the saga continues…tolkien or santa?
today’s topic revolves around my genre of books. fantasy. i hope this appeals to other fantasy aficionados like me.
i was making myself a cup of coffee in the office and suddenly, i had this burning question. the elves described by tolkien in his books (Lord of the Rings and his other works), are similar in height and built to humans. tolkien can be likened to, the father of fantasy, as his literature includes descriptive information of the different races such as dwarves, elves, hobbits and so forth.
here comes the catch. how come santa’s elves are short in stature then? a lot of movies and some books, describe them having child-like physique. this is not the only instance of elves being described as smaller than humans. books written by other authors, such as enid blyton, margaret weis and tracy hickman and a handful more, follow this school of thought.
from what i understand, many authors, relied on tolkien’s description of the races, but still there are differences. how did this come about? it is puzzling me to no end. i don’t think there were distinctions in the elf race, other than the sea elves and land-dwelling elves. the difference in built, is too pronounced and i wonder how this came about. can anyone elaborate or clarify on this?
