Christopher Paolini's Eragon also features elves of a Nordic persuasion.
Elves are mythical creatures of Germanic mythology that have survived in northern European folklore. Originally a race of minor gods of nature and fertility, they are often pictured as small, youthful-seeming men and women of great beauty living in forests and other natural places, underground, or in wells and springs. They have been imagined to be long-lived or immortal and magical powers have been attributed to them. Something associated with elves or the qualities of elves is described by the adjectives elfin, elven, elfish, or elvish. Elves are staple characters in modern fantasy. They are also called:
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The 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.)What remained of the belief in elves in German folklore was that they were mischievous pranksters that could cause disease to cattle and people, and bring bad dreams to sleepers. The German word for nightmare, Albtraum, means "elf dream". The archaic form Albdruck means "elf pressure"; it was believed that nightmares are a result of an elf sitting on the dreamer's chest.Post-Tolkien literary elves (popularized by the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game) tend to be human-sized or only slightly smaller than humans, and tend also to be capable warriors, especially skilled in archery. Terms like hob or brownie or other genuine regional folklore terms are seldom used of such creatures: they are unlikely to sneak in at night and help a cobbler mend his shoes. The canonical role-playing style elf is Deedlit, a major character of the anime series Record of Lodoss War.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.Modern fantasy literature has revived the elves as a race distinct from fairies. Fantasy elves are different from Norse elves, but are more akin to that older mythology and to the Irish sdhe than to folktale elves.Little documentation exists on English rustic beliefs and terminology before the nineteenth century, but it seems that the term elf was used, at least on some occasions or in some places, for various kinds of uncanny wights, either human-sized or smaller. But other terms were also used.Elf, fairy, and other terms for nature spirits like pwcca, hobgoblin, Robin Goodfellow, the Scots brownie, and so forth are no longer clearly distinguished in popular English folklore, nor are similar terms in other European languages.
