Jeff Russell

Thank you for this! These are precisely the kind of sources I don't currently have any ability to draw from (though I'd like to learn German for this and other reasons. I'm taking my first tentative steps via Duolingo and Anki decks so I can talk to my sister-in-law's soon-to-be in-laws).

On your last point, elves also feature prominently in the Old English to Early Modern English sources, where "elf-shot" is a term for some kind of sudden-onset ill health that was thought to be caused by arrows shot by elves hiding in the woods.

There's several lines of evidence on "elves" that I feel need to be looked into, but I'm not sure they can necessarily be neatly reconciled: the Old Norse poems, various charms in Old High German and Old English, the later folklore your source and others talk about, health-related writings like "Leechcraft" guides, takes on the fae, beliefs on ancestor worship, and so forth.

Cheers,
Jeff

P.S. I will definitely be reviwing the translations you sent to me, I've just been moving through the "to read" pile slower than I hoped.