Editing Half-elf (section)

== Norse mythology ==

In [[Norse mythology]], a half-elf is the offspring of an [[elf]] and a [[human]]. Major examples include [[Skuld (princess)|Skuld]] and [[Hagen (legend)|Högni]].<ref name="Byock 1998"/><ref name="Cumpstey 2017"/> Högni was a hero in ''[[Þiðrekssaga|Thidreks saga]]'', born to a human queen when an elf visited her while the king was away.<ref name="Cumpstey 2017">{{cite book |last=Cumpstey |first=Ian (trans.) |title=The Saga of Didrik of Bern |publisher=Skadi Press |year=2017 |isbn=978-0-9576-1203-7 }}</ref> Skuld was a Danish princess, as told in ''[[Hrólfs saga kraka|Hrólf Kraki's saga]]''. King Helgi, sleeping alone as he had not been invited to King Adils's wedding, let in a ragged person on a midwinter night. As she slept, he saw she was a radiantly beautiful woman dressed in a silk gown. She told him he had freed her from a curse and asked to leave. He asked her to stay and marry him, and she agreed. They slept together. She told him they would have a child, and asked him to visit the child the next winter at the harbour. The King forgot to do so, but three years later the woman, an elf, returned and left a daughter at his door. She told him that the child's name was Skuld, which means "what you should do". She said that the King would gain the reward for breaking the curse, but that the King's people would suffer as the King had not done as she had asked. She never came back, but Skuld was always angry.<ref name="Byock 1998">{{cite book |last=Byock |first=Jesse L. (trans.) |title=The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki |year=1998 |place=London |publisher=[[Penguin Books]] |isbn=0-14-043593-X |at=Chapter 11 |chapter=The Elfin Woman and the Birth of Skuld |url=http://www.viking.ucla.edu/hrolf/ch11.html}}</ref>

The scholar Hilda Ellis describes Skuld as evil, recalling that in the saga, Skuld used magic to raise an army against Hrólf, her half-brother. As quickly as Hrólf's warriors kill Skuld's men, they spring up, fighting more strongly than ever. Leading the fight for Hrólf, [[Bödvar Bjarki|Bodvar Bjarki]] calls Skuld's men ''[[Draugr|draugar]]'', 'undead', saying "they are grimmest to deal with after they are dead, and against this we have no power."<ref name="Ellis 1968">{{cite book |last=Ellis |first=Hilda Roderick |title=The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature |year=1968 |orig-year=1943 |publisher=Greenwood Press |location=New York |pages=78–80, 112 |oclc=1313536388 }}</ref> Ellis comments that Skuld is one of the Norse women involved in "everlasting battle" who share the names of [[Valkyrie]]s, females who guide the souls of the dead. She notes that Skuld is "said to be the child of an elf-woman", but that it is difficult "to decide how accurately the term [elves] is used", as its meaning shifts between the sagas and the ''[[Edda]]'' poems.<ref name="Ellis 1968"/>

Högni too is "essentially a demonic character", his name connected to the German ''Hexe'', 'witch', and to the English "hag"; the scholar Alexander Krappe sees his being the son of an elf as fitting in to that role, while his daughter Hildegund similarly has "certain magical qualities", such as awakening fallen warriors.<ref name="Krappe 1923">{{cite journal |last1=Krappe |first1=Alexander Haggerty |title=The Legend of Walther and Hildegund |journal=Journal of English and Germanic Philology |date=January 1923 |volume=22 |issue=1 |pages=75–88 |jstor=27702692 }}</ref>