or decoration to ward away the ill-intentions of Elves (in theory that would mean Elves not wanting humans to bother them would use the sign of the Christian cross).
[[File:Robin "Puck" Goodfellow.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Yep, ol' Billy Shakes was writing about Elf self-insert OCs too. Causing the costume prosthetic ear industry is a lesser mentioned influence he had on the modern day.]]
During the Renaissance period and the Enlightenment, Elves were used to add a sense of wonder to stories such as in William Shakespeare's ''Midsummer Night Dream'', or a touch of eroticism such as in the popular ballad ''Elveskud'' where a female Elf seduces a young man to be her husband (in most variations he resists her and she murders him with pestilence, likely to keep it PG-13). Just like how in the modern day you can circumvent rules regarding violence on television by using non-humans and blood colors other than red, you could get away with a lot of shit that uptight religious folks would (literally) burn you at the stake for by just substituting a human for a pointy-eared human. It should be noted that, as far as we know (it can be argued of course), the trope of Elves having pointy ears comes from ''Midsummer Night Dream'' through the Fey spirit named Puck, who later would be known as Robin Goodfellow in Shakespeare's ''Grim the Collier of Croydon'' and would appear in other pieces of English literature from other authors. Puck is a servant to the fairy king and queen Oberon and Titania, and is generally portrayed like a [[Satyr]] (which are usually portrayed with pointy ears like a goat). As fairies and Elves became staples of English art and folklore, Puck's pointy ears showed up more and more and in further and further cultures. 
Interestingly, its possible that Shakespeare derived the fairy king and Puck's master Oberon from the French Auberon, himself derived from the aforementioned German Alberich, and Shakespeare's Puck retroactively influenced the German change of Dwarfs from bit parts in the stories of great heroes to rapist goatmen that want you to shag a regular goat. Which is a pretty good summary of how Elf myth evolved and cross-pollinated. Of course it gets more complicated too, since Alberich is also likely the inspiration for the character Elegast, a Dutch character who is the king of the Elves and a friend of Charlemagne's (yes, '''THAT''' Charlemagne) who after proving his loyalty marries ol'Charly's sister, a story which may have influenced both later variations of Arthurian myth as well as Robin Hood. Alberich could change his appearance but was generally depicted either as an attractive bearded warrior or as a small child, his preferred guise for mischief which Puck/Robin inherited. On the other hand, Richard Wagner's operas used Alberich as a recurring character, influenced by the evil that Germans had come to associate with Elves and appears as a gross old hermit that is absolutely cram-packed full of all the anti-Semitic content Wagner could pack into one character before it spilled over into others and served as the catalyst for much of the misfortune in any of the stories he's in, giving a huge boost to pop-culture Dwarves being gold-obsessed dirty old men. 

A kind of war of words was waged around this time between authors from various European countries for ownership of the concept of Elves by famous figures such as Jacob Grimm (of the Brothers Grimm) and Hans Christian Anderson, each of whom carried Elves further away from sexual human-like beings and further towards what we know today as fairies (as in the thing your daughter might run around the house in plastic butterfly wings pretending to be, not the cruel, thieving, kiddie-raping variety that was known to pagan holdovers in earlier European myth.) 

By the 1700s, elves appeared in song and literature to add a sense of beauty to descriptions of the wilderness, an idyllic version of the countryside full of magic and mystery. This continued into the Victorian era, where small diminutive humanoids were added to pictures of toadstools or tree branches, helped further by the widespread appeal of fairy tales and the reprinting of the works of the aforementioned great authors into children's storybooks with thousands of illustrations by different artists. Some folks, notably Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (the guy who wrote Sherlock Holmes) actually believed these to be real, to the point that "believes in elves/fairies" was the 1800s version of "believes aliens are living on Earth" and was just as common. Martin Luther himself (as in the one who kicked off the whole Protestant revolt/Reformation thing) believed in them too, but a much more [[grimdark]] variety, that is, creatures of the devil, in whom he had a quite vigorous belief, [[What|once lobbing an inkwell at the old chap's head]], the resulting stain still being shown to tourists in [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|Wartburg]].
[[File:The King Of Elflands Daughter First Edition.jpg|thumb|right|100px|Its not as expensive as it should be given the significance, but a first edition copy of TKoE'sD costs about as much as a Hot Toys Legolas doll or the start to a Warhammer Elf army.]]
The return of the man-sized elves came with the 1823 American poem ''Twas the Night before Christmas'', describing Santa Claus as being "a right jolly old elf"; this kicked off an artistic evolution, a key figure of which was cartoonist Thomas Nast, who created the visual and folklore for Santa Claus as an Nordic-esque elf who is identical to a human, helped by child-sized elves of the Danish "shoemaker elf" variety (they are called "nisser" in Danish).