elven jewelry
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.
Scandinavian mythology includes light-elves (Lioslfar) who dwell in the third space in heaven, dark-elves (Dcklfar), and black-elves (Svartalfar). The black-elves were skilled smiths, and the most skilled were reputed to be the sons of Ivaldi, the father of Idun.
Elves were imported into Britain with the Anglo-Saxons.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".Wendy and Richard Pini's long-running comic book Elfquest attempts to avoid the usual Tolkienesque elven clichs by placing their elves in a setting inspired by Native American rather than European mythology. It later turns out that they are actually the descendants of a shape-shifting alien race rather than mythological beings.Tolkien's elves were enemies of goblins and orcs and had a longstanding quarrel with the dwarves: these motifs also often reappear in Tolkien-inspired works. In gaming, and to some extent fantasy, elves have a great depth of knowledge (especially regarding magic) due to a racial inclination as well as their extreme age. There are also "dark elves" popularized by TSR as drow.Elf-shot was the name use for found neolithic flint arrow-heads, imagined as created and used by the elvish folk, and sudden paralysis was sometimes attributed to elf-stroke.There are also in the Heimskringla notions about a line of local kings who rule over lfheim, situated between the Gautelfr and the present border between Norway and Sweden on the Swedish westcoast. The last king is named Gandalf.However, in Elizabethan England, Shakespeare imagined elves as little people. He apparently considered elves and fairies to be the same race. In Henry IV, Part 1, i. 4, he has Falstaff call Prince Henry, "you starveling, you elfskin!", and in his Midsummer Night's Dream, his elves are almost as small as insects. On the other hand, Edmund Spenser applies elf to full-sized beings in The Faerie Queene.In Scandinavian folklore, which is a later blend of Norse mythology and elements of Christian mythology, there are several groups of human-like nature spirits than are akin to "elves" in a modern sense. These are called tomtar, vittror, and lvor, and are grouped under the general name of vttar (compare wights).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.)