The Sacred Grove Of The Druids, Set Design From Vincenzo Bellini's Opera ''Norma''

In reading direct anecdotes from people who believed in vættir, back in the 1800s, there is this sense that the vættir were already endangered before these people were born, and that the vættir are all but gone now. They speak of their grandparents' experiences, of things they saw in their childhood and stories that everyone knew about, but which took place a generation or more ago. They talk about how vættir "used to" live in that hill over there, or how the old house down the road "had" a vættr in the attic before it was torn down. It feels post-apocalyptic. Like they lived through an extinction event and are left to tell the tales of mammoths and aurochsen. The great enlightenment lit up the dark woods and farms and hills of rural communities and killed off the vættir en masse, forcing the last ones to retreat to the attics of madmen and storytellers.

Innocence Hiking, from Among Gnomes and Trolls 6

Illustration by John Bauer

1912

Glen Coe, Ballachulish

Sinitta Leunen

by downtofowler

Source: oh_hedwig

ℍ𝐚𝓵ｌ נ𝐀 𝔳คĻǤẸ

Cloud Study, John Constable, 1822, Tate

Presented anonymously 1952 Size: support: 476 x 575 mm frame: 605 x 705 x 70 mm Medium: Oil paint on paper on board

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/constable-cloud-study-n06065

Dewerstone Woods Dartmoor

The Swan Maiden, from Among Gnomes and Trolls No. 2 by John Bauer (1908)