Elvehøj


Elvehøj is the Danish name of a Scandinavian ballad, known in Swedish as Älvefärd, type A 65 in The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad; it is also attested in Norwegian.

Summary

The ballad is in the first person. The narrator, an attractive young man, falls asleep beside an elf-mound. Some women then attempt to woo the narrator, singing so beautifully that the natural world responds. The narrator, however, resists their blandishments, grasping his sword. The man is most often rescued by the crowing of a cock awaking him, though in the Danish A-version, from the mid-sixteenth-century Jens Billes visebog, he is saved by the advice of his sister who, previously enchanted, is one of the elf-maidens. The ballad usually ends with moralising advice to the listeners.
The following table, by Lynda Taylor, charts the differences between the main versions.
Narrative elementsSw ASw CDan ADan BDan C
Frame: young man introduces himself.××××
Young man, resting head on elf-hill, approached by elf-maidens.×trolls×××
They waken him and invite him to dance.××××
One elf sits on a golden chair.×
She sings the most beautiful song, enchanting all around her:×××××
> affecting the stream and the fish, the birds××××
> the wild animals××
They invite him to stay with them, offering inducements.×××
He sits by while the dancing continues, refusing to interact.××××
The elves threaten to kill him if he does not stay with them.××
A maiden brings him a drink, advising him not to partake.
He obeys, offering to rescue her from the elves. She tells
him that is impossible.		×
He says God has come to his help by sending the dawn to waken
the cockerel; otherwise he would have ended up in the mountain
with the elves.		luck××××
Advice to young men not to linger by an elf-hill.×××

Manuscripts

DgF includes three main variants of ‘'Elvehøj'’, one of which survives in several near-identical copies. There are three versions in Sveriges medeltida ballader: two are complete, with eight four-line stanzas each, while the B-version is fragmentary, with only four stanzas. Each one is very different from the others. A is the oldest Swedish version, collected in the 1670s from a farmer’s wife in Västergötland; C was collected in Östergötland in the 1840s.
CountryEditionSiglumManuscriptDate
DenmarkDgF 46AJens Billes visebogmid-C16
DenmarkDgF 46BaLangebeks Foliohaandskrift Nr. 611610
DenmarkDgF 46BbReenbergs Haandskrift Nr. 132c. 1700
DenmarkDgF 46BcThotts Foliohaandskrift Nr. 132c. 1750
DenmarkDgF 46BdVedel II Nr. 91591
DenmarkDgF 46BeQueen Sofie’s Visebog Nr.
16		1584–98
DenmarkDgF 46CCollected by Evald Tang Kristensen1868×77
SwedenSMB 31ACollected from a farmer’s wife in Västergötland1670s
SwedenSMB 31BFragmentary
SwedenSMB 31CCollected in Östergötland1840s

Translations

The ballad can be seen as a 'happy ending' version of the much more famous Elveskud. The story is also similar to the ballads Herr Magnus och havsfrun, SMB 26, and Jungfrurnas gäst, SMB 30.
H. C. Andersen wrote a fairy tale called 'Elverhøi' in 1845, 'and the celebrated elfin mound has now become a tourist spot in Stevns Peninsula, Denmark.
The ballad was one of the inspirations for the 1828 patriotic play Elverhøj by Johan Ludvig Heiberg. Elverhøj is still a popular play in Denmark.