About elves and dwarves.


Elves are often associated with Celtic mythology. But I never found much about elves in ancient Celtic Mythology. The most prominent creatures in Celtic Mythology are the Thuatha de Danaan, often referred to as the fair ones, who later became known as fairies or fearies.
In more recent tales those fairies were very small, and usually had wings to fly with. Also, they seem to be female most of the time.
In older tales they were about human size, and they never had wings. They did have the power to travel through different worlds in a way that human could not. They were a lot like the elves as desribed by Tolkien, but they weren't called elves.
There's a french word "fay" (in dutch we write this as "fee"). The word "fay" seems to be related to the word "fairy", but I am not sure about this.

I think "elf" is nordic word, and the origin of the elves must be found in nordic or german mythology.
What does nordic mythology teach us about elves? Not a lot, and the few things that are being said are not always consistent with each other.
There are two Eddas, and they both consist of a collection of various sources, and those sources frequently contradict each other.
According to most sources I found, there are two races of elves, living in two of the nine worlds.

There are the light elves, who live in Alfheim (elven home). Those elves are closely related to Gods. There is a connection between the light elves and the god Freyr. It could be that Freyr himself is an elf. But since Freyr is also a familymember of the Vanir (fertility gods), this could mean that all the Vanir are light elves, or a subrace of the light elves.
The second race are the dark elves, who live underground in Swartalfheim (dark elven home). Dark elves avoid the sun, and feel mostly at home in caves and mines. They are very good at mining and at metal working. They often create powerfull magical artifacts, that are much sought after even by the gods. Dark elves are not gods themselves, but they are the gods' preferred artisans.
Dark elves are sometimes also known as dwarves.
Now here is where the different parts of the both Eddas disagree. Some texts say that dwarves and dark elves are the same thing, other texts say they are two different things.
They may be different things, but they are so similar in most respects, that it is hard to keep them apart.

Freya, the beautifull goddess of fertality and sex, one time has sex with four dwarves in excange for a golden necklace that they make for her. All the other gods frown on Freya for this prostitution, but she is so happy with her necklace that she doesn't care.
(for all you guys out there who never have succes with women; learn some form of metal working!)
There's also the incident of the seven dwarves who find a beautiful princess in their house, and decide to keep her as a housekeeper. They establish a warm friendship with the princess, but as far as I know, they never get to have sex with her. Maybe they forgot to make her a necklace?

In Schotland, dark elves are called "trow" or "drow" which seems to be related to the nordic word "troll" and not to "dwarf.

In the dutch language, there is something strange about the word "elf". When dutch or belgian people use the word "elf", we usually mean a small feminine creature with wings. This is called a fay or fairy in all other languages, but we call it "elf".

In the Dungeons and Dragons world, a dark elf is something completely different from a dwarf. But since I like to annoy people, I keep adressing dark elves as dwarves.

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These articles are all written by me. These articles are brought to you as useless information, and they pretend to be nothing more than that.
Not everything I state in these articles is nessecarily true. But it is not all untrue either.

Coen de Moor