q. WHO INVENTED ELVES.

[luka]

im not just trying to be controversial. its just amazing to think one man could have invented everything. every type except the barbarian which was howard, and the wizard which is oldish.

 

[Slothrop]

I don't think he invented them so much as he came up with the realization that became 'definitive'. Dwarves and elves and trolls and goblins and things had been floating around in different forms before but the way Tolkein defined them was the one that everyone else more or less copied. I'm sure there's a good musical analogy here but I can't think of it. Maybe Coki and wobble or something.


Just remembered - Lord Dunsany had elves in the King of Elfland's Daughter.

 

[Leo]

if new york can die, so can elves.

 

[nomos]

it was Colonel Tom Parker

 

[Mr. Tea]

I don't think he invented them so much as he came up with the realization that became 'definitive'.

Yeah, very little he wrote about was a complete invention. Ents, maybe, but then there were dryads and various woodland spirits in different mythologies since forever, so possibly not even them.

It's a bit like the way the classic red-suited Santa Claus was created in late C19 America (not by Coca-Cola, contrary to popular myth, though they certainly popularised him) out of an amalgamation of the British Father Christmas, Dutch Sinterklaas and Scandinavian Tomte.

What Tolkien did was to redefine creatures like elves that would have been familiar in some form or another to his readers as well as resurrect (in modified form) creatures like orcs that had been forgotten for centuries. I mean orcs ('orcneas') are mentioned in Beowulf as a sort of ghoul or zombie but would have been completely unknown to anyone other than a few dusty old scholars if Tolkien hadn't recycled them in the way he did. And hobbits are an amalgamation of brownies, pixies, 'the wee folk' generally.

 

[bassnation]

Elves were small little wood people in ancient nordic and germanic mythology afaik. I think they got mixed up with faeries sometime in the 1800's... Tolkien wasn't far off I reckon.

They've been around for millennia. Wights too.

ok, now you've got me off researching wights on the net. apparently wiht is an old saxon word which was surprisingly broad in meaning - a person or object - but also could refer to evil spirits.

 

[baboon2004]

Iceland?

 

[Leo]

who invented L-VIS 1990?

 

[luka]

 

[luka]

 

[grizzleb]

Elves was just a way for record producers to package black music to a white audience.

 

[mistersloane]

Here yer go luka, the elven meme

http://cyberalfheim.info/elvenmeme.html

 

[nomos]

Elves was just a way for record producers to package black music to a white audience.

it was Colonel Tom Parker

beat you to it