THE SCENE: In parts of medieval Scandinavia, the commonly held belief was that the pursuit of bodily pleasures resulted in a “punishment” of being transformed into a dancing elf.
THE TEXT: It is therefore considered a certainty that such fauns and satyrs are like those supernatural beings which, in many places within the northern regions, especially at night time, habitually dance round in a circle, with all the Muses singing in harmony. After sunrise they can sometimes be detected by their footprints in the dew, as was done by King Hother, who followed the three maidens to their caves and obtained from them the girdle and belt of victory. Sometimes, it is true, they press so deep into the earth in their leaping that the area they constantly use is worn away in a ring by the extraordinary heat and grows no new grass on its parched sod. This nocturnal play of supernatural being the natives call ‘the dance of the elves’, and this is their belief about them: that the souls of people who devote themselves to bodily pleasures (becoming as it were their servants), giving way to the incitements of their lusts and profaning the laws of God and man, assume corporeal form and are whirled about the earth.
– A Description of the Northern Peoples, Olaus Magnus, 16th Century AD
