Elves and Fairies

Matthias Egeler is professor of Old Norse literature and culture at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, after years at Oxford, Cambridge, and Munich. His research focuses on Old Norse literary, cultural, and religious history; the literary and religious history of medieval Ireland; and the world of Icelandic folk tales.

“A fascinating cultural and social history that traces the development of a particular, regionally distinctive lore in relation to the history of diverse peoples passing through changes of social, economic, cultural, and intellectual conditions.”—David Bentley Hart, The Lamp“Rich in its account of the fairy theme in British and Irish art and literature, right up to the present day, and it is surely [among] the best account of fairies as a cultural theme.”—Francis Young“Matthias Egeler takes us on a fascinating journey through space and time to explore the history of elves and fairies.”—Angelika H. Rudiger, Folklore“Have fairies become stock characters of literary and artistic fantasy with no hope of breaking back into reality? . . . This book is the first to grapple seriously with the question for a number of decades, and makes for worthwhile and engaging reading.”—Francis Young, History Today“Clap if you believe in fairies? Certainly, and elves too, if they are like the ones so lovingly explained in Matthias Egeler’s book.”—Alberto Manguel, author of Fabulous Monsters“A genuinely magical book, even though it is also hardheaded and profoundly scholarly. We begin in the magic of a meadow in Iceland full of flowers and warmth, and travel by way of Scotland and Germany to a wide range of fairy lands of the imagination. Gloriously attentive to the details of landscape and story, this book maps a rich landscape of the playful and the deadly. An outstanding contribution.”—Diane Purkiss, author of Fairies and Fairy Stories“The history of fairy belief would take thousands of pages to write. With a wizardry worthy of his subject, Matthias Egeler has somehow done fairylore justice in just over two hundred.”—Simon Young, author of The Boggart“Beginning in Iceland and Ireland, this is a splendid and masterful study of the different kinds of elves and fairies found in European culture—a model of clarity, absorbing and enriching.”—Séamus Mac Mathúna, Emeritus Professor of Irish and Celtic Studies, Ulster University“This is the most comprehensive and easily read overview of the place of fairies and elves in the modern imagination, provided with an equally sparkling investigation of the medieval and folkloric sources that underpin it.”—Ronald Hutton, author of Pagan Britain