D&D General Christmas elves in dnd?

[Hriston]

The description of Santa Claus as "a right jolly old elf" is misguided and similar to the name Gandalf being applied to the maia Olórin; he is apparently long-lived, magical, and associates with elves, therefore people think he's an elf, but he's not. In both cases, the beard is a dead giveaway.

The nisse is a household spirit of the goblin/kobold family. They often wear red caps whereas Santa's elves are often depicted as wearing green. Gnomes, on the other hand, are earth spirits.

 

[Yaarel]

The nisse is a household spirit of the goblin/kobold family. They often wear red caps whereas Santa's elves are often depicted as wearing green. Gnomes, on the other hand, are earth spirits.

The nisse is in the "house sprite" family, like brownie and hob.

Nisse is a nickname, like Robin Goodfellow is. The proper name for the phenomenon is "tomt" (tompt, topt, tuft), literally a "property" of land. It is literally the animistic mind of the earth that a home is built on. A place has a presence, sometimes an interactive one.

The German kobold is also a house sprite. But the English goblin isnt. The goblin is a malicious sprite, unlike a brownie that is protective house sprite. (Tho sometimes the German kobold can be malicious, more like a goblin.)

The Latin term "gnomus" probably derives from Greek ge-nomos, literally a "division of land", a field. Hence it means the same thing as Norse tomt. In any case, the Latin term is normally used to translate the folkbeliefs about house sprites, from various languages.

Gnome is a house sprite, moreso than an earth elemental per se.

The Norse tomt, Scottish brownie, English hob, German kobold, are all Gnomes.

 

[Hriston]

Gnome was coined by Paracelsus in the 16th century. It refers to the Bergmännlein or "mountain manikin", a class of beings believed to lurk in the mines in early modern Germany. It was in the 20th century that gnome lost its strict association with earth and became largely synonymous with creatures of the household spirit type such as hobs, brownies, and goblins.

 

[Yaarel]

Gnome was coined by Paracelsus in the 16th century. It refers to the Bergmännlein or "mountain manikin", a class of beings believed to lurk in the mines in early modern Germany. It was in the 20th century that gnome lost its strict association with earth and became largely synonymous with creatures of the household spirit type such as hobs, brownies, and goblins.

Because mines are human constructions, they can associate with house sprites, the mindful presence of the land that humans inhabit.

By extension, gnomes can associate with ships made out of wood that humans inhabit. Albeit this might relate to the concept that an "earth being" (landvættr) can travel and relocate away from its place of origin. Wherever humans travel, it is possible for nature beings to travel with them, as a stow away on a ship sotospeak.

The Scandinavian tomt is understood as a "gnome", including the "Christmas gnomes" (jul-nisser). Scandinavia imported the concept of these land beings being "small sprites" (gnomes) from the Christians of the British Isles. But before then, the worldview that areas of land are alive with individual personalities (landvættir) is already part of Norse animism.

The being who protects a family (fylgja) is often different from the being of the land that a family dwells on.

 

[Hriston]

I don't want to debate the semantics of the term gnome. What I consider its misappropriation, to refer to household spirits, bothers me, but that ship sailed last century. Such usage is now quite popular, garden gnomes and the English title of the 1976 book Gnomes being prime examples. The book's original title in Dutch is Leven en werken van de kabouter from which it can be seen that gnome is being used as a translation (IMO a poor one) for kabouter which is a type of household spirit akin to the tomte/nisse, hob, brownie, kobold, etc.

Since this is a "D&D General" thread, what I'm interested in is the identity of the gnome in D&D for which I consider this text foundational (Dungeons & Dragons (1974), Vol 2, p 16):

GNOMES: Slightly smaller than Dwarves, and with longer beards, these creatures usually inhabit the hills and lowland burrows as opposed to the mountainous homes which Dwarves choose. They are more reclusive than their cousins, but in all other respects resemble Dwarves.​

In D&D, as in the Chainmail "Fantasy Supplement", gnomes bear a familial relationship and are grouped along with dwarves ("their cousins") to the exclusion of creatures of the household spirit type such as goblins/hobgoblins and kobolds. Similarly, the Monster Manual (1977) entry for "Gnome" refers to "their larger cousins, dwarves" (p 46). Likewise, the Players Handbook (1978), in its entry for playable gnomes, refers to "their cousins, the dwarves" and states they are "miners of exceptional merit" (p 16). These foundational texts align most closely with the paracelsian conception of gnomes which depicts them as diminutive miners (the Bergmännlein) associated with the classical element of earth and related to the "dwarfs" who are stated to be "monstra" or a monstrous form of the former (Paracelsus, A Book on Nymphs, Sylphs, Pygmies, and Salamanders, and on the Other Spirits).

There is some conflation, in this thread, of Christmas elves with Santa Claus who bears, along with his predecessors, a strong resemblance to the nisse/tomte and other household spirits with which he shares many features, particularly Julenisse/Jultomte which evolved possibly under his influence. I could certainly see Santa being classified with the household spirits. He wears a red cap after all! But Christmas elves aren't mentioned in writing until Louisa May Alcott's Christmas Elves which was written in 1855/56 but never published by her. They are a literary creation, and there doesn't seem to be much evidence tying their depiction to the household spirits or to gnomes. Their existence vis a vis Santa Claus doesn't seem to have been assumed as late as the early 20th century. L. Frank Baum doesn't seem to have thought it necessary to mention them at all in The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902), although he does mention a number of other types of fairies who help Santa Claus make or acquire toys in some capacity or other. My favorite literary depiction of Christmas elves is found in The Father Christmas Letters by JRR Tolkien. He writes about three kinds of elves who live at the North Pole: the Snow-elves who dress in white, the Green elves who move in with Father Christmas and are trained on how to pack gifts, and the Red Elves, or Red Gnomes, of Norway who help capture goblins and fend off their attacks. Later, many of the Red Elves/Gnomes move to the North Pole as well. Of course, when Tolkien talks about gnomes, he's actually talking about a type of elf, the Noldor of his legendarium. In fact, the language of the Red Elves/Gnomes is actually a dialect of Quenya called Arktik, so it can be reasonably surmised they are High Elves.