The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year (5 page)

they particularly small. They have, however, always been a part of Christmas, even if their feast was originally held in October.

What’s with the Elves?

We know that the feast of the elves was called
Álfablót,
or

“Elf Sacrifice” and we know that it took place in southwestern Sweden, but we do not know exactly
what
took place.

In fact, we know almost nothing about Álfablót, and that

is the fault of a rather ill-tempered old farm wife who lived
29

30 At Home with the Elves

in the settlement of Hov in 1017. But before we take her to task, we must answer the question of who exactly are the

elves?

“
Hvat er med alfom?”
or “What’s with the elves?”3 asks the prophetess in the Old Norse poem
Völuspá
. You may be asking the same question, for it is not yet December,

the battered rinds of the neighbors’ jack-o’-lanterns are

still moldering at the curb while the Thanksgiving turkey

cools its heels in the freezer.
Hvat er med alfom
indeed. The ancient Scandinavians regarded the
Álfar
as a distinct class of beings, though there was some fluidity among the bloodlines of elves, gods, norns and even humans. Thirteenth-

century Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson offers us not one

race of elves but two. Light Elves, whom Snorri likens to

the sun, lived in Álfheim or “elf home,” which was located somewhere in the heavens. The Dark Elves, who were

“blacker than pitch,” dwelt deep inside the earth.

From earliest times, or the Bronze Age at least, elves

were associated with the sun. In Sweden, cup-shaped

depressions can be found in rocks bearing carvings of what we presume to be sun wheels. These stone cups held offerings of milk which rural Swedes continued to pour out for

the elves into the twentieth century. An Old Norse kenning for the sun itself is
álfröðlull
, or “glory of the elves.” The elves’ role as intermediaries between mortals and the life-giving sun helps to explain their shining aspect.

3. This line is more usual y translated as “What of the elves?” but I prefer this one, provided by John Lindow under the entry, “Elves,”

in his
Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals and
Beliefs
.

At Home with the Elves 31

The highly literate Snorri divided the elves neatly into

Light and Dark, but this does not mean they were so divided throughout the Nordic world, or that every peasant who

sought practical help from the elves was aware of such a divi-sion. The elves might have shone like the sun, but they were also very much of the earth. Because they were believed to be physically present in the landscape, they were often of more immediate importance to the farmer than were the mighty

gods. It is possible that propitiation of the elves preceded worship of the gods, just as it has long outlived it in the general population, for the story of the elves does not end with Ragnarök, the fiery demise of the Old Norse worldview.

“Will you know more?”

“
Vitod er enn, eda hvat?”
the
Völuspá
prophetess goes on to ask as she describes the end of that world. While many of the chieftains and kings of northern Europe were able to trade in Odin for Christ without much thought, the tillers of the soil had been working on their relationship with the elves for thousands of years and they were not about to give them up so easily. Rather than let the elves go, they re-settled them within a Christian cosmology. In this new world, the elves were semi-fallen angels. When Lucifer rose up against God, the elves, or fairies, failed to choose sides and so they were not cast all the way down but were doomed to haunt the wild places of the earth until Judgment Day. The idea that these creatures of light reached their state because of the actions of the Angel of Light fit neatly with the old beliefs.

Another rather more amusing theory has to do with

an unexpected visit God paid to Adam and Eve long after

32 At Home with the Elves

they had been expelled from the Garden of Eden and set up

house for themselves. By this time, they had so many chil-

dren that Eve couldn’t keep them all properly bathed, so she presented to God only the ones who had just come out of

the tub. When God asked to see the rest of the children, Eve denied that there were any, having sent the filthy ones to hide in the backyard. (She had apparently not learned her

lesson about lying to an omniscient deity.) God declared

that those children whom Eve had hidden from him would

remain hidden from all mankind. The descendants of these

grubby children are the Hidden Folk as they are known in

Iceland to this day.

Of course, not everyone is satisfied with such apocry-

phal explanations. From the early to mid-twentieth cen-

tury, it was fashionable to identify the elves and fairies as Europe’s first settlers. In his 1955 book
Witchcraft Today
, original Wiccan Gerald Gardner equated them with the

Picts and other tribes whose desire to keep the Old Ways

in the face of Christianity sent them scurrying to the fur-thermost reaches of the Celtic realm, to the barren moun-

taintops and to dark holes in the hills where they could

continue to practice their own brand of earthy magic.

Already a small race compared to the Romano-Britons

and Anglo-Saxons, their children were made smaller still

by the deprivations of a life in hiding. These aboriginal

“pixies,” a corruption of “Picts” as Gardner would have it, kept very much to themselves, stealing out only at night to pinch butter, milk and the occasional cow from their more

agriculturally advanced neighbors. In between times, they

At Home with the Elves 33

occupied themselves with their ancient rituals and with

making stone arrowheads tipped with poison, or “elf-shot.”

What did these pixies look like? No doubt their hair

was knotted into “elf locks” for want of a good combmaker, and at one time, it was common knowledge that they were

red-haired. In Washford Market, Somerset, they were also

thought to be cross-eyed and to have “pointed ears, short

faces and turned-up noses.”4 The observation that redheads could pop up unpredictably in otherwise blond or dark-haired families may have had to do with this belief. Rather than attribute such children’s coloring to a recessive gene or to the milkman, parents might regard them as changelings—the cast-off progeny of the pixies.

We know from the Romans that the Picts brushed

themselves with a blue paint that may have been mineral-

derived, though the more popular explanation is that it was derived from indigo extracted from the woad plant (
Isatis
tinctoria
).5 According to Gardner, when they wanted to go unnoticed, they mixed this blue colorant with a dye made

from the yellow-flowered weld (
Reseda luteola
), the result being a whole race of tiny men and women roaming the

4. Quite often, the terms “fairy,” “elf,” and “pixy” are used interchangeably. However, as Ruth L. Tongue explains in
Somerset
Folklore
, the Somerset Pixies defeated the fairies at some mythical point in time and drove them all west of the River Parrett. Since we mortals are not all of one tribe, it should come as no surprise that our otherwordly neighbors have also divided themselves into factions.

5. The writers who described these blue warriors did not make it clear if their skin was only painted or tattooed. If the latter were the case, an ink made from woad would have been the sensible choice since woad reduces swelling when applied to the skin.

34 At Home with the Elves

moors in varying shades of blue and Lincoln Green, the latter eventual y becoming the national color of Faerie.

Like their Neolithic ancestors, these beleaguered but

colorful “little people” maintained homes of dry-stone construction half sunk in the earth, perhaps even elaborate

complexes of them as can be seen at Skara Brae in the far

north of Scotland. Since the whole house was covered in

grass or heather, it would have looked to the casual eye like a natural feature of the landscape. If one of the “big people”

happened to be passing by of a winter’s night and witness

the opening of a well-concealed door, he could not have

failed to notice the blaze of hearth light staining the snow as it does at the doors of elvish abodes in so many folktales of northwestern Europe. There would have to have been

smoke holes in those hollow hil s through which the scents of the bracken fire and roasted shrew could have escaped,

but these details are seldom present in the folklore. Gardner insists that most of the coming and going would have been

through those primitive chimneys, which only added to the

pixies’ exoticism in the eyes of their neighbors.

Unfortunately, this Gardnerian version of elvish origins

probably has a lot more romance in it than truth. Instead, Gardner’s concept of the “mighty dead” might give us a better idea of who the elves really are. The mighty dead are the spirits of magical practitioners, “witches,” if you will, who, through a series of reincarnations, have honed their skills to the point where they, in death, have become objects of worship or at least consultation.

The elves were certainly revered, but one would hes-

itate to call them mighty. Especially in the Scandinavian

At Home with the Elves 35

folktales which were first recorded in the nineteenth cen-

tury by roving ethnographers inspired by the Brothers

Grimm, the elves appear to carry on lives that parallel those of their human neighbors. They move their cattle from one

pasture to another and spread their hay to dry in the sun.

They cook, clean and concern themselves with the welfare

of their children. They even attend their own church ser-

vices, though they appear not to have undergone either

Reformation or Counter-Reformation even in those coun-

tries where the humans were staunchly Protestant. Often,

the elves are possessed of an unearthly beauty, but just as often they appear as ordinary people, albeit in quaint dress.

If the elves resemble us, it is because they
are
us, or, rather, they
were
. The human who stumbles upon a procession of elves is often startled to recognize someone he knows among them: someone who has died either recently

or years before. Often, this dead acquaintance advises the human witness how to safely leave the party, the standard

precaution being not to touch the food. The elves, then, are the dead; not the quietly resting dead but those who, for

whatever reason, have taken up new lives on the other side of the veil and at times, either knowingly or unknowingly, might come strolling back through it.

Among these elves are the long dead who speak a lan-

guage the barest traces of which are remembered in the

names of hillocks that used to be mountains or of rivers

that have long ago changed course. The bones of these peo-

ple have become fully incorporated into the soil, yet still they rattle about the landscape on their elvish business.

They no longer remember any other kind of existence and

36 At Home with the Elves

may be only dimly aware of developments since their pass-

ing. They are troubled by the tolling of church bells and

might be scalded by the dripping of holy water into their

homes, not to mention the seeping of car exhaust, for these things belong to a world they no longer do.

The more recently dead, in their petticoats and high-

crowned hats, have crossed over just long enough ago not

to notice anything strange about the banquet, how the

candles blaze but never burn down, how the platters of

cakes are never diminished. But the sweetheart who was

put in the churchyard just last week has not yet been fully absorbed into the company of elves. She can still remember who belongs on which side of the divide and will do what

she can to prevent her living loved ones from being taken

up prematurely by the dead.

An Offering to the Elves

It is time now to join Sigvat6 the Scald, or court poet, on a journey he has undertaken through southwestern Sweden

on behalf of the Norwegian King Olav. It is the “beginning of winter.” Since this is the Viking Age, in which the year was divided into a summer and a winter half, this puts us

somewhere around the time of our Halloween. No doubt

snow has already fallen on the forest of Eidaskog, though

the river is not yet frozen. Sigvat and his small party of king’s men are cold, footsore and probably hungry to boot.

6. “Sigvat” is the spelling used in Erling Monsen and A. H. Smith’s translation of Snorri Sturluson’s
Heimskringla or Lives of the Norse
Kings
. If you are looking for the scald in another translation, you might find him under “Sighvat.” The episode concerned takes place in Chapter 91 of
The History of St. Olav.

At Home with the Elves 37

Darkness is falling as they emerge from the woods at Hov.

In search of beds or at least a pile of straw for the night, they approach the first farm they see, but the door is barred. As Sigvat attempts to stick his nose in the crack, it is explained to him by those within that he has arrived at a holy time, that the space inside is already consecrated and he may not enter. Since this is no church but a farmhouse, Sigvat, an Icelandic Christian, assumes correctly that it is a heathen observance. He curses the farmer, either for his lack of hospitality or his backward ways or both, and goes on his way.