used in sorcery, accompanied by the harp. A similar art of enchanting and bewitching the Laplanders are supposed to possess even to the present day, and with some probability it may be conjectured that the Asiatic people, who in the sagas are mentioned under the name of Dwarfs, was no other than an immigration of Oriental Lapps, and the origin of the race among us which still bears that name.’
The Scandinavians distinguished between the Light Elves and the Black Elves or Dwarfs. The former lived in mounds and the latter in caves; but in all probability the distinction existed not in blood, but in mode of habitations. Just as to this day there are the shore Lapps and the mountain Lapps.
Popular fancy has idealised the Light Elves into merry beings that dance their ringlets on the grass, and because their original habitations have collapsed altogether they have transferred them to the tumuli of the incinerated dead. But with these latter they had nothing to do. The barrow is a substitute for the turf-covered hovel that perished without leaving a trace.
There is one difficulty in identifying the Elves and Dwarfs with the Lapps, and that
