Elfkin

What elfkin means

Elfkin, or elven otherkin, are people whose kintype is an elf. They know that their bodies are human. What they describe is an inner identity, present since childhood for most, that belongs to an older and stranger people than the one they were born among.

Some say simply "elf." Others name a particular kind, drawn from a particular tradition, and some describe an elven people that matches no single source. As with every kintype, the old stories are treated as the nearest available description, not as a pattern to be copied.

The oldest kintype

The community's history begins with elves. In the 1970s small circles of people who understood themselves to be elves began to find one another, mostly in North America and mostly through the pagan and occult networks of the time. They corresponded by letter, passed around hand-copied newsletters, and took as their sign a star of seven points drawn in a single line, which they called the elven star. It is now better known as the heptagram, and the page on symbols and emblems draws it.

In 1990 an electronic mailing list was founded for elves and those interested in them. It soon drew people who felt the same kind of kinship with other beings entirely, and in the spring of that year a member suggested the word otherkind for them. It was quickly shortened to otherkin. The word that now covers dragons, fae, gryphons and much else was coined, in other words, among elves who wanted to make room at their table. The history page tells what followed.

Elves in old northern tradition

The elves of older tradition are not quite the elves of modern pictures. They come from the Germanic and Norse world, and they were more uncertain, more powerful and more dangerous than later tellers made them.

• In the Norse sources the elves are a race of beings mentioned alongside the gods. A medieval Icelandic writer divides them into light-elves, fairer than the sun, and dark-elves who dwell under the earth. Old Icelandic writings also mention offerings made to the elves at certain seasons.
• In Old English the word was aelf. Elves could bring sudden pains and illness, called elf-shot, and old books of remedies include charms against them. Yet the same language could call a woman "elf-bright," meaning radiantly beautiful.
• In later Scandinavian folklore elves dance in meadows at dusk, and anyone drawn into the dance may lose years or their wits. In Iceland belief in the hidden people is still spoken of with respect, and stories are told of roads made to curve around rocks said to be their homes.

The boundary between elves and the fair folk of the British Isles has always been blurred, and the page on faekin picks up that thread.

The debt to later literature

Over the last two centuries elves changed shape in books. Some nineteenth-century writers shrank them into tiny creatures of flowers and dewdrops. Then, in the twentieth century, a much-loved body of fantasy literature restored them to full stature: tall, grave, long-lived, bound to the forests and the stars, with their own languages, their own griefs and a deep memory of better ages.

The elves that many elfkin describe owe a good deal to that literature, and elfkin are usually the first to say so. Some found the first words for their experience in such books, and say that the stories gave shape to something already present rather than putting it there. Others found the novels less true to them than the older, wilder folklore. Both are common, and neither settles anything about what a person is. A story can be the first place someone recognizes themselves without being the reason they are who they are.

What elfkin commonly describe

• An affinity with old woodland, and with places that feel untouched by hurry.
• A love of made things of quiet beauty, such as music, careful handwork, gardens and well-made language. Many elfkin are drawn to old or invented languages.
• A sense of belonging to a people more than to a place, sometimes with a feeling of being separated from that people.
• Phantom sensations, most often of pointed ears or of a lighter, more graceful way of moving, felt as phantom shifts.
• Sensitivity to noise, crowds and ugliness, which can make ordinary city life tiring.
• Impressions of another life, for some. These are discussed on the page on memories and past lives, and are generally held as personal meaning, not as proof.

None of these is required, and many elfkin would recognize themselves in only two or three.

Out of step with time

If one experience unites elfkin more than any other, it is the feeling of being out of step with the age. Many describe it from early childhood: a sense of being older than their years, of watching the world's fashions and urgencies from a little distance, of grieving for things that pass before others have noticed them going.

This can be lonely. It can also become a trap, if a person begins to feel that the present is beneath them. Thoughtful elfkin have long warned against that turn, and against any idea that being an elf makes someone wiser or better than the humans around them. The community has generally been wary of anyone who uses an elven identity to claim superiority.

What helps, people say, is giving the long view somewhere to live: slow crafts, a garden that will outlast its planter, friendships kept up over decades, time in places that change at the pace of trees. And it helps to keep enough in step to live well. Paying the bills on time is not a betrayal of an ancient soul.

Elfkin and the love of stories

Loving elves in stories does not make a person an elf. Many people enjoy elven characters, costumes, festivals and games without identifying as anything but human, and that is a pleasure open to everyone. Elfkin identity is not the same thing. It is not chosen, it is not put on and taken off, and it tends to persist whether or not a person still enjoys the books.

A useful test is what remains when the enthusiasm fades. Elfkin often report that their interest in fantasy has come and gone over the years, while the sense of being an elf has stayed exactly where it was. Many have little interest in fantasy fiction at all.

A person whose elf belongs to one particular invented world, and could not be described any other way, may find that fictionkin is the more accurate word. The two are neighbors, and the line between them is a matter for each person.

Where to go next

The page on kintypes sets elves beside the other great families, and the otherkin overview explains the wider identity. If you are questioning, the advice on the awakening page applies to elfkin with very little change: start from experience, read widely, and give it time.