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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.
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.The elves (light-elves) are often mentioned along with the Aesir, instead of the Vanir (a race of gods). The names Vanir and Alfar (light elves) may have been either synonymous, since the expression "Aesir and Alfar" meant "all the gods", or designating a difference in status between the major fertility gods, the Vanir, and the minor ones, the elves. The Van Freyr was the lord of lfheim (meaning "elvenhome"), the home of the light-elves, and he had as servants two elves: Byggvir and Beyla. Like the Vanir the elves were associated with fertility and, in late fall, the "alfablt" (elven sacrifice) was performed in the homes. It was secret, no strangers were allowed in the homes, and so next to nothing is known of it.Towards the end of the 20th century, a number of people have begun to describe themselves as elves, usually more of the Tolkien than the folkloric Santa type. Many of these people can be found in the Otherkin subculture.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.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.)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.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.
