The Word Elf, and What It Does Not Mean

Alfheim is mentioned almost in passing. A poem lists it among the dwellings and says the gods gave it to Freyr as a tooth-gift, the present made when a child cuts its first tooth. That single detail is most of what exists, and it links the elves to the god of fertility and plenty rather than to anything ethereal.

Snorri supplies the scheme everyone knows: light elves who are fairer than the sun and live in Alfheim, and dark or black elves who live below and are swarthy. The poetry does not make that division, and the dark elves are difficult to distinguish from dwarves in his own text. It is very likely a systematisation, possibly modelled on the Christian division of angels, imposed on a word that had been used loosely.

What the word does mean in practice is visible in later Scandinavian usage. Elves receive offerings. The alfablot was a household sacrifice held in autumn, private enough that a traveller could be turned away from a farm because it was in progress. Elves cause illness, and charms exist against elf-shot. This is not a race of beautiful immortals; it is a class of local powers who had to be kept on good terms, and the modern elf owes far more to nineteenth century romanticism and to Tolkien than to any of it.