Happy Tuesday, Missians!
Sorry I wasn't able to get this post out as scheduled. I'd just gotten back from vacation yesterday morning, and between unpacking and getting my new website set up, I ended up running out of time. But have no fear. Tuesdays can be just as mythical! Ready to learn about Gnomes, Trolls, and Elves? Me too! Let's dive in.
Besides being little dopey statues with elf hats, in people's gardens, what are gnomes, exactly?
Well, here's the scoop from Wikipedia:
A gnome is a diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characteristics have been reinterpreted to suit the needs of various story tellers, but it is typically said to be a small humanoid that lives underground.[2]
Origins
Sorry I wasn't able to get this post out as scheduled. I'd just gotten back from vacation yesterday morning, and between unpacking and getting my new website set up, I ended up running out of time. But have no fear. Tuesdays can be just as mythical! Ready to learn about Gnomes, Trolls, and Elves? Me too! Let's dive in.
Besides being little dopey statues with elf hats, in people's gardens, what are gnomes, exactly?
Well, here's the scoop from Wikipedia:
A gnome is a diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characteristics have been reinterpreted to suit the needs of various story tellers, but it is typically said to be a small humanoid that lives underground.[2]
Origins
The word comes from Renaissance Latin gnomus, which first appears in the Ex Libro de Nymphis, Sylvanis, Pygmaeis, Salamandris et Gigantibus, etc by Paracelsus, published posthumously in Nysa in 1566 (and again in the Johannes Huser edition of 1589–1591 from an autograph by Paracelsus).[3]
The term may be an original invention of Paracelsus, possibly deriving the term from Latin gēnomos (itself representing a Greek γη-νομος, literally "earth-dweller"). In this case, the omission of the ē is, as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) calls it, a blunder. Paracelsus uses Gnomi as a synonym of Pygmæi and classifies them as earth elementals. He describes them as two spans high, very reluctant to interact with humans, and able to move through solid earth as easily as humans move through air.[4][5]
The chthonic, or earth-dwelling, spirit has precedents in numerous ancient and medieval mythologies, often guarding mines and precious underground treasures, notably in the Germanic dwarfs and the Greek Chalybes, Telchines or Dactyls.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnome
Okay, so not that much on Gnomes...
So what's an Elf? Are they the same? Let's explore further with Wikipedia:
An elf is a type of human-shaped supernatural being in Germanic mythology and folklore. In medieval Germanic-speaking cultures, elves seem generally to have been thought of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty, ambivalent towards everyday people and capable of either helping or hindering them.[1] However, the details of these beliefs have varied considerably over time and space, and have flourished in both pre-Christian and Christian cultures.
Elves as causes of illness
The earliest surviving manuscripts mentioning elves in any Germanic language are from Anglo-Saxon England. Medieval English evidence has, therefore, attracted quite extensive research and debate.[35][36][37][38] In Old English, elves are most often mentioned in medical texts which attest to the belief that elves might afflict humans and livestock with illnesses: apparently mostly sharp, internal pains and mental disorders. The most famous of the medical texts is the metrical charm Wið færstice ("against a stabbing pain"), from the tenth-century compilation Lacnunga, but most of the attestations are in the tenth-century Bald's Leechbook and Leechbook III. This tradition continues into later English-language traditions too: elves continue to appear in Middle English medical texts.[39]
Beliefs in elves causing illness remained prominent in early modern Scotland, where elves were viewed as being supernaturally powerful people who lived invisibly alongside everyday rural people.[40] Thus, elves were often mentioned in the early modern Scottish witchcraft trials: many witnesses in the trials believed themselves to have been given healing powers or to know of people or animals made sick by elves.[41][42] Throughout these sources, elves are sometimes associated with the succuba-like supernatural being called the mare.[43]
While they may have been thought to cause disease with magical weapons, elves are more clearly associated in Old English with a kind of magic denoted by Old English sīden and sīdsa, cognate with Old Norse seiðr, and also paralleled in the Old Irish Serglige Con Culainn.[44][45] By the fourteenth century they were also associated with the arcane practice of alchemy.[46]
"Elf-shot"
In one or two Old English medical texts, elves might be envisaged as inflicting illness with projectiles. In the twentieth century, scholars often labelled the illnesses elves caused as "elf-shot", but work from the 1990s onwards showed that the medieval evidence for elves being thought to cause illness in this way is slender;[47] debate about its significance is ongoing.[48]
The noun elf-shot is actually first attested in a Scots poem, "Rowlis Cursing", from around 1500, where "elf schot" is listed among a range of curses to be inflicted on some chicken-thieves.[49] The term may not always have denoted an actual projectile: shot could mean "a sharp pain" as well as "projectile". But in early modern Scotland elf-schot and other terms like elf-arrowhead are sometimes used of neolithic arrow-heads, apparently thought to have been made by elves. In a few witchcraft trials people attest that these arrrow-heads were used in healing rituals, and occasionally alleged that witches (and perhaps elves) used them to injure people and cattle.[50]Compare with the following excerpt from a 1749–50 ode by William Collins:
- There every herd, by sad experience, knows
- How, winged with fate, their elf-shot arrows fly,
- When the sick ewe her summer food forgoes,
- Or, stretched on earth, the heart-smit heifers lie.[51]
Size, appearance, and sexuality
Because of elves' association with illness, in the twentieth century, most scholars imagined that elves in the Anglo-Saxon tradition were small, invisible, demonic beings, causing illness with arrows. This was encouraged by the idea that "elf-shot" is depicted in the Eadwine Psalter, in an image which became well known in this connection.[52] However, this is now thought to be a misunderstanding: the image proves to be a conventional illustration of God's arrows and of Christian demons.[53] Rather, recent scholarship suggests Anglo-Saxon elves, like elves in Scandinavia or the Irish Aos Sí, were regarded as people.[54]
Like words for gods and men, the word elf is used in personal names where words for monsters and demons are not.[55] Just as álfar are associated with Æsir in Old Norse, the Old English Wið færstice associates elves with ēse; whatever this word meant by the tenth century, etymologically it denoted pagan gods.[56] In Old English, the plural ylfe (attested in Beowulf) is grammatically an ethnonym (a word for an ethnic group), suggesting that elves were seen as a people.[57][58] As well as appearing in medical texts, the Old English word ælf and its feminine derivative ælbinne were used in glosses to translate Latin words for nymphs. This fits well with the word ælfscȳne, which meant "elf-beautiful" and is attested describing the seductively beautiful Biblical heroines Sarah and Judith.[59]
Likewise, in Middle English and early modern Scottish evidence, while still appearing as causes of harm and danger, elves appear clearly as human-like beings.[60] They became associated with medieval chivalric romance traditions of fairies and particularly with the idea of a Fairy Queen. A propensity to seduce or rape people becomes increasingly prominent in the source material.[61] Around the fifteenth century, evidence starts to appear for the belief that elves might steal human babies and replace them with changelings.[62]
There's plenty more information on Elves. Be sure to read the rest of the article here:
Now for the most unpleasant sounding one of the three: Trolls (unless we're talking Treasure Trolls). Billy Goat Gruff, anyone?
A troll is a class of being in Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore. In Old Norse sources, beings described as trolls dwell in isolated rocks, mountains, or caves, live together in small family units, and are rarely helpful to human beings.
Later, in Scandinavian folklore, trolls became beings in their own right, where they live far from human habitation, are not Christianized, and are considered dangerous to human beings. Depending on the source, their appearance varies greatly; trolls may be ugly and slow-witted, or look and behave exactly like human beings, with no particularly grotesque characteristic about them.
Trolls are sometimes associated with particular landmarks, which at times may be explained as formed from a troll exposed to sunlight. Trolls are depicted in a variety of media in modern popular culture.
Scandinavian Folklore
Later in Scandinavian folklore, trolls become defined as a particular type of being.[7] Numerous tales are recorded about trolls in which they are frequently described as being extremely old, very strong, but slow and dim-witted, and are at times described as man-eaters and as turning to stone upon contact with sunlight.[8] However, trolls are also attested as looking much the same as human beings, without any particularly hideous appearance about them, but living far away from human habitation and generally having "some form of social organization" — unlike the rå and näck, who are attested as "solitary beings". According to John Lindow, what sets them apart is that they are not Christian, and those who encounter them do not know them. Therefore, trolls were in the end dangerous, regardless of how well they might get along with Christian society, and trolls display a habit of bergtagning ('kidnapping'; literally "mountain-taking") and overrunning a farm or estate.[9]
Lindow states that the etymology of the word "troll" remains uncertain, though he defines trolls in later Swedish folklore as "nature beings" and as "all-purpose otherworldly being[s], equivalent, for example, to fairies in Anglo-Celtic traditions". They "therefore appear in various migratory legends where collective nature-beings are called for". Lindow notes that trolls are sometimes swapped out for cats and "little people" in the folklore record.[9]
A Scandinavian folk belief that lightning frightens away trolls and jötnar appears in numerous Scandinavian folktales, and may be a late reflection of the god Thor's role in fighting such beings. In connection, the lack of trolls and jötnar in modern Scandinavia is sometimes explained as a result of the "accuracy and efficiency of the lightning strokes".[10] Additionally, the absence of trolls in regions of Scandinavia are described in folklore as being a "consequence of the constant din of the church-bells". This ring caused the trolls to leave for other lands, although not without some resistance; numerous traditions relate how trolls destroyed a church under construction or hurled boulders and stones at completed churches. Large local stones are sometimes described as the product of a troll's toss.[11] Additionally, into the 20th century, the origins of particular Scandinavian landmarks, such as particular stones, are ascribed to trolls who may, for example, have turned to stone upon exposure to sunlight.[8]
Smaller trolls are attested as living in burial mounds and in mountains in Scandinavian folk tradition.[12] In Denmark, these creatures are recorded as troldfolk ("troll-folk"), bjergtrolde ("mountain-trolls"), or bjergfolk ("mountain-folk") and in Norway also as troldfolk ("troll-folk") and tusser.[12] Trolls may be described as small, human-like beings or as tall as men depending on the region of origin of the story.[13]Lindow compares the trolls of the Swedish folk tradition to Grendel, the supernatural mead hall invader in the Old English poem Beowulf, and notes that "just as the poem Beowulf emphasizes not the harrying of Grendel but the cleansing of the hall of Beowulf, so the modern tales stress the moment when the trolls are driven off."[9]
In Norwegian tradition, similar tales may be told about the larger trolls and the Huldrefolk ("hidden-folk") yet a distinction is made between the two. The use of the word trow in Orkney and Shetland, to mean beings which are very like the Huldrefolk in Norway may suggest a common origin for the terms. The word troll may have been used by pagan Norse settlers in Orkney and Shetland as a collective term for supernatural beings who should be respected and avoided rather than worshiped. Troll could later have become specialized as a description of the larger, more menacing Jötunn-kind whereas Huldrefolk may have developed as the term for smaller trolls.[14]
John Arnott MacCulloch posited a connection between the Old Norse vættir and trolls, suggesting that both concepts may derive from spirits of the dead.[15]
Wanna find out more about trolls? Go here:
Curious about the troll from Billy Goat Gruff? Click this link:
So what did I learn? I learned that these Mythical Creatures sort of overlap with the ones from last week, and that they aren't necessarily clear-cut, good or bad, (though some of them have a reputation for being more one, than the other); but either way, they're interesting to read about, though I'd definitely not wanna run across any in real life, (in case they do exist). At any rate, I hope you guys enjoyed this year's batch of May Mythical Beasts. Be sure to join us next year for a whole new May Mythical crew. Stay tuned for June's schedule, and our Missy Show Christmas in July announcements.
Until next time, this is your host J,
signing off...
PS: If you're interested in checking out my new website that combines information about my book, The Missy Show, and Girl October websites, go to https://www.jaslynjordyn.com/
As always, thanks for your support!
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| From "The Boy and the Trolls" illustrated by John Bauer, 1915 Wikipedia, Public Domain |
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