Note 216 — Chapter V
Reading edition
Footnote 216:
(return)
See p. 228. In Scandinavia the dead were called elves, and lived feasting in their barrows or in hills. These became the seat of ancestral cults. The word "elf" also means any divine spirit, later a fairy. "Elf" and síde may thus, like the "elf-howe" and the síd or mound, have a parallel history. See Vigfusson-Powell, Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. 413 f.