The Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett feature extradimensional creatures called elves, that go back to the old myths of cradle-robbing fairies. The book Lords and Ladies is about an encounter with "the fair folk".Buy elven jewelry online in the largest elvish store
In 1954, Poul Anderson introduced grim Norse-style elves in his fantasy novel The Broken Sword and made them full-sized.
Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (1954-1958), became astoundingly popular and was much imitated. In the 1960s and afterwards, elves similar to those in Tolkien's novels became staple non-human characters in high fantasy works and in fantasy role-playing games (RPGs).
Christopher Paolini's Eragon also features elves of a Nordic persuasion.
Before they became diminutive and whimsical, elves were probably akin to powerful pre-Christian forest spirits like the woodwose, the Green Man, and the drusi in the mythology of the Gauls beings to be respected and even feared. A trace of the former importance of elves in Germanic culture exists in names like Alfred (Old English lfrd, "elf-counsel") and Alvin (Old English lfwine, "elf-friend").Tolkien is responsible for reviving the older and less-used terms elves, elven, and elvish rather than Edmund Spenser's invented elfs, elfin, and elfish. He probably preferred the word elf over fairy because elf is of Anglo-Saxon origin while fairy entered English from French.The twentieth-century philologist and fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien had little use for Shakepearean fairy portrayals or for Victorian diminutive fairy prettiness and whimsy, aligning his elves with the god-like and human-sized elves of Norse mythology, the Ljoslfar. He conceived a race of beings similar to humans but fairer, with greater spiritual powers, keener senses, and a closer empathy with nature. They are great smiths and fierce warriors on the side of good. Tolkien's Elves of Middle-earth are not deathless and can be killed by injury, and while they are sufficiently long-lived to be called immortal by humans, they do age.Buy celtic jewelry online in the largest celtic storePurchase celtic jewelry online in the largest celtic storeThe Brothers Grimm fairy tale The Shoemaker & the Elves is probably the most famous original elf tale. The elves are only one foot tall in this story, naked, and like to work on shoes, as leprechauns do. When the shoemaker rewards their work with little clothes, the elves are so delighted, that they run away and are never seen again. (This tales is echoed in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter stories: see below.)The Scandinavian elves were of human size, which allowed "normal" human interactions: for example, in Hrlf Kraki's saga, the Danish king Helgi finds an elf-woman on an island and rapes her. Famous men could be elevated to the rank of elves after death, and in one such case, the full-sized smith hero Vlund is called an elf.
