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Elf
An elf (plural: elves) is a ty pe of human-shaped supernatural being in Germanic my thology and folklore. In mediev al Germanic-speaking cultures, elv es seem generally to hav e been thought
of as beings with magical powers and supernatural beauty , ambiv alent towards ev ery day people and capable of either helping or hindering them. [1 ] Howev er, the details of these beliefs hav e
v aried considerably ov er time and space, and hav e flourished in both pre-Christian and Christian cultures.

The word elf is found throughout the Germanic languages and seems originally to hav e meant 'white being'. Reconstructing the early concept of an elf depends largely on texts, written by
Christians, in Old and Middle English, mediev al German, and Old Norse. These associate elv es v ariously with the gods of Norse my thology , with causing illness, with magic, and with beauty
and seduction.

After the mediev al period, the word elf tended to become less common throughout the Germanic languages, losing out to alternativ e nativ e terms like zwerc ("dwarf") in German and huldra
("hidden being") in Scandinav ian languages, and to loan-words like fairy (borrowed from French into most of the Germanic languages). Still, beliefs in elv es persisted in the early modern
period, particularly in Scotland and Scandinav ia, where elv es were thought of as magically powerful people liv ing, usually inv isibly , alongside ev ery day human communities. They
continued to be associated with causing illness and with sexual threats. For example, a number of early modern ballads in the British Isles and Scandinav ia, originating in the mediev al
period, describe elv es attempting to seduce or abduct human characters. Ängsälvor (Swedish "Meadow Elves") by Nils
Blommér (1850)
With urbanisation and industrialisation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, beliefs in elv es declined rapidly (though Iceland has some claim to continued popular belief in elv es).
Howev er, from the early modern period onwards, elv es started to be prominent in the literature and art of educated elites. These literary elv es were imagined as small, impish beings, with
William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream being a key dev elopment of this idea. In the eighteenth century , German Romanticist writers were influenced by this notion of the elf, and reimported the English word elf into the German
language.

From this Romanticist elite culture came the elv es of popular culture that emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The "Christmas elv es" of contemporary popular culture are a relativ ely recent tradition, popularized during the late
nineteenth-century in the United States. Elv es entered the twentieth-century high fantasy genre in the wake of works published by authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien; these re-popularised the idea of elv es as human-sized and human-like beings.
Elv es remain a prominent feature of fantasy books and games nowaday s.

Contents
Relationship with reality
Not objectively real
Fitting elves into Christian cosmologies
Demythologising elves as indigenous peoples
Demythologising elves as people with illness or disability
Etymology
Elves in proper names
Elves in medieval texts and post-medieval folk-belief
Medieval English-language sources
Elves as causes of illness
"Elf-shot"
Size, appearance, and sexuality
Decline in the use of the word elf
Old Norse texts
Mythological texts
Other sources
Medieval and early modern German texts
Elves in post-medieval folklore
England
Scandinavia
Terminology
Appearance and behaviour
In ballads
As causes of illness
Modern continuations

Post-medieval elite and popular culture

Early modern elite culture
The Romantic movement
Modern popular culture
Christmas elf
Fantasy fiction

Equivalents in non-Germanic traditions

Europe
Asia
Footnotes
Citations
References
External links

Relationship with reality

Not objectively real

From a scientific v iewpoint, elv es are not considered objectiv ely real. [2 ]

Howev er, elv es hav e in many times and places been believ ed to be real beings. [3 ] Where enough people hav e believ ed in the reality of elv es that those beliefs then had real effects in the world, they can be understood as part of people's world
v iew, and as a social reality : a thing which, like the exchange-v alue of a dollar bill or the sense of pride stirred up by a national flag, is real because of people's beliefs rather than as an objectiv e reality . [3 ] Accordingly , beliefs about elv es and
their social functions hav e v aried ov er time and space. [4 ]

Ev en in the twenty -first century , fantasy stories about elv es hav e been argued both to reflect and shape their audiences' understanding of the real world, [5 ][6 ] and traditions about Santa Claus and his elv es relate to Christmas.

Ov er time, people hav e attempted to demy thologise or rationalise beliefs in elv es in v arious way s. [7 ]

Fitting elves into Christian cosmologies

Beliefs about elv es hav e their origins before the conv ersion to Christianity and associated Christianization of north-west Europe. For this reason, belief in elv es has, from the Middle Ages through into recent scholarship, often been labelled
"pagan" and a "superstition". Howev er, almost all surv iv ing textual sources about elv es were produced by Christians (whether Anglo-Saxon monks, mediev al Icelandic poets, early modern ballad-singers, nineteenth-century folklore collectors,
or ev en twentieth-century fantasy authors). Attested beliefs about elv es therefore need to be understood as part of Germanic-speakers' Christian culture and not merely relic of their pre-Christian religion. Accordingly , inv estigating the
relationship between beliefs in elv es and Christian cosmology has been a preoccupation of scholarship about elv es both in early times and in modern research. [8 ]

Historically , people hav e taken three main approaches to integrating elv es into Christian cosmology , all of which are found widely across time and space:

Identifying elves with the demons of Judaeo-Christian-Mediterranean tradition.[9] For example:

In English-language material: in the Royal Prayer Book from c. 900, elf appears as a gloss for "Satan".[10] In the late-fourteenth-century Wife of Bath’s Tale, Geoffrey Chaucer equates male elves with incubi (demons which rape sleeping women).[11] In
the early modern Scottish witchcraft trials, witnesses' descriptions of encounters with elves were often interpreted by prosecutors as encounters with the Devil.[12]
In medieval Scandinavia, Snorri Sturluson wrote in his Prose Edda of ljósálfar and døk k álfar ('light-elves and dark-elves'), the ljósálfar living in the heavens and the døk k álfar under the earth. The consensus of modern scholarship is that Snorri's elves
are based on angels and demons of Christian cosmology.[13]
Elves appear as demonic forces widely in medieval and early modern English, German, and Scandinavian prayers.[14][15][16]
Viewing elves as being more or less like people, and more or less outside Christian cosmology.[17] The Icelanders who copied the Poetic Edda did not explicitly try to integrate elves into Christian thought. Likewise, the early modern Scottish people who
confessed to encountering elves seem not to have thought of themselves as having dealings with the Devil. Nineteenth-century Icelandic folklore about elves mostly presents them as a human agricultural community parallel to the visible human community,
that may or may not be Christian.[18][19] It is possible that stories were sometimes told from this perspective as a political act, to subvert the dominance of the Church.[20]
Integrating elves into Christian cosmology without identifying them as demons.[21] The most striking examples are serious theological treatises: the Icelandic Tíðfordrif (1644) by Jón Guðmundsson lærði or, in Scotland, Robert Kirk's Secret Commonwealth
of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (1691). This approach also appears in the Old English poem Beowulf, which lists elves among the races springing from Cain's murder of Abel.[22] The late thirteenth-century South English Legendary and some Icelandic folktales
explain elves as angels that sided neither with Lucifer nor with God, and were banished by God to earth rather than hell. One famous Icelandic folktale explains elves as the lost children of Eve.[23]

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Demythologising elves as indigenous peoples

Some nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholars attempted to rationalise beliefs in elv es as folk-memories of lost indigenous peoples. Since belief in supernatural beings is so ubiquitous in human
cultures, howev er, scholars no longer believ e that such explanations are v alid. [2 4 ][2 5 ] Research has shown, howev er, that stories about elv es hav e often been used as a way for people to think
metaphorically about real-life ethnic others. [2 6 ][2 7 ][5 ]

Demythologising elves as people with illness or disability

Scholars hav e at times also tried to explain away beliefs in elv es as being inspired by people suffering certain kinds of illness (such as Williams sy ndrome [2 8 ] ). Elv es were certainly often seen as a cause
of illness, and indeed the English word oaf seems to hav e originated as a form of the elf: the word elf came to mean 'changeling left by an elf' and then, because changelings were noted for their failure to
thriv e, to its modern sense 'a fool, a stupid person; a large, clumsy man or boy '. [2 9 ] Howev er, it again seems unlikely that the origin of beliefs in elv es itself is to be explained by people's encounters with
objectiv ely real people affected by disease. [3 0 ]

Etymology
The English word elf is from the Old English word most often attested as ælf (whose plural would hav e been *ælfe). Although this word took a v ariety of forms in different Old English dialects, these
conv erged on the form elf during the Middle English period. [3 3 ] During the Old English period, separate forms were used for female elv es (such as ælfen, putativ ely from common Germanic
*ɑlβ(i)innjō), but during the Middle English period the word elf came routinely to include female beings. [3 4 ] Title page of Daemonologie by James
VI and I, which tried to explain
The main mediev al Germanic cognates are Old Norse alfr, plural alfar, and Old High German alp, plural alpî, elpî (alongside the feminine elbe). [3 5 ] These words must come from Common Germanic, the
traditional Scottish beliefs in terms of
ancestor-language of English, German, and the Scandinav ian languages: the Common Germanic forms must hav e been *ɑlβi-z and ɑlβɑ-z. [3 6 ] Christian scholarship.

Germanic *ɑlβi-z~*ɑlβɑ-z is generally agreed to be cognate with the Latin albus ('(matt) white'), Old Irish ailbhín ('flock'); Albanian elb ('barley '); and Germanic words for
'swan' such as Modern Icelandic álpt. These all come from an Indo-European base *alb h -, and seem to be connected by the idea of whiteness. The Germanic word
presumably originally meant "white one", perhaps as a euphemism. Jakob Grimm thought that whiteness implied positiv e moral connotations, and, noting Snorri
Sturluson's ljósálfar, suggested that elv es were div inities of light. This is not necessarily the case, howev er. For example, because the cognates suggest matt white rather
than shining white, and because in mediev al Scandinav ian texts whiteness is associated with beauty , Alaric Hall has suggested that elv es may hav e been called "the white
people" because whiteness was associated with (specifically feminine) beauty . [3 7 ]

A completely different ety mology , making elf cognate with the Rbhus, semi-div ine craftsmen in Indian my thology , was also suggested by Kuhn, in 1855. [3 8 ] In this
case, *ɑlβi-z connotes the meaning, "skillful, inv entiv e, clev er", and is cognate with Latin labor, in the sense of "creativ e work". While often mentioned, this ety mology is
not widely accepted. [3 9 ]

A chart showing how the sounds of the word elf have changed in the
Elves in proper names history of English.[31][32]
Throughout the mediev al Germanic languages, elf was one of the nouns that was used in personal names, almost inv ariably as a first element. These names may hav e
been influenced by Celtic names beginning in Albio- such as Albiorix. [4 0 ]

Personal names prov ide the only ev idence for elf in Gothic, which must hav e had the word *albs (plural *albeis). The most famous name of this kind is Alboin. Old English names in elf- include the
cognate of Alboin Ælfwine (literally "elf-friend", m.), Ælfric ("elf-powerful", m.), Ælfweard ("elf-guardian", m.), and Ælfwaru ("elf-care", f.). A widespread surv iv or of these in modern English is Alfred (Old
English Ælfrēd, "elf-adv ice"). Also surv iv ing are the English surname Elgar (Ælfgar, "elf-spear") and the name of St Alphege (Ælfhēah, "elf-high"). [4 1 ] German examples are Alberich, Alphart and Alphere
(father of Walter of Aquitaine)[4 2 ][4 3 ] and Icelandic examples include Álfhildur. These names suggest that elv es were positiv ely regarded in early Germanic culture. Of the many words for supernatural
beings in Germanic languages, the only ones regularly used in personal names are elf and words denoting pagan gods, suggesting that elv es were considered similar to gods. [4 4 ]

In later Old Icelandic, alfr ("elf") and the personal name which in Common Germanic had been *Aþa(l)wulfaz both coincidentally became álfr~Álfr. [4 5 ]

Elv es appear in some place-names, though it is hard to be sure how many as a v ariety of other words, including personal names, can appear similar to elf. The clearest English example is Elveden ("elv es'
hill", Suffolk); other examples may be Eldon Hill ("Elv es' hill", Derby shire); and Alden Valley ("elv es' v alley ", Lancashire). These seem to associate elv es fairly consistently with woods and v alley s. [4 6 ] Alden Valley, Lancashire, possibly a
place once associated with elves
Elves in medieval texts and post-medieval folk-belief

Medieval English-language sources

Elves as causes of illness

The earliest surv iv ing manuscripts mentioning elv es in any Germanic language are from Anglo-Saxon England. Mediev al English ev idence has, therefore, attracted quite extensiv e research and debate. [4 7 ][4 8 ][4 9 ][5 0 ] In Old English, elv es are
most often mentioned in medical texts which attest to the belief that elv es might afflict humans and liv estock 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: elv es continue to appear in Middle English medical texts. [5 1 ]

Beliefs in elv es causing illness remained prominent in early modern Scotland, where elv es were v iewed as being supernaturally powerful people who liv ed inv isibly alongside ev ery day rural people. [5 2 ] Thus, elv es were often mentioned in the
early modern Scottish witchcraft trials: many witnesses in the trials believ ed themselv es to hav e been giv en healing powers or to know of people or animals made sick by elv es. [5 3 ][5 4 ] Throughout these sources, elv es are sometimes
associated with the succuba-like supernatural being called the mare. [5 5 ]

While they may hav e been thought to cause disease with magical weapons, elv es 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. [5 6 ][5 7 ] By the fourteenth century they were also associated with the arcane practice of alchemy . [5 8 ]

"Elf-shot"
In one or two Old English medical texts, elv es might be env isaged as inflicting illness with projectiles. In the twentieth century , scholars often labelled the illnesses elv es caused as "elf-shot", but
work from the 1990s onwards showed that the mediev al ev idence for elv es being thought to cause illness in this way is slender;[5 9 ] debate about its significance is ongoing. [6 0 ]

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-thiev es. [6 1 ] The
term may not alway s hav e 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 hav e been made by elv es. In a few witchcraft trials people attest that these arrrow-heads were used in healing rituals, and
occasionally alleged that witches (and perhaps elv es) used them to injure people and cattle. [6 2 ] Compare with the following excerpt from a 17 49–50 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.[63]

Size, appearance, and sexuality

Because of elv es' association with illness, in the twentieth century , most scholars imagined that elv es in the Anglo-Saxon tradition were small, inv isible, 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. [6 4 ] Howev er, this is now thought to be a
The Eadwine Psalter, f. 66r, detail: Christ
misunderstanding: the image prov es to be a conv entional illustration of God's arrows and of Christian demons. [6 5 ] Rather, recent scholarship suggests Anglo-Saxon elv es, like elv es in Scandinav ia
and demons attacking the psalmist.
or the Irish Aos Sí, were regarded as people. [6 6 ]

Like words for gods and men, the word elf is used in personal names where words for monsters and demons are not. [6 7 ] Just as álfar are associated with Æsir in Old
Norse, the Old English Wið færstice associates elv es with ēse; whatev er this word meant by the tenth century , ety mologically it denoted pagan gods. [6 8 ] In Old English, the plural ylfe (attested in Beowulf) is
grammatically an ethnony m (a word for an ethnic group), suggesting that elv es were seen as a people. [6 9 ][7 0 ] As well as appearing in medical texts, the Old English word ælf and its feminine deriv ativ e ælbinne
were used in glosses to translate Latin words for ny mphs. This fits well with the word ælfscȳne, which meant "elf-beautiful" and is attested describing the seductiv ely beautiful Biblical heroines Sarah and Judith. [7 1 ]

Likewise, in Middle English and early modern Scottish ev idence, while still appearing as causes of harm and danger, elv es appear clearly as human-like beings. [7 2 ] They became associated with mediev al chiv alric "⁊ ylfe" ("and elves") in
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. [7 3 ] Around the fifteenth century , Beowulf
ev idence starts to appear for the belief that elv es might steal human babies and replace them with changelings. [7 4 ]

Decline in the use of the word elf

By the end of the mediev al period, elf was increasingly being supplanted by the French loan-word fairy. [7 5 ] An example is Geoffrey Chaucer's satirical tale Sir Thopas, where the title character sets out in quest of the "elf-queen", who dwells in
the "countree of the Faerie". [7 6 ]

Old Norse texts

Mythological texts

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Ev idence for elf-beliefs in mediev al Scandinav ia outside Iceland is v ery sparse, but the Icelandic ev idence is uniquely rich. For a long time, v iews about elv es in Old Norse
my thology were defined by Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, which talks about svartálfar, dökkálfar and ljósálfar ("black elv es", "dark elv es", and "light elv es"). Howev er,
these words are only attested in the Prose Edda and texts based on it, and it is now agreed that they reflect traditions of dwarv es, demons, and angels, partly showing
Snorri's "paganisation" of a Christian cosmology learned from the Elucidarius, a popular digest of Christian thought. [1 3 ]

Scholars of Old Norse my thology now focus on references to elv es in Old Norse poetry , particularly the Elder Edda. The only character explicitly identified as an elf in
classical Eddaic poetry , if any , is Völundr, the protagonist of Völundarkviða. [7 7 ] Howev er, elv es are frequently mentioned in the alliterating phrase Æsir ok Álfar ('Æsir
and elv es') and its v ariants. This was clearly a well established poetic formula, indicating a strong tradition of associating elv es with the group of gods known as the Æsir, or
ev en suggesting that the elv es and Æsir were one and the same. [7 8 ][7 9 ] The pairing is paralleled in the Old English poem Wið færstice [8 0 ] and in the Germanic personal
name sy stem;[6 7 ] moreov er, in Skaldic v erse the word elf is used in the same way as words for gods. [8 1 ] Sigv atr Þórðarson’s skaldic trav elogue Austrfaravísur, composed
around 1020, mentions an álfablót (‘elv es' sacrifice’) in Edskogen in what is now southern Sweden. [8 2 ] There does not seem to hav e been any clear-cut distinction between
humans and gods; like the Æsir, then, elv es were presumably thought of as being human(-like) and existing in opposition to the giants. [8 3 ] Many commentators hav e also
(or instead) argued for conceptual ov erlap between elv es and dwarv es in Old Norse my thology , which may fit with trends in the mediev al German ev idence. [8 4 ]

There are hints that the god Frey r was associated with elv es. In particular, Álfheimr (literally "elf-world") is mentioned as being giv en to Frey r in Grímnismál. Snorri
Sturluson identified Frey r as one of the Vanir. Howev er, the term Vanir is rare in Eddaic v erse, v ery rare in Skaldic v erse, and is not generally thought to appear in other
Germanic languages. Giv en the link between Frey r and the elv es, it has therefore long been suspected that álfar and Vanir are, more or less, different words for the same One possible semantic field diagram of words for sentient beings in
Old Norse, showing their relationships as a Venn diagram (Hall
group of beings. [8 5 ][8 6 ][8 7 ] Howev er, this is not uniformly accepted. [8 8 ]
2009: 208, fig. 1).
A kenning (poetic metaphor) for the sun, álfröðull (literally "elf disc"), is of uncertain meaning but is to some suggestiv e of a close link between elv es and the sun. [8 9 ][9 0 ]

Although the relev ant words are of slightly uncertain meaning, it seems fairly clear that Völundr is described as one of the elv es in Völundarkviða. [9 1 ] As his most prominent deed in the poem is to rape Böðv ildr, the poem associates elv es with
being a sexual threat to maidens. The same idea is present in two post-classical Eddaic poems, which are also influenced by chiv alric romance or Breton lais, Kötludraumur and Gullkársljóð. The idea also occurs in later traditions in
Scandinav ia and bey ond, so may be an early attestation of a prominent tradition. [9 2 ] Elv es also appear in a couple of v erse spells, including the Bergen rune-charm from among the Bry ggen inscriptions. [9 3 ]

Other sources
The appearance of elv es in sagas is closely defined by genre. The Sagas of Icelanders, Bishops' Sagas, and Contemporary sagas, whose portray al of the supernatural is generally restrained, rarely
mention álfar, and then only in passing. [9 4 ] But although limited, these texts prov ide some of the best ev idence for the presence of elv es in ev ery day beliefs in mediev al Scandinav ia. They include a
fleeting mention of elv es seen out riding in 1168 (in Sturlunga saga); mention of an álfablót ("elv es' sacrifice") in Kormáks saga; and the existence of the euphemism ganga álfrek ('go to driv e away the
elv es') for "going to the toilet" in Eyrbyggja saga. [9 4 ][9 5 ]

The Kings' sagas include a rather elliptical but widely studied account of an early Swedish king being worshipped after his death and being called Ólafr Geirstaðaálfr ('Ólafr the elf of Geirstaðir'), and a
demonic elf at the beginning of Norna-Gests þáttr. [9 6 ]

The legendary sagas tend to focus on elv es as legendary ancestors or on heroes' sexual relations with elf-women. Mention of the land of Álfheimr is found in Heimskringla while Þorsteins saga
Víkingssonar recounts a line of local kings who ruled ov er Álfheim, who since they had elv en blood were said to be more beautiful than most men. [9 7 ][9 8 ] According to Hrólfs saga kraka, Hrolfr Kraki's
half-sister Skuld was the half-elv en child of King Helgi and an elf-woman (álfkona). Skuld was skilled in witchcraft (seiðr). Accounts of Skuld in earlier sources, howev er, do not include this material. The
Þiðreks saga v ersion of the Nibelungen (Niflungar) describes Högni as the son of a human queen and an elf, but no such lineage is reported in the Eddas, Völsunga saga, or the Nibelungenlied. [9 9 ] The
relativ ely few mentions of elv es in the Chiv alric sagas tend ev en to be whimsical. [1 0 0 ]

Both Continental Scandinav ia and Iceland hav e a scattering of mentions of elv es in medical texts, sometimes in Latin and sometimes in the form of amulets, where elv es are v iewed as a possible cause of
illness. Most of them hav e Low German connections. [1 0 1 ][1 0 2 ][1 0 3 ]
Glasgow Botanic Gardens. Kibble
Palace. William Goscombe John,
Medieval and early modern German texts The Elf, 1899.

The Old High German word alp is attested only in a small number of glosses. It is defined by the Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch as a "nature-god or nature-
demon, equated with the Fauns of Classical my thology ... regarded as eerie, ferocious beings ... As the mare he messes around with women". [1 0 4 ] Accordingly , the German word Alpdruck (literally "elf-
oppression") means "nightmare". There is also ev idence associating elv es with illness, specifically epilepsy . [1 0 5 ]

In a similar v ein, elv es are in Middle German most often associated with deceiv ing or bewildering people "in a phrase that occurs so often it would appear to be prov erbial: die elben/der alp trieget mich
("the elv es/elf are/is deceiv ing me"). [1 0 6 ] The same pattern holds in Early Modern German. [1 0 7 ][1 0 8 ] This deception sometimes shows the seductiv e side apparent in English and Scandinav ian
material:[1 0 5 ] most famously , the early thirteenth-century Heinrich v on Morungen's fifth Minnesang begins "Von den elben wirt entsehen v il manic man / Sô bin ich v on grôzer liebe entsên" ("full many
Portrait of Margarethe Luther (right),
believed by her son Martin to have a man is bewitched by elv es / thus I too am bewitched by great lov e"). [1 0 9 ] Elbe was also used in this period to translate words for ny mphs. [1 1 0 ]
been afflicted by elbe ("elves").
In later mediev al pray ers, Elv es appear as a threatening, ev en demonic, force. For example, there are pray ers which inv oke God's help against nocturnal attacks by Alpe. [1 1 1 ] Correspondingly , in the
early modern period, elv es are described in north Germany doing the ev il bidding of witches; Martin Luther believ ed his mother to hav e been afflicted in this way . [1 1 2 ]

As in Old Norse, howev er, there are few characters identified as elv es. It seems likely that in the German-speaking world, elv es were to a significant extent conflated with dwarv es (Middle High German: getwerc). [1 1 3 ] Thus, some dwarv es that
appear in German heroic poetry hav e been seen as relating to elv es. In particular, nineteenth-century scholars tended to think that the dwarf Alberich, whose name ety mologically means "elf-powerful", was influenced by early traditions of
elv es. [1 1 4 ][1 1 5 ]

Elves in post-medieval folklore

England
From around the Late Middle Ages, the word elf began to be used in English as a term loosely sy nony mous with the French loan-word fairy;[1 1 6 ] in elite art and literature, at least, it also became
associated with diminutiv e supernatural beings like Puck, hobgoblins, Robin Goodfellow, the English and Scots brownie, and the Northumbrian English hob. [1 1 7 ]

Howev er, in Scotland and parts of northern England near the Scottish border, beliefs in elv es remained prominent into the nineteenth century . James VI of Scotland and Robert Kirk discussed elv es
seriously ; elf-beliefs are prominently attested in the Scottish witchcraft trials, particularly the trial of Issobel Gowdie; and related stories also appear in folktales, [1 1 8 ] There is a significant corpus of
ballads narrating stories about elv es, such as Thomas the Rhymer, where a man meets a female elf; Tam Lin, The Elfin Knight, and Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, in which an Elf-Knight rapes, seduces,
or abducts a woman; and The Queen of Elfland's Nourice, a woman is abducted to be a wet-nurse to the elf-queen's baby , but promised that she may return home once the child is weaned. [1 1 9 ]

Scandinavia

Terminology
In Scandinav ian folklore, a div erse array of human-like supernatural beings are attested which might be thought of as elv es and which might partly originate in mediev al Scandinav ian beliefs. Howev er,
the characteristics and names of these beings hav e v aried widely across time and space, and they cannot be neatly categorised. These beings are sometimes known by words descended directly from
Old Norse álfr. Howev er, in the modern languages, traditional terms related to álfr hav e tended to be replaced with other terms. Things are further complicated by the fact that when referring to the
elv es of Old Norse my thology , scholars hav e adopted new forms based directly on the Old Norse word álfr. The following table summarises the situation in the main modern standard languages of
Scandinav ia. [1 2 0 ]

language terms related to elf in traditional usage main terms of similar meaning in traditional usage scholarly term for Norse mythological elves

Danish elver, elverfolk , ellefolk nøk k e, nisse, fe alf

Swedish älva sk ogsrå, sk ogsfru, tomte alv, alf

Norwegian (bokmål) alv, alvefolk vette, huldra alv

Thomas the Rhymer in Walter
Icelandic álfur huldufólk álfur Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border

Appearance and behaviour

The elv es of Norse my thology hav e surv iv ed into folklore mainly as females, liv ing in hills and mounds of stones. [1 2 1 ] The Swedish älvor were stunningly beautiful girls who liv ed in the
forest with an elv en king. [1 2 2 ][1 2 3 ]

The elv es could be seen dancing ov er meadows, particularly at night and on misty mornings. They left a circle where they had danced, which were called älvdanser (elf dances) or älvringar
(elf circles), and to urinate in one was thought to cause v enereal diseases. Ty pically , elf circles were fairy rings consisting of a ring of small mushrooms, but there was also another kind of elf
circle. In the words of the local historian Anne Marie Hellström:

...on lake shores, where the forest met the lake, you could find elf circles. They were round places where the grass had been flattened like a floor. Elves had danced there. By Lake
Tisnaren, I have seen one of those. It could be dangerous and one could become ill if one had trodden over such a place or if one destroyed anything there.[121]
Älvalek , "Elf Play" by August Malmström (1866).

If a human watched the dance of the elv es, he would discov er that ev en though only a few hours seemed to hav e passed, many y ears had passed in the real world. Humans being inv ited or
lured to the elf dance is a common motif transferred from older Scandinav ian ballads. [1 2 4 ]

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Elv es were not exclusiv ely y oung and beautiful. In the Swedish folktale Little Rosa and Long Leda, an elv ish woman (älvakvinna) arriv es in the end and sav es the heroine, Little Rose, on condition that the king's cattle no longer graze on her
hill. She is described as a beautiful old woman and by her aspect people saw that she belonged to the subterraneans. [1 2 5 ]

In ballads
Elv es hav e a prominent place in a number of closely related ballads which must hav e originated in the Middle Ages but are first attested in the early modern period. [1 1 9 ] Many of these ballads are first attested in Karen Brahes Folio, a Danish
manuscript from the 157 0s, but they circulated widely in Scandinav ia and northern Britain. Because they were learned by heart, they sometimes mention elv es, ev en though that term had become archaic in ev ery day usage. They hav e
therefore play ed a major role in transmitting traditional ideas about elv es in post-mediev al cultures. Some of the early modern ballads, indeed, are still quite widely known, whether through school sy llabuses or modern folk music. They
therefore giv e people an unusual degree of access to ideas of elv es from older traditional culture. [1 2 6 ]

The ballads are characterised by sexual encounters between ev ery day people and human(-like) beings referred to in at least some v ariants as elv es (the same characters also appear as mermen, dwarv es, and other kinds of supernatural beings).
The elv es pose a threat to the ev ery day community by try ing to lure people into the elv es' world. Much the most popular example is Elveskud and its many v ariants (paralleled in English as Clerk Colvill), where a woman from the elf-world tries
to tempt a y oung knight to join her in dancing, or simply to liv e among the elv es; in some v ersions he refuses and in some he accepts, but in either case he dies, tragically . As in Elveskud, sometimes the ev ery day person is a man and the elf a
woman, as also in Elvehøj (much the same story as Elveskud, but with a happy ending), Herr Magnus og Bjærgtrolden, Herr Tønne af Alsø, Herr Bøsmer i elvehjem, or the Northern British Thomas the Rhymer. Sometimes the ev ery day person
is a woman and the elf is a man, as in the northern British Tam Lin, The Elfin Knight, and Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, in which the Elf-Knight bears away Isabel to murder her, or the Scandinav ian Harpans kraft. In The Queen of Elfland's
Nourice, a woman is abducted to be a wet-nurse to the elf-queen's baby , but promised that she may return home once the child is weaned. [1 1 9 ]

As causes of illness
In folk-stories, Scandinav ian elv es often play the role of disease-spirits. The most common, though also most harmless case was v arious irritating skin rashes, which were called älvablåst (elv en puff)
and could be cured by a forceful counter-blow (a handy pair of bellows was most useful for this purpose). Skålgropar, a particular kind of petrogly ph (pictogram on a rock) found in Scandinav ia, were
known in older times as älvkvarnar (elv en mills), because it was believ ed elv es had used them. One could appease the elv es by offering them a treat (preferably butter) placed into an elv en mill. [1 2 0 ]

In order to protect themselv es and their liv estock against malev olent elv es, Scandinav ians could use a so-called Elf cross (Alfkors, Älvkors or Ellakors), which was carv ed into buildings or other
objects. [1 2 7 ] It existed in two shapes, one was a pentagram and it was still frequently used in early 20th-century Sweden as painted or carv ed onto doors, walls and household utensils in order to
protect against elv es. [1 2 7 ] The second form was an ordinary cross carv ed onto a round or oblong silv er plate. [1 2 7 ] This second kind of elf cross was worn as a pendant in a necklace and in order to hav e
sufficient magic it had to be forged during three ev enings with silv er, from nine different sources of inherited silv er. [1 2 7 ] In some locations it also had to be on the altar of a church for three consecutiv e
Sunday s. [1 2 7 ]

Modern continuations
The "Elf cross" which protected
In Iceland, expression of belief in the huldufólk ("hidden people"), elv es that dwell in rock formations, is still relativ ely common. Ev en when Icelanders do not explicitly express their belief, they are
against malevolent elves.[127]
often reluctant to express disbelief. [1 2 8 ] A 2006 and 2007 study by the Univ ersity of Iceland's Faculty of Social Sciences rev ealed that many would not rule out the existence of elv es and ghosts, a
result similar to a 197 4 surv ey by Erlendur Haraldsson. The lead researcher of the 2006–2007 study , Terry Gunnell, stated: "Icelanders seem much more open to phenomena like dreaming the future,
forebodings, ghosts and elv es than other nations". [1 2 9 ] Whether significant numbers of Icelandic people do believ e in elv es or not, elv es are certainly prominent in national discourses. They occur most often in oral narrativ es and news
reporting in which they disrupt house- and road-building. In the analy sis of Valdimar Tr. Hafstein, "narrativ es about the insurrections of elv es demonstrate supernatural sanction against dev elopment and against urbanization; that is to say ,
the supernaturals protect and enforce pastoral v alues and traditional rural culture. The elv es fend off, with more or less success, the attacks and adv ances of modern technology , palpable in the bulldozer". [1 3 0 ] Elv es are also prominent, in
similar roles, in contemporary Icelandic literature. [1 3 1 ]

Folk-stories told in the nineteenth century about elv es are still told in modern Denmark and Sweden, but now feature ethnic minorities in place of elv es in an essentially racist discourse. In an ethnically fairly homogeneous mediev al
country side, supernatural beings prov ided the Other through which ev ery day people created their identities; in cosmopolitan industrial contexts, ethnic minorities or immigrants are used in story telling to similar effect. [2 7 ]

Post-medieval elite and popular culture

Early modern elite culture

Early modern Europe saw the emergence for the first time of a distinctiv e elite culture: while the Reformation encouraged new skepticism and opposition to traditional beliefs, subsequent Romanticism
encouraged the fetishisation of such beliefs by intellectual elites. The effects of this on writing about elv es are most apparent in England and Germany , with dev elopments in each country influencing the
other. In Scandinav ia, the Romantic mov ement was also prominent, and literary writing was the main context for continued use of the word elf, except in fossilised words for illnesses. Howev er, oral
traditions about beings like elv es remained prominent in Scandinav ia into the early twentieth century . [1 2 4 ]

Elv es entered early modern elite culture most clearly in the literature of Elizabethan England. [1 1 7 ] Here Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene (1590–) used fairy and elf interchangeably of human-sized
beings, but they are complex imaginary and allegorical figures. Spenser also presented his own explanation of the origins of the Elfe and Elfin kynd, claiming that they were created by Prometheus. [1 3 2 ]
Likewise, William Shakespeare, in a speech in Romeo and Juliet (1592) has an "elf-lock" (tangled hair) being caused Queen Mab, who is referred to as "the fairies' midwife". [1 3 3 ] Meanwhile, A Midsummer
Night's Dream promoted the idea that elv es were diminutiv e and ethereal. The influence of Shakespeare and Michael Dray ton made the use of elf and fairy for v ery small beings the norm, and had a Illustration of Shakespeare's A
lasting effect seen in fairy tales about elv es, collected in the modern period. [1 3 4 ] Midsummer Night's Dream by Arthur
Rackham.

The Romantic movement

Early modern English notions of elv es became influential in eighteenth-century Germany . The Modern German Elf (m) and Elfe (f) was introduced as a loan-word from English in the 17 40s[1 3 5 ][1 3 6 ]
and was prominent in Christoph Martin Wieland's 17 64 translation of A Midsummer Night's Dream. [1 3 7 ]

As German Romanticism got underway and writers started to seek authentic folklore, Jacob Grimm rejected Elf as a recent Anglicism, and promoted the reuse of the old form Elb (plural Elbe or
Elben). [1 3 6 ][1 3 8 ] In the same v ein, Johann Gottfried Herder translated the Danish ballad Elveskud in his 17 7 8 collection of folk songs, Stimmen der Völker in Liedern, as "Erlkönigs Tochter" ("The Erl-
king's Daughter"; it appears that Herder introduced the term Erlkönig into German through a mis-Germanisation of the Danish word for elf). This in turn inspired Goethe's poem Der Erlkönig. Goethe's
poem then took on a life of its own, inspiring the Romantic concept of the Erlking, which was influential on literary images of elv es from the nineteenth century on. [1 3 9 ]

In Scandinav ia too, in the nineteenth century , traditions of elv es were adapted to include small, insect-winged fairies. These are often called "elv es" (älvor in modern Swedish, alfer in Danish, álfar in
Illustration of Der Erlk önig (c. 1910) Icelandic), although the more formal translation in Danish is feer. Thus, the alf found in the fairy tale The Elf of the Rose by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen is so tiny that he can hav e a rose
by Albert Sterner. blossom for home, and has "wings that reached from his shoulders to his feet". Y et Andersen also wrote about elvere in The Elfin Hill. The elv es in this story are more alike those of traditional Danish
folklore, who were beautiful females, liv ing in hills and boulders, capable of dancing a man to death. Like the huldra in Norway and Sweden, they are hollow when seen from the back. [1 4 0 ]

English and German literary traditions both influenced the British Victorian image of elv es, which appeared in illustrations as tiny men and women with pointed ears and stocking caps. An example is
Andrew Lang's fairy tale Princess Nobody (1884), illustrated by Richard Doy le, where fairies are tiny people with butterfly wings, whereas elv es are tiny people with red stocking caps. These
conceptions remained prominent in twentieth-century children's literature, for example Enid Bly ton's The Faraway Tree series, and were influenced by German Romantic literature. Accordingly , in the
Brothers Grimm fairy tale Die Wichtelmänner (literally , "the little men"), the title protagonists are two tiny naked men who help a shoemaker in his work. Ev en though Wichtelmänner are akin to beings
such as kobolds, dwarv es and brownies, the tale was translated into English by Margaret Hunt in 1884 as The Elves and the Shoemaker. This shows how the meanings of elf had changed, and was in itself
influential: the usage is echoed, for example, in the house-elf of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter stories. In his turn, J. R. R. Tolkien recommended using the older German form Elb in translations of his
works, as recorded in his Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings (1967 ). Elb, Elben was consequently introduced in the 197 2 German translation of The Lord of the Rings, repopularising the form
in German. [1 4 1 ]
Little älvor, playing with
Tomtebobarnen. From Children of
the Forest (1910) by Swedish author Modern popular culture
and illustrator Elsa Beskow.

Christmas elf
With industrialisation and mass education, traditional folklore about elv es waned, but as the phenomenon of popular culture emerged, elv es were reimagined, in large part on the basis of Romantic
literary depictions and associated mediev alism. [1 4 1 ]

As American Christmas traditions cry stallized in the nineteenth century , the 1823 poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (widely known as "'Twas the Night before Christmas") characterized St Nicholas
himself as "a right jolly old elf". Howev er, it was his little helpers, inspired partly by folktales like The Elves and the Shoemaker, who became known as "Santa's elv es"; the processes through which this
came about are not well understood, but one key figure was a Christmas-related publication by the German-American cartoonist Thomas Nast. [1 4 2 ][1 4 1 ] Thus in the US, Canada, UK, and Ireland, the
modern children's folklore of Santa Claus ty pically includes small, nimble, green-clad elv es with pointy ears, long noses, and pointy hats, as Santa's helpers. They make the toy s in a workshop located in
the North Pole. [1 4 3 ] The role of elv es as Santa's helpers has continued to be popular, as ev idenced by the success of the popular Christmas mov ie Elf. [1 4 1 ]

Fantasy fiction
The fantasy genre in the twentieth century grew out of nineteenth-century Romanticism, in which nineteenth-century scholars such as Andrew Lang and the Grimm brothers collected fairy -stories from
folklore and in some cases retold them freely . [1 4 4 ]

A pioneering work of the fantasy genre was The King of Elfland's Daughter, a 1924 nov el by Lord Dunsany . The Elv es of Middle-earth play ed a central role in Tolkien's legendarium, notably The
Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings; this legendarium was enormously influential on subsequent fantasy writing. Tolkien's writing had such influence that in the 1960s and afterwards, elv es speaking
an elv ish language similar to those in Tolkien's nov els became staple non-human characters in high fantasy works and in fantasy role-play ing games. Tolkien also appears to be the first author to hav e
introduced the notion that elv es are immortal beings. Post-Tolkien fantasy elv es (which featured not only in nov els but also role-play ing games such as Dungeons & Dragons) are often portray ed as A person dressed as a Christmas
being wiser and more beautiful than humans, with sharper senses and perceptions as well. They are said to be gifted in magic, mentally sharp and lov ers of nature, art, and song. They are often skilled Elf, Virginia 2016.
archers. A hallmark of many fantasy elv es is their pointed ears. [1 4 4 ]

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In works where elv es are the main characters, such as The Silmarillion or Wendy and Richard Pini's comic book series Elfquest, elv es exhibit a similar range of behav iour to a human cast, distinguished
largely by their superhuman phy sical powers. Howev er, where narrativ es are more human-centered, as in The Lord of the Rings, elv es tend to sustain their role as powerful, sometimes threatening,
outsiders. [1 4 4 ] Despite the obv ious fictionality of fantasy nov els and games, scholars hav e found that elv es in these works continue to hav e a subtle role in shaping the real-life identities of their
audiences. For example, elv es can function to encode real-world racial others in v ideo games, [5 ][1 4 5 ] or to influence gender-norms through literature. [6 ]

Equivalents in non-Germanic traditions Typical illustration of a female elf in

the high fantasy style.
Beliefs in human-like supernatural beings are widespread in human cultures, and many such beings may be referred to as elves in English.

Europe
Elf-like beings appear to hav e been a common characteristic within Indo-European my thologies. [1 4 7 ] In the Celtic-speaking regions of north-west Europe, the beings most similar to elv es are
generally referred to with the Gaelic term Aos Sí. [1 4 8 ][1 4 9 ] The equiv alent term in modern Welsh is Tylwyth Teg. In the Romance-speaking world, beings comparable to elv es are widely known by
words deriv ed from Latin fata ('fate'), which came into English as fairy. This word became partly sy nony mous with elf by the early modern period. [1 1 6 ] Other names also abound, howev er, such as
the Sicilian Donas de fuera ('ladies from outside'), [1 5 0 ] or French bonnes dames ('good ladies'). [1 5 1 ] In the Finnic-speaking world, the term usually thought most closely equiv alent to elf is haltija (in
Finnish) or haldaja (Estonian). [1 5 2 ] Meanwhile, an example of an equiv alent in the Slav ic-speaking world is the vila (plural vile) of Serbo-Croatian (and, partly , Slov ene) folklore. [1 5 3 ] Elv es bear
some resemblances to the saty rs of Greek my thology , who were also regarded as woodland-dwelling mischief-makers. [1 5 4 ]

Asia Greek black-figure vase painting

depicting dancing satyrs. A propensity
Some scholarship draws parallels between the Arabian tradition of jinn with the elv es of mediev al Germanic-language cultures. [1 5 5 ] Some of the comparisons are quite precise: for example, the root for dancing and making mischief in the
of the word jinn was used in mediev al Arabic terms for madness and possession in similar way s to the Old English word ylfig, [1 5 6 ] which deriv ed from elf and also denoted prophetic states of mind woods is among the traits satyrs and
implicitly associated with elv ish possession. [1 5 7 ] elves have in common.[146]

Khmer culture in Cambodia includes the Mrenh kongveal, elf-like beings associated with guarding animals. [1 5 8 ]

In the animistic precolonial beliefs of the Philippines, the world can be div ided into the material world and the spirit world. All objects, animate or inanimate, has a spirit called anito. Non-human anito are known as diwata, usually
euphemistically referred to as dili ingon nato ('those unlike us'). They inhabit natural features like mountains, forests, old trees, cav es, reefs, etc., as well as personify abstract concepts and natural phenomena. They are similar to elv es in that
they are beings that can be helpful or malev olent, but are usually indifferent to mortals. They can be mischiev ous and cause unintentional harm to humans, but they can also deliberately cause illnesses and misfortunes when disrespected or
angered. Spanish colonizers equated them with elf and fairy folklore. [1 5 9 ]

Orang bunian are supernatural beings in Malay sian, Bruneian and Indonesian folklore, [1 6 0 ] inv isible to most humans except those with spiritual sight. While the term is often translated as "elv es", it literally translates to "hidden people" or
"whistling people". Their appearance is nearly identical to humans dressed in ancient Southeast Asian sty le.

In Māori culture, Patupaiarehe are beings similar to European elv es and fairies. [1 6 1 ]

Footnotes

Citations
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see Ármann Jakobsson (2015). wvRTAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA110); Schrader (1890), p. 163 (htt 82. Hall (2007), pp. 30–31. ttp://woerterbuchnetz.de/Lexer/?sigle=Lexer&mode=Vern
2. Hall (2007), pp. 8-9, 168-69. ps://books.google.com/books?id=fV8SAAAAYAAJ&pg=P etzung&lemid=LA00984) is an example: Pf. arzb. 2 14b=
83. Hall (2007), pp. 31–34, 42, 47–53.
A163). Pfeiffer (1863), p. 44 (Pfeiffer, F. (1863). "Arzenîbuch 2=
3. Hall (2007), pp. 8-9. 84. Hall (2007), pp. 32–33.
39. Hall (2007), pp. 54–55 fn. 1. Bartholomäus" (Mitte 13. Jh.)". Zwei deutsche
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Shippey (2005); Hall (2007), pp. 16–17, 230–31; Gunnell 40. Hall (2007), p. 56.
(http://www.helsinki.fi/folkloristiikka/English/RMN/RMN%2 le.com/books?id=I0QSAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA44). Wien.):
(2007). 41. Reaney, P. H.; Wilson, R. M. (1997). A Dictionary of 0Newsletter%20DECEMBER%202010.pdf) (PDF). The "Swen der alp triuget, rouchet er sich mit der verbena, ime
5. Poor, Nathaniel (September 2012). "Digital Elves as a English Surnames. Oxford University Press. pp. 6, 9. Retrospective Methods Network Newsletter: 10–19. enwirret als pald niht;" meaning: 'When an alp deceives
Racial Other in Video Games: Acknowledgment and ISBN 978-0-19-860092-3. you, fumigate yourself with verbena and the confusion will
86. Hall (2007), pp. 35–37.
Avoidance". Games and Culture. 7 (5): 375–396. 42. Paul, Hermann (1900). Grundriss der germanischen soon be gone'. The editor glosses alp here as "malicious,
87. Frog, Etunimetön; Roper, Jonathan (May 2011). "Verses
doi:10.1177/1555412012454224 (https://doi.org/10.1177% philologie unter mitwirk ung (https://books.google.com/boo teasing spirit" (German: boshafter neck ende geist)
versus the Vanir: Response to Simek's "Vanir Obituary" (h
2F1555412012454224). ks?id=wXcVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA268). K. J. Trübner. 109. Edwards (1994), p. 13.
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letter_2_May_2011.pdf) (PDF). The Retrospective 110. Edwards (1994), p. 17.
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ks.google.com/books?id=3AcnAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA114).
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10. Hall (2007), pp. 71–72. n.vuya.net/sites/default/files/1973%20Of%20Elves%20an Wise One of the Mountain: Form, Function and
45. De Vries, Jan (1962). "Álfr". Altnordisches d%20Dwarves%20(Motz).pdf) (PDF). Arv: Tidsk rift för
11. Hall (2007), p. 162. Significance of the Subterranean Smith. A Study in
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21. e.g. Shippey (2005). 122. For the Swedish belief in älvor see mainly Schön, Ebbe
60. Tolley (2009), I, p. 220. (PDF), Mak ing History: Essays on the Fornaldarsögur, (1986). "De fagra flickorna på ängen". Älvor, vättar och
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