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daesthai said:
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Reverend Zombie said:
The Norse had Elves, too (and I recall reading that the Norse idea of Elf inspired Tolkien.)
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I was under the impression that Tolkien's elves came from a Finnish background and his love of The Kalevala.
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From what I know, the Kalevala (& Tolkien's learning Finnish in order to read it) was certainly the inspiration for the
language of the elves, and the stories in it served as inspiration for Tolkien's stories (just as Beowulf and various other sources did).
But I do not know if there are actually elves in the Kalevala. Their absence from it would preclude it as source of inspiration for the idea of elves as such.