Kobold
Encyclopedia
The kobold is a sprite
stemming from Germanic mythology
and surviving into modern times in German folklore
. Although usually invisible, a kobold can materialise in the form of an animal, fire, a human being, and a candle. The most common depictions of kobolds show them as humanlike figures the size of small children. Kobolds who live in human homes wear the clothing of peasants; those who live in mines are hunched and ugly; and kobolds who live on ships smoke pipes and wear sailor clothing.
Legends tell of three major types of kobolds. Most commonly, the creatures are house spirits of ambivalent nature; while they sometimes perform domestic chores, they play malicious tricks if insulted or neglected. Famous kobolds of this type include King Goldemar
, Heinzelmann
, Hödekin
. In some regions, kobolds are known by local names, such as the Galgenmännlein of southern Germany and the Heinzelmännchen
of Cologne
. Another type of kobold haunts underground places, such as mines. The name of the element cobalt
comes from the creature's name, because medieval miners blamed the sprite for the poisonous and troublesome nature of the typical arsenic
al ores of this metal (cobaltite
and smaltite
) which polluted other mined elements. A third kind of kobold, the Klabautermann
, lives aboard ships and helps sailors.
Kobold beliefs are evidence of the survival of pagan
customs after the Christianisation of Germany. Belief in kobolds dates to at least the 13th century, when German peasants carved kobold effigies for their homes. Such pagan practices may have derived from beliefs in the mischievous kobalos
of ancient Greece, the household lares
and penates of ancient Rome, or native German beliefs in a similar room spirits called kofewalt
(whose name is a possible rootword of the modern kobold). Kobold beliefs mirror legends of similar creatures in other regions of Europe, and scholars have argued that the names of creatures such as goblin
s and kabouter
s derive from the same roots as kobold. This may indicate a common origin for these creatures, or it may represent cultural borrowings and influences of European peoples upon one another. Similarly, subterranean kobolds may share their origins with creatures such as gnome
s and dwarves and the aquatic Klabautermann with similar water spirits.
, hobgoblin
and pixy, the Scottish brownie, and the Scandinavian nisse or tomte
; while they align the subterranean variety with the Norse dwarf and the Cornish knocker. Irish historian Thomas Keightley has argued that the German kobold and the Scandinavian nis
predate the Irish fairy
and the Scottish brownie and influenced the beliefs in those entities, but American folklorist Richard Mercer Dorson has discounted this argument as reflecting Keightley's prejudices toward Gotho-Germanic ideas over Celtic ones.
Kobold beliefs represent the survival of pagan
customs into the Christian and modern eras and offer hints of how pagan Europeans worshipped in the privacy of their homes. Religion historian Otto Schrader has suggested that kobold beliefs derive from the pagan tradition of worshipping household deities thought to reside in the hearth fire. Alternatively, Nancy Arrowsmith and George Moorse have said that the earliest kobolds were thought to be tree spirits. According to 13th-century German poet Conrad of Würzburg, medieval Germans carved kobolds from boxwood
and wax and put them "up in the room for fun". Mandrake
root was another material used. People believed that the wild kobold remained in the material used to carve the figure. These kobold effigies were 30 to 60 cm (one to two feet) high and had colourful clothing and large mouths. One example, known as the monoloke, was made from white wax and wore a blue shirt and black velvet vest. The 17th century expression to laugh like a kobold may refer to these dolls with their mouths wide open, and it may mean "to laugh loud and heartily". These kobold effigies were stored in glass and wooden containers. German mythologist Jacob Grimm
has traced the custom to Roman times and has argued that religious authorities tolerated it even after the Germans had been Christianised.
Several competing etymologies
for kobold have been suggested. In 1908, Otto Schrader traced the word to kuba-walda, meaning "the one who rules the house". According to this theory, the root of the word is chubisi, the Old High German
word for house, building, or hut, and the word akin to the root of the English cove. The suffix -old means "to rule". Classicist Ken Dowden has identified the kofewalt
, a spirit with powers over a single room, as the antecedent to the term kobold and to the creature itself. He has drawn parallels between the kobold and the Roman lares and penates and the Anglo-Saxon cofgodas
, "room-gods". Linguist Paul Wexler has proposed yet another etymology, tracing kobold to the roots koben ("pigsty") and hold ("stall spirit").
Grimm has provided one of the earlier and more commonly accepted etymologies for kobold, tracing the word's origin through the Latin cobalus to the Greek koba'los, meaning "rogue
". The change to the word-final -olt is a feature of the German language
used for monsters and supernatural beings. Variants of kobold appear as early as the 13th century. The words goblin and gobelin, rendered in Medieval Latin as gobelinus, may in fact derive from the word kobold or from kofewalt. Related terms occur in Dutch
, such as kabout, kabot, and kabotermanneken. Citing this evidence, British antiquarian Charles Hardwick has argued that the house kobold and similar creatures, such as the Scottish bogie
, French goblin
, and English Puck
, all descend from the Greek kobaloi, creatures "whose sole delite consists in perplexing the human race, and evoking those harmless terrors that constantly hover round the minds of the timid." In keeping with Grimm's definition, the kobaloi were spirits invoked by rogues. Similarly, British writer Archibald Maclaren has suggested that kobold beliefs descend from the ancient Roman custom of worshipping lares
, household gods, and penates, gods of the house and its supplies.
Another class of kobold lives in underground places. Folklorists have proposed that the mine kobold derives from the beliefs of the ancient Germanic people. Scottish historical novelist Walter Scott
has suggested that the Proto-Norse based the kobolds on the short-statured Finns, Lapps, and Latvians who fled their invasions and sought shelter in northern European caves and mountains. There they put their skills at smithing to work and, in the beliefs of the proto-Norse, came to be seen as supernatural beings. These beliefs spread, becoming the kobold, the Germanic gnome
, the French goblin and the Scottish bogle
. In contrast, Humorists William Edmonstoune Aytoun
and Theodore Martin
(writing as "Bon Gaultier
") have proposed that the Norse themselves were the models for the mine kobold and similar creatures, such as dwarfs, goblins, and troll
s; Norse miners and smiths "were small in their physical proportions, and usually had their stithies near the mouths of the mines among the hills." This gave rise to myths about small, subterranean creatures, and the stories spread across Europe "as extensively as the military migrations from the same places did".
German writer Heinrich Smidt
believed that the sea kobolds, or Klabautermann, entered German folklore via German sailors who had learned about them in England. However, historians David Kirby and Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen dispute this, claiming no evidence of such a belief in Britain. An alternate view connects the Klabautermann myths with the story of Saint Phocas
of Sinope. As that story spread from the Black Sea
to the Baltic Sea
. Scholar Reinhard Buss instead sees the Klabautermann as an amalgamation of early and pre-Christian beliefs mixed with new creatures.
, Kurd Chimgen, Walther, and Wolterken. Local names for kobolds include Allerünken, Alraune, Galgenmännlein (in southern Germany), Glucksmännchen, Heinzelmännchen
(in Cologne), Hütchen, and Oaraunle. The Heinzelmännchen
are a class of kobolds from Cologne, and the Klabautermann
is a kobold from the beliefs of fishermen and sailors of the Baltic Sea
. Many of these names are modifications of common German given names, such as Heinrich (abbreviated to Heinze), Joachim, and Walther.
Kobolds may manifest as animals, fire, human beings, and objects. Fiery kobolds are also called drakes, draches, or puks. A tale from the Altmark
, recorded by Anglo-Saxon scholar Benjamin Thorpe
in 1852, describes the kobold as "a fiery stripe with a broad head, which he usually shakes from one side to the other . . . ." A legend from the same period taken from Pechüle
, near Luckenwald, says that the kobold flies through the air as a blue stripe and carries grain. "If a knife or a fire-steel be cast at him, he will burst, and must let fall what which he is carrying." Some legends say the fiery kobold enters and exits a house through the chimney. Legends dating to 1852 from western Uckermark
ascribe both human and fiery features to the kobold; he wears a red jacket and cap and moves about the air as a fiery stripe. Such fire associations, along with the name drake, may point to a connection between kobold and dragon myths.
Kobolds who live in human homes are generally depicted as humanlike, dressed as peasants, and standing about as tall as a four-year-old child. A legend recorded by folklorist Joseph Snowe from a place called Alte Burg in 1839 tells of a creature "in the shape of a short, thick-set being, neither boy nor man, but akin to the condition of both, garbed in a party-coloured loose surcoat, and wearing a high-crowned hat with a broad brim on his diminutive head." The kobold Hödekin
(also known as Hüdekin and Hütchen) of Hildesheim
wore a little hat down over his face (Hödekin means "little hat"). Another type of kobold known as the Hütchen is said to be 0.3–1 m (1–3 ft) tall, with red hair and beard, and clad in red or green clothing and a red hat and may even be blind. Yet other tales describe kobolds appearing as herdsmen looking for work and little, wrinkled old men in pointed hoods. Some kobolds resemble small children. According to dramatist and novelist X. B. Saintine
, kobolds are the spirits of dead children and often appear with a knife that represents the means by which they were put to death. Heinzelmann, a kobold from the folklore of Hudermühlen Castle
in the region of Lüneburg
, appeared as a beautiful boy with blond, curly hair to his shoulders and dressed in a red silk coat. His voice was "soft and tender like that of a boy or maiden."
Legends variously describe mine kobolds as 0.6 metre-tall (2-ft) old men dressed like miners to short, bent creatures with ugly features, including, in some tales, black skin. In 1820, Spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten
recorded a description of mine kobolds from a Madame Kalodzy, who stayed with peasants named Dorothea and Michael Engelbrecht:
The same informant claimed to later have seen the kobolds first-hand. She described them as "diminutive black dwarfs about two or three feet in height, and at that part which in the human being is occupied by the heart, they carry the round luminous circle first described, an appearance which is much more frequently seen than the little black men themselves." The Heinzelmännchen
of Cologne resemble short, naked men, and the Klabautermann
, a kobold from the beliefs of fishermen and sailors of the Baltic Sea
, typically appears as a small, pipe-smoking humanlike figure wearing a yellow nightcap-style sailor's hat and a red or grey jacket.
Other kobolds appear as animals. Folklorist D. L. Ashliman
has reported kobolds appearing as wet cats and hens, and Arrowsmith and Moorse mention kobolds in the shape of bats, casts, roosters, snakes, and worms. Thorpe has recorded that the people of Altmark believed that kobolds appeared as black cats while walking the earth. The kobold Heinzelmann could appear as a black marten
and a large snake.
Most often, kobolds remain completely invisible. Although King Goldemar
(or Goldmar), a famous kobold from Castle Hardenstein
, had hands "thin like those of a frog, cold and soft to the feel", he never showed himself. The master of Hundermühlen Castle, where Heinzelmann lived, convinced the kobold to let him touch him one night. The kobold's fingers were childlike, and his face was like a skull, without body heat. One legend tells of a female servant taking a fancy to her house's kobold and asking to see him. The kobold refuses, claiming that to look upon him would be terrifying. Undeterred, the maid insists, and the kobold tells her to meet him later—and to bring along a pail of cold water. The kobold waits for the maid, nude and with a butcher knife in his back. The maid faints at the sight, and the kobold wakes her with the cold water. In one variant, the maid sees a dead baby floating in a cask full of blood; years before, the woman had born a bastard child, killed it, and hidden it in such a cask. Legends tell of those who try to trick a kobold into showing itself being punished for the misdeed. For example, Heinzelmann tricked a nobleman into thinking that the kobold was hiding in a jug. When the nobleman covered the jug's mouth to trap the creature, the kobold chided him:
When a man threw ashes and tares about to try to see King Goldemar's footprints, the kobold cut him to pieces, put him on a spit, roasted him, boiled his legs and head, and ate him. The Heinzelmänchen of Cologne marched from the city and sailed away when a tailor's wife strewed peas on the stairs to trip them so she could see them. In 1850, Keightley noted that the Heinzelmänchen "[had] totally disappeared, as has been everywhere the case, owing to the curiosity of people, which has at all times been the destruction of so much of what was beautiful in the world."
Domestic kobolds are linked to a specific household. Some legends claim that every house has a resident kobold, regardless of its owners' desires or needs. The means by which a kobold enters a new home vary from tale to tale. One tradition claims that the kobold enters the household by announcing itself at night by strewing wood chips about the house and putting dirt or cow manure in the milk cans. If the master of the house leaves the wood chips and drinks the soiled milk, the kobold takes up residence. The kobold Heinzelmann of Hundermühlen Castle arrived in 1584 and announced himself by knocking and making other sounds. Should someone take pity on a kobold in the form of a cold, wet creature and take it inside to warm it, the spirit takes up residence there. A tradition from Perleberg in northern Germany says that a homeowner must follow specific instructions to lure a kobold to his house. He must go on St John's Day between noon and one o'clock, into the forest. When he finds an anthill with a bird on it, he must say a certain phrase, which causes the bird to transform into a small person. The figure then leaps into a bag carried by the homeowner, and he can then transfer the kobold to his home. Even if servants come and go, the kobold stays.
House kobolds usually live in the hearth area of a house, although some tales place them in less frequented parts of the home, in the woodhouse, in barns and stables, or in the beer cellar of an inn. At night, such kobolds do chores that the human occupants neglected to finish before bedtime: They chase away pests, clean the stables, feed and groom the cattle and horses, scrub the dishes and pots, and sweep the kitchen. Other kobolds help tradespeople and shopkeepers. A Cologne legend recorded by Keightley claims that bakers in the city in the early 19th century never needed hired help because, each night, the kobolds known as Heinzelmänchen made as much bread as a baker could need. Similarly, bieresal, kobolds who live in the beer cellars of inns, bring beer into the house, clean the tables, and wash the bottles and glasses. This association between kobolds and work gave rise to a saying current in 19th-century Germany that a woman who worked quickly "had the kobold".
A kobold can bring wealth to his household in the form of grain and gold. A legend from Saterland
and East Friesland, recorded by Thorpe in 1852, tells of a kobold called the Alrûn. Despite standing only about a foot tall, the creature could carry a load of rye in his mouth for the people with whom he lived and did so daily as long as he received a meal of biscuits and milk. The saying to have an Alrûn in one's pocket means "to have luck at play". However, kobold gifts may be stolen from the neighbours; accordingly, some legends say that gifts from a kobold are demonic or evil. Nevertheless, peasants often welcome this trickery and feed their kobold in the hopes that it continue bringing its gifts. A family coming into unexplained wealth was often attributed to a new kobold moving into the house.
Kobolds bring good luck and help their hosts as long as the hosts take care of them. The kobold Heinzelmann found things that had been lost. He had a rhyme he liked to sing: "If thou here wilt let me stay, / Good luck shalt thou have alway; / But if hence thou wilt me chase, / Luck will ne'er come near the place." Three famous kobolds, King Goldemar, Heinzelmann, and Hödekin, all gave warnings about danger to the owners of the home in which they lived. Heinzelmann once warned a colonel to be careful on his daily hunt. The man ignored the advice, only to have his gun backfire and shoot off his thumb. Heinzelman appeared to him and said, "See, now, you have got what I warned you of! If you had refrained from shooting this time, this mischance would not have befallen you." The kobold Hödekin, who lived with the bishop of Hildesheim in the 12th century, once warned the bishop of a murder. When the bishop acted on the information, he was able to take over the murderer's lands and add them to his bishopric.
In return, the family must leave a portion of their supper (or beer, for the bierasal) to the spirit and must treat the kobold with respect, never mocking or laughing at the creature. A kobold expects to be fed in the same place at the same time each day, or in the case of the Hütchen, once a week and on holidays. One tradition says that their favourite food is grits or water-gruel. Tales tell of kobolds with their own rooms; the kobold Heinzelmann had his own chamber at the castle, complete with furnishings. and King Goldemar was said to sleep in the same bed with Neveling von Hardenberg. He demanded a place at the table and a stall for his horses. Keightley relates that maids who leave the employ of a certain household must warn their successor to treat the house kobold well.
Legends tell of slighted kobolds becoming quite malevolent and vengeful, afflicting errant hosts with supernatural diseases, disfigurements, and injuries. Their pranks range from beating the servants to murdering those who insult them. One holyman visited the home of Heinzelmann and refused to accept the kobold's protests that he was a Christian. Heinzelmann threatened him, and the nobleman fled. Another nobleman refused to drink to the kobold's honour, which prompted Heinzelmann to drag the man to the ground and choke him near to death. When a kitchen servant got dirt on the kobold Hödekin and sprayed him with water each time he appeared, Hödekin asked that the boy be punished, but the steward dismissed the behaviour as a childish prank. Hodeken waited for the servant to go to sleep and then strangled him, tore him limb from limb, and threw him in a pot over the fire. The head cook rebuked the kobold for the murder, so Hodeken squeezed toad blood onto the meat being prepared for the bishop. The cook chastised the spirit for this behaviour, so Hodeken threw him over the drawbridge into the moat. According to Lüthi, these abilities reflect the fear of the people who believe in them. Thomas Keightley has attributed the feats of kobolds to "ventriloquism and the contrivances of servants and others."
Archibald Maclaren has attributed kobold behaviour to the virtue of the homeowners; a virtuous house has a productive and helpful kobold; a vice-filled one has a malicious and mischievous pest. If the hosts give up those things to which the kobold objects, the spirit ceases its annoying behaviour. Heinzelmann punished vices; for example, when the secretary of Hudenmühlen was sleeping with the chamber maid, the kobold interrupted a sexual encounter and hit the secretary with a broom handle. King Goldemar revealed the secret transgressions of clergymen, much to their chagrin. Joseph Snowe has related the tale of a kobold at Alte Burg: When two students slept in the mill in which the creature lived, one of them ate the offering of food the miller had left the kobold. The student who had left the meal alone felt the kobold's touch as "gentle and soothing", but the one who had eaten its food felt that "the fingers of the hand were pointed with poisoned arrowheads, or fanged with fire." Even friendly kobolds are rarely completely good, and house kobolds may do mischief for no particular reason. They hide things, push people over when they bend to pick something up, and make noise at night to keep people awake. The kobold Hödekin of Hildesheim roamed the walls of the castle at night, forcing the watch to be constantly vigilant. A kobold in a fishermen's house in Köpenick on the Wendish Spree reportedly moved sleeping fishermen so that their heads and toes lined up. King Goldemar enjoyed strumming the harp and playing dice. One of Heinzelmann's pranks was to pinch drunken men to make them start fights with their companions. Heinzelmann liked his lord's two daughters and scared away their suitors so that the women never married.
Folktales tell of people trying to rid themselves of mischievous kobolds. In one tale, a man with a kobold-haunted barn puts all the straw onto a cart, burns the barn down, and sets off to start anew. As he rides away, he looks back and sees the kobold sitting behind him. "It was high time that we got out!" it says. A similar tale from Köpenick tells of a man trying to move out of a kobold-infested house. He sees the kobold preparing to move too and realises that he cannot rid himself of the creature. The lord of the Hundermühlen Castle disliked Heinzelmann and tried to escape him by taking up residence with his family and retinue elsewhere. Nevertheless, the invisible kobold travelled along with them as a white feather, which they discovered when they stayed at an inn.
Exorcism
by a Christian priest works in some tales; the bishop of Hildesheim managed to exorcise Hödekin from the castle. Even this method is not fool-proof, however; when an exorcist tried to drive away Heinzelmann, the kobold tore up the priest's holy book, strewed it about the room, attacked the exorcist, and chased him away. Insulting a kobold may drive it away, but not without a curse; when someone tried to see his true form, Goldemar left the home and vowed that the house would now be as unlucky as it had been fortunate under his care. Actions a Hütchen considers insulting include giving him clothing, rushing him in his work, burning the house down, and leaving a wagon wheel in front of it.
, Cornish knocker and the Welsh coblynau
. Stories of subterranean kobolds were common in Germany by the 16th century. Superstitious miners believed the creatures to be expert miners and metalworkers who could be heard constantly drilling, hammering, and shoveling. Some stories claim that the kobolds live in the rock, just as human beings live in the air.
Legends often paint underground kobolds as evil creatures. In medieval mining towns, people prayed for protection from them. They were blamed for the accidents, cave-ins, and rock slides that plagued human miners. One favoured kobold prank was to fool miners into taking worthless ore. For example, 16th-century miners sometimes encountered what looked to be rich veins of copper or silver, but which, when smelted, proved to be little more than a pollutant and could even be poisonous. These ores caused a burning sensation to those who handled them. Miners tried to appease the kobolds with offerings of gold and silver and by insisting that fellow miners treat them respectfully. Nevertheless, some stories claim that kobolds only returned such kindness with more poisonous ores. Miners called these ores cobalt after the creatures from whom they were thought to come. In 1735, Swedish chemist Georg Brandt
isolated a substance from such ores and named it cobalt rex. In 1780, scientists showed that this was in fact a new element, which they named cobalt
.
Tales from other parts of Germany make mine kobolds beneficial creatures, at least if they are treated respectfully. Nineteenth-century miners in Bohemia and Hungary reported hearing knocking in the mines. They interpreted such noises as warnings from the kobolds to not go in that direction. Other miners claimed that the knocks indicated where veins of metal could be found: the more knocks, the richer the vein. In 1884, spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten reported a story from a Madame Kalodzy, who claimed to have heard mine kobolds while visiting a peasant named Michael Engelbrecht: "On the three first days after our arrival, we only heard a few dull knocks, sounding in and about the mouth of the mine, as if produced by some vibrations or very distant blows. . . ." Kobolds are sometimes indifferent to human miners so long as they are left alone. They are content to simply mine ore themselves, collect it, and haul it away by windlass
.
The Klabautermann
(also spelt Klaboterman and Klabotermann) is a creature from the beliefs of fishermen and sailors of Germany's north coast, the Netherlands, and the Baltic Sea
, and may represent a third type of kobold or possibly a different spirit that has merged with kobold traditions. Belief in the Klabautermann dates to at least the 1770s. According to these traditions, Klabautermanns live on ships and are generally beneficial to the crew. For example, a Klabautermann will pump water from the hold, arrange cargo, and hammer at holes until they can be repaired. The creatures are thought to be especially useful in times of danger, preventing the ship from sinking. The Klabautermann is associated with the wood of the ship on which it lives. It enters the ship via the wood used to build it, and it may appear as a ship's carpenter.
The Klabautermann's benevolent behaviour lasts as long as the crew and captain treat the creature respectfully. A Klabautermann will not leave its ship until it is on the verge of sinking. To this end, superstitious sailors in the 19th century demanded that others pay the Klabautermann respect. Ellett has recorded one rumour that a crew even threw its captain overboard for denying the existence of the ship's Klabautermann. Heinrich Heine has reported that one captain created a place for his ship's Klabautermann in his cabin and that the captain offered the spirit the best food and drink he had to offer. Klabautermanns are easily angered. Their ire manifests in pranks such as tangling ropes and laughing at sailors who shirk their chores.
The sight of a Klabautermann is an ill omen, and in the 19th century, it was the most feared sight among sailors. According to one tradition, they only appear to those about to die. Another story recorded by Ellett claims that the Klabautermann only shows itself if the ship is doomed to sink.
, Martin Luther
translates the Hebrew lilith
in Isaiah
34:14 as kobold. In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
's Faust
, the kobold represents the Greek element of earth:
Similarly, a kobold is musically depicted in Edvard Grieg
's lyric piece, opus 71, number 3. Likewise, kobold characters such as Pittiplatsch
and Pumuckl
appear in German popular culture. Der Kobold, Op. 3, is also Opera in Three Acts with text and music by Siegfried Wagner
; his third opera and it was completed in 1903.
Kobolds are referenced in the Larry Niven
novel Protector
. Jack Brennan, after becoming a super-intelligent humanoid, creates an artificial world that he calls Kobold in the outer reaches of the Solar System
. The name is a reference to Jack Brennan's dual roles as a trickster (using his superior intellect and technology to baffle humans on Earth) and as a self-appointed protector of humanity.
The Kobold Heinzelmann is an important character in the novel American Gods
by Neil Gaiman
.
Sprite (creature)
The term sprite is a broad term referring to a number of preternatural legendary creatures. The term is generally used in reference to elf-like creatures, including fairies, and similar beings , but can also signify various spiritual beings, including ghosts. In Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl books,...
stemming from Germanic mythology
Germanic mythology
Germanic mythology is a comprehensive term for myths associated with historical Germanic paganism, including Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon mythology, Continental Germanic mythology, and other versions of the mythologies of the Germanic peoples...
and surviving into modern times in German folklore
German folklore
German folklore shares many characteristics with Scandinavian folklore and English folklore due to their origins in a common Germanic mythology. It reflects a similar mix of influences: a pre-Christian pantheon and other beings equivalent to those of Norse mythology; magical characters associated...
. Although usually invisible, a kobold can materialise in the form of an animal, fire, a human being, and a candle. The most common depictions of kobolds show them as humanlike figures the size of small children. Kobolds who live in human homes wear the clothing of peasants; those who live in mines are hunched and ugly; and kobolds who live on ships smoke pipes and wear sailor clothing.
Legends tell of three major types of kobolds. Most commonly, the creatures are house spirits of ambivalent nature; while they sometimes perform domestic chores, they play malicious tricks if insulted or neglected. Famous kobolds of this type include King Goldemar
King Goldemar
King Goldemar is a dwarf or kobold from Germanic mythology and folklore. By the Middle Ages, Goldemar had become the king of the dwarfs in German belief. In the fairy tale "The Friendship of the Dwarfs", the author Villamaria depicts Goldemar as a "mighty dwarf king" with a queen and a court of...
, Heinzelmann
Hinzelmann
Heinzelmann was a kobold in the mythology of northern Germany. According to legend, he was a household spirit of ambivalent nature, similar to Puck or Robin Goodfellow, who could provide good luck and perform household tasks, but become malicious if not appeased.Heinzelmann, it was said, usually...
, Hödekin
Hödekin
Hödekin is a kobold of German folklore. According to the legend recorded by folklorist Thomas Keightley in 1850, Hödekin always wore a felt hat down over his face; his name means "Little Hat". Hödekin lived with the bishop of Hildesheim and was a helpful sprite...
. In some regions, kobolds are known by local names, such as the Galgenmännlein of southern Germany and the Heinzelmännchen
Heinzelmännchen
The Heinzelmännchen are a race of creatures appearing in a tale connected with the city of Cologne in Germany.The little house gnomes are said to have done all the work of the citizens of Cologne during the night, so that the inhabitants of Cologne could be very lazy during the day...
of Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
. Another type of kobold haunts underground places, such as mines. The name of the element cobalt
Cobalt
Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is found naturally only in chemically combined form. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal....
comes from the creature's name, because medieval miners blamed the sprite for the poisonous and troublesome nature of the typical arsenic
Arsenic
Arsenic is a chemical element with the symbol As, atomic number 33 and relative atomic mass 74.92. Arsenic occurs in many minerals, usually in conjunction with sulfur and metals, and also as a pure elemental crystal. It was first documented by Albertus Magnus in 1250.Arsenic is a metalloid...
al ores of this metal (cobaltite
Cobaltite
Cobaltite is a sulfosalt mineral composed of cobalt, arsenic and sulfur, CoAsS. It contains up to 10 percent iron and variable amounts of nickel. Structurally it resembles pyrite with one of the sulfur atoms replaced by an arsenic atom....
and smaltite
Smaltite
Smaltite is a variety of the mineral skutterudite consisting of cobalt iron nickel arsenide: As2.Smaltite crystallizes in the cubic system with the same hemihedral symmetry as pyrite; crystals have usually the form of cubes or cubo-octahedra, but are imperfectly developed and of somewhat rare...
) which polluted other mined elements. A third kind of kobold, the Klabautermann
Klabautermann
A Klabautermann is a water kobold who assists sailors and fishermen on the Baltic and North Sea in their duties. He is a merry and diligent creature, with an expert understanding of most watercraft, and an unsupressable musical talent. He also rescues sailors washed overboard. The name comes from...
, lives aboard ships and helps sailors.
Kobold beliefs are evidence of the survival of pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
customs after the Christianisation of Germany. Belief in kobolds dates to at least the 13th century, when German peasants carved kobold effigies for their homes. Such pagan practices may have derived from beliefs in the mischievous kobalos
Kobalos
The kobalos was a sprite from Greek mythology, a mischievous creature fond of tricking and frightening mortals. Greek myths depict the kobaloi as "impudent, thieving, droll, idle, mischievous, gnome-dwarfs", and as "funny, little triksy elves" of a phallic nature...
of ancient Greece, the household lares
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
and penates of ancient Rome, or native German beliefs in a similar room spirits called kofewalt
Kofewalt
A kofewalt was a spirit in pagan German folklore that was thought to have power over a room of the home. The kofewalt may be a predecessor to the German kobold. The English form was the cofgod .-References:* Dowden, Ken . . London: Routledge. ISBN 0415120349....
(whose name is a possible rootword of the modern kobold). Kobold beliefs mirror legends of similar creatures in other regions of Europe, and scholars have argued that the names of creatures such as goblin
Goblin
A goblin is a legendary evil or mischievous illiterate creature, a grotesquely evil or evil-like phantom.They are attributed with various abilities, temperaments and appearances depending on the story and country of origin. In some cases, goblins have been classified as constantly annoying little...
s and kabouter
Kabouter
Kabouter is the Dutch/Afrikaans word for gnome or leprechaun. In folklore, the Dutch Kabouters are akin to the Irish Leprechaun, Scandinavian Tomte, the English Hob or Brownie and the German Klabauter or kobold. The term kabouter was also adopted by a 1970s hippie movement in Amsterdam that sprang...
s derive from the same roots as kobold. This may indicate a common origin for these creatures, or it may represent cultural borrowings and influences of European peoples upon one another. Similarly, subterranean kobolds may share their origins with creatures such as gnome
Gnome
A gnome is a diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature...
s and dwarves and the aquatic Klabautermann with similar water spirits.
Origins and etymology
The kobold's origins are obscure. Sources equate the domestic kobold with creatures such as the English boggartBoggart
In Englishfolklore, a boggart is a household fairy which causes things to disappear, milk to sour, and dogs to go lame. Always malevolent, the boggart will follow its family wherever they flee...
, hobgoblin
Hobgoblin
Hobgoblin is a term typically applied in folktales to describe a friendly but troublesome creature of the Seelie Court.The most commonly known hobgoblin is the character Puck in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck, however, is only another name given to a much older character named Robin...
and pixy, the Scottish brownie, and the Scandinavian nisse or tomte
Tomte
A tomte , nisse or tonttu is a mythical creature of Scandinavian folklore. The tomte or nisse was believed to take care of a farmer's home and children and protect them from misfortune, in particular at night, when the housefolk were asleep...
; while they align the subterranean variety with the Norse dwarf and the Cornish knocker. Irish historian Thomas Keightley has argued that the German kobold and the Scandinavian nis
Tomte
A tomte , nisse or tonttu is a mythical creature of Scandinavian folklore. The tomte or nisse was believed to take care of a farmer's home and children and protect them from misfortune, in particular at night, when the housefolk were asleep...
predate the Irish fairy
Fairy
A fairy is a type of mythical being or legendary creature, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural.Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term...
and the Scottish brownie and influenced the beliefs in those entities, but American folklorist Richard Mercer Dorson has discounted this argument as reflecting Keightley's prejudices toward Gotho-Germanic ideas over Celtic ones.
Kobold beliefs represent the survival of pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
customs into the Christian and modern eras and offer hints of how pagan Europeans worshipped in the privacy of their homes. Religion historian Otto Schrader has suggested that kobold beliefs derive from the pagan tradition of worshipping household deities thought to reside in the hearth fire. Alternatively, Nancy Arrowsmith and George Moorse have said that the earliest kobolds were thought to be tree spirits. According to 13th-century German poet Conrad of Würzburg, medieval Germans carved kobolds from boxwood
Boxwood
Boxwood may refer to:*Buxus, a genus of about 70 species of shrubs and trees in the family Buxaceæ, which in North America is called "boxwood"*Buxus sempervirens, the most common species of Buxus, which is known as "boxwood" in United Kingdom...
and wax and put them "up in the room for fun". Mandrake
Mandrake (plant)
Mandrake is the common name for members of the plant genus Mandragora, particularly the species Mandragora officinarum, belonging to the nightshades family...
root was another material used. People believed that the wild kobold remained in the material used to carve the figure. These kobold effigies were 30 to 60 cm (one to two feet) high and had colourful clothing and large mouths. One example, known as the monoloke, was made from white wax and wore a blue shirt and black velvet vest. The 17th century expression to laugh like a kobold may refer to these dolls with their mouths wide open, and it may mean "to laugh loud and heartily". These kobold effigies were stored in glass and wooden containers. German mythologist Jacob Grimm
Jacob Grimm
Jacob Ludwig Carl Grimm was a German philologist, jurist and mythologist. He is best known as the discoverer of Grimm's Law, the author of the monumental Deutsches Wörterbuch, the author of Deutsche Mythologie and, more popularly, as one of the Brothers Grimm, as the editor of Grimm's Fairy...
has traced the custom to Roman times and has argued that religious authorities tolerated it even after the Germans had been Christianised.
Several competing etymologies
Etymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
for kobold have been suggested. In 1908, Otto Schrader traced the word to kuba-walda, meaning "the one who rules the house". According to this theory, the root of the word is chubisi, the Old High German
Old High German
The term Old High German refers to the earliest stage of the German language and it conventionally covers the period from around 500 to 1050. Coherent written texts do not appear until the second half of the 8th century, and some treat the period before 750 as 'prehistoric' and date the start of...
word for house, building, or hut, and the word akin to the root of the English cove. The suffix -old means "to rule". Classicist Ken Dowden has identified the kofewalt
Kofewalt
A kofewalt was a spirit in pagan German folklore that was thought to have power over a room of the home. The kofewalt may be a predecessor to the German kobold. The English form was the cofgod .-References:* Dowden, Ken . . London: Routledge. ISBN 0415120349....
, a spirit with powers over a single room, as the antecedent to the term kobold and to the creature itself. He has drawn parallels between the kobold and the Roman lares and penates and the Anglo-Saxon cofgodas
Cofgodas
A Cofgod was an household god in Anglo-Saxon paganism related to the German kobold and equivalent to the Roman penates. It is generally accepted that the English hob and Anglo-Scottish brownie are the modern survival of the cofgod.-References:* "", An Other Dictionary: Tribal English. Accessed 13...
, "room-gods". Linguist Paul Wexler has proposed yet another etymology, tracing kobold to the roots koben ("pigsty") and hold ("stall spirit").
Grimm has provided one of the earlier and more commonly accepted etymologies for kobold, tracing the word's origin through the Latin cobalus to the Greek koba'los, meaning "rogue
Rogue (vagrant)
A rogue is a vagrant person who wanders from place to place. Like a drifter, a rogue is an independent person who rejects conventional rules of society in favor of following their own personal goals and values....
". The change to the word-final -olt is a feature of the German language
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
used for monsters and supernatural beings. Variants of kobold appear as early as the 13th century. The words goblin and gobelin, rendered in Medieval Latin as gobelinus, may in fact derive from the word kobold or from kofewalt. Related terms occur in Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, such as kabout, kabot, and kabotermanneken. Citing this evidence, British antiquarian Charles Hardwick has argued that the house kobold and similar creatures, such as the Scottish bogie
Boggart
In Englishfolklore, a boggart is a household fairy which causes things to disappear, milk to sour, and dogs to go lame. Always malevolent, the boggart will follow its family wherever they flee...
, French goblin
Goblin
A goblin is a legendary evil or mischievous illiterate creature, a grotesquely evil or evil-like phantom.They are attributed with various abilities, temperaments and appearances depending on the story and country of origin. In some cases, goblins have been classified as constantly annoying little...
, and English Puck
Puck (mythology)
In English folklore, Puck is a mythological fairy or mischievous nature sprite. Puck is also a generalised personification of land spirits. In more recent times, the figure of Robin Goodfellow is identified as a puck.-Etymology:...
, all descend from the Greek kobaloi, creatures "whose sole delite consists in perplexing the human race, and evoking those harmless terrors that constantly hover round the minds of the timid." In keeping with Grimm's definition, the kobaloi were spirits invoked by rogues. Similarly, British writer Archibald Maclaren has suggested that kobold beliefs descend from the ancient Roman custom of worshipping lares
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
, household gods, and penates, gods of the house and its supplies.
Another class of kobold lives in underground places. Folklorists have proposed that the mine kobold derives from the beliefs of the ancient Germanic people. Scottish historical novelist Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
has suggested that the Proto-Norse based the kobolds on the short-statured Finns, Lapps, and Latvians who fled their invasions and sought shelter in northern European caves and mountains. There they put their skills at smithing to work and, in the beliefs of the proto-Norse, came to be seen as supernatural beings. These beliefs spread, becoming the kobold, the Germanic gnome
Gnome
A gnome is a diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature...
, the French goblin and the Scottish bogle
Bogle
A bogle, boggle or bogill is a British term for a ghost or folkloric being, used for a variety of related folkloric creatures including Shellycoats, Barguests, Brags, the Hedley Kow and even giants such as those associated with Cobb's Causey .The name is derived from the...
. In contrast, Humorists William Edmonstoune Aytoun
William Edmonstoune Aytoun
William Edmondstoune Aytoun FRSE was a Scottish lawyer and poet.Born in Edinburgh, he was the only son of Joan Keith and Roger Aytoun , a writer to the signet, and was related to Sir Robert Aytoun...
and Theodore Martin
Theodore Martin
Sir Theodore Martin KCB KCVO was a Scottish poet, biographer, and translator.-Biography:Martin was the son of James Martin, a solicitor in Edinburgh, where Theodore was born and educated at the Royal High School and University...
(writing as "Bon Gaultier
Bon Gaultier
Bon Gaultier was a nom de plume assumed by the writers William Edmonstoune Aytoun and Sir Theodore Martin.The humorous Bon Gaultier Ballads remained popular for a long time; originally contributed to a magazine, they appeared in book form in 1845....
") have proposed that the Norse themselves were the models for the mine kobold and similar creatures, such as dwarfs, goblins, and troll
Troll
A troll is a supernatural being in Norse mythology and Scandinavian folklore. In origin, the term troll was a generally negative synonym for a jötunn , a being in Norse mythology...
s; Norse miners and smiths "were small in their physical proportions, and usually had their stithies near the mouths of the mines among the hills." This gave rise to myths about small, subterranean creatures, and the stories spread across Europe "as extensively as the military migrations from the same places did".
German writer Heinrich Smidt
Heinrich Smidt
Heinrich Smidt was a German writer. He wrote novels and adventure stories about the sea, as well as the article "Die Klabautermann", about the German water sprite of the same name, in the German publication Seegemälde in 1828....
believed that the sea kobolds, or Klabautermann, entered German folklore via German sailors who had learned about them in England. However, historians David Kirby and Merja-Liisa Hinkkanen dispute this, claiming no evidence of such a belief in Britain. An alternate view connects the Klabautermann myths with the story of Saint Phocas
Saint Phocas
Saint Phocas, sometimes called Phocas the Gardener or Phocas of Sinope, is venerated as a martyr by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches...
of Sinope. As that story spread from the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
to the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
. Scholar Reinhard Buss instead sees the Klabautermann as an amalgamation of early and pre-Christian beliefs mixed with new creatures.
Characteristics
Kobolds are spirits and, as such, part of a spiritual realm. However, as with other European spirits, they often dwell among the living. Although kobold is the general term, tales often give names to individuals and classes of kobolds. The name Chim is particularly common, and other names found in stories include Chimmeken, King Goldemar, Heinzchen, Heinze, Himschen, Heinzelmann, HödekinHödekin
Hödekin is a kobold of German folklore. According to the legend recorded by folklorist Thomas Keightley in 1850, Hödekin always wore a felt hat down over his face; his name means "Little Hat". Hödekin lived with the bishop of Hildesheim and was a helpful sprite...
, Kurd Chimgen, Walther, and Wolterken. Local names for kobolds include Allerünken, Alraune, Galgenmännlein (in southern Germany), Glucksmännchen, Heinzelmännchen
Heinzelmännchen
The Heinzelmännchen are a race of creatures appearing in a tale connected with the city of Cologne in Germany.The little house gnomes are said to have done all the work of the citizens of Cologne during the night, so that the inhabitants of Cologne could be very lazy during the day...
(in Cologne), Hütchen, and Oaraunle. The Heinzelmännchen
Heinzelmännchen
The Heinzelmännchen are a race of creatures appearing in a tale connected with the city of Cologne in Germany.The little house gnomes are said to have done all the work of the citizens of Cologne during the night, so that the inhabitants of Cologne could be very lazy during the day...
are a class of kobolds from Cologne, and the Klabautermann
Klabautermann
A Klabautermann is a water kobold who assists sailors and fishermen on the Baltic and North Sea in their duties. He is a merry and diligent creature, with an expert understanding of most watercraft, and an unsupressable musical talent. He also rescues sailors washed overboard. The name comes from...
is a kobold from the beliefs of fishermen and sailors of the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
. Many of these names are modifications of common German given names, such as Heinrich (abbreviated to Heinze), Joachim, and Walther.
Kobolds may manifest as animals, fire, human beings, and objects. Fiery kobolds are also called drakes, draches, or puks. A tale from the Altmark
Altmark
The Altmark is a historic region in Germany, comprising the northern third of Saxony-Anhalt. As the initial territory of the Brandenburg margraves, it is sometimes referred to as the "Cradle of Prussia", as by Otto von Bismarck, a native from Schönhausen near Stendal.- Geography :The Altmark is...
, recorded by Anglo-Saxon scholar Benjamin Thorpe
Benjamin Thorpe
Benjamin Thorpe was an English scholar of Anglo-Saxon.-Biography:After studying for four years at Copenhagen University, under the Danish philologist Rasmus Christian Rask, he returned to England in 1830, and in 1832 published an English version of Caedmon's metrical paraphrase of portions of the...
in 1852, describes the kobold as "a fiery stripe with a broad head, which he usually shakes from one side to the other . . . ." A legend from the same period taken from Pechüle
Pechüle
Pechüle is an old village in Brandenburg, Germany, part of the village of Bardenitz, which itself belongs since 2003 to the administrative district of the town of Treuenbrietzen....
, near Luckenwald, says that the kobold flies through the air as a blue stripe and carries grain. "If a knife or a fire-steel be cast at him, he will burst, and must let fall what which he is carrying." Some legends say the fiery kobold enters and exits a house through the chimney. Legends dating to 1852 from western Uckermark
Uckermark
Uckermark is a Kreis in the northeastern part of Brandenburg, Germany. Neighboring districts are Barnim and Oberhavel, the districts Mecklenburgische Seenplatte and Vorpommern-Greifswald in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and to the east Poland . It is the largest district of Germany areawise...
ascribe both human and fiery features to the kobold; he wears a red jacket and cap and moves about the air as a fiery stripe. Such fire associations, along with the name drake, may point to a connection between kobold and dragon myths.
Kobolds who live in human homes are generally depicted as humanlike, dressed as peasants, and standing about as tall as a four-year-old child. A legend recorded by folklorist Joseph Snowe from a place called Alte Burg in 1839 tells of a creature "in the shape of a short, thick-set being, neither boy nor man, but akin to the condition of both, garbed in a party-coloured loose surcoat, and wearing a high-crowned hat with a broad brim on his diminutive head." The kobold Hödekin
Hödekin
Hödekin is a kobold of German folklore. According to the legend recorded by folklorist Thomas Keightley in 1850, Hödekin always wore a felt hat down over his face; his name means "Little Hat". Hödekin lived with the bishop of Hildesheim and was a helpful sprite...
(also known as Hüdekin and Hütchen) of Hildesheim
Hildesheim
Hildesheim is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located in the district of Hildesheim, about 30 km southeast of Hanover on the banks of the Innerste river, which is a small tributary of the Leine river...
wore a little hat down over his face (Hödekin means "little hat"). Another type of kobold known as the Hütchen is said to be 0.3–1 m (1–3 ft) tall, with red hair and beard, and clad in red or green clothing and a red hat and may even be blind. Yet other tales describe kobolds appearing as herdsmen looking for work and little, wrinkled old men in pointed hoods. Some kobolds resemble small children. According to dramatist and novelist X. B. Saintine
X. B. Saintine
Xavier Boniface Saintine was a French dramatist and novelist. He was born Joseph Xavier Boniface in Paris in 1798. In 1823, he produced a volume of poetry in the manner of the Romanticists, entitled Poèmes, odes, épîtres...
, kobolds are the spirits of dead children and often appear with a knife that represents the means by which they were put to death. Heinzelmann, a kobold from the folklore of Hudermühlen Castle
Hodenhagen
Hodenhagen is a municipality in the district of Heidekreis, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The town was once the site of Hudemühlen Castle, which is now completely destroyed. The castle was famous as the home of the kobold Hinzelmann. The site of another medieval castle, Hodenhagen Castle on the River...
in the region of Lüneburg
Lüneburg
Lüneburg is a town in the German state of Lower Saxony. It is located about southeast of fellow Hanseatic city Hamburg. It is part of the Hamburg Metropolitan Region, and one of Hamburg's inner suburbs...
, appeared as a beautiful boy with blond, curly hair to his shoulders and dressed in a red silk coat. His voice was "soft and tender like that of a boy or maiden."
Legends variously describe mine kobolds as 0.6 metre-tall (2-ft) old men dressed like miners to short, bent creatures with ugly features, including, in some tales, black skin. In 1820, Spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten
Emma Hardinge Britten
Emma Hardinge Britten is known for her work as an advocate for the early Modern Spiritualist Movement. Due to the publication of her speeches and writing on the spiritual movement, and an incomplete autobiography which was edited by her sister, much of Emma’s life and work is publicly recorded....
recorded a description of mine kobolds from a Madame Kalodzy, who stayed with peasants named Dorothea and Michael Engelbrecht:
We were about to sit down to tea when Mdlle. Gronin called our attention to the steady light, round, and about the size of a cheese plate, which appeared suddenly on the wall of the little garden directly opposite the door of the hut in which we sat.
Before any of us could rise to examine it, four more lights appeared almost simultaneously, about the same shape, and varying only in size. Surrounding each one was the dim outline of a small human figure, black and grotesque, more like a little image carved out of black shining wood, than anything else I can liken them to. Dorothea kissed her hands to these dreadful little shapes, and Michael bowed with great reverence. As for me and my companions, we were so awe-struck yet amused at these comical shapes, that we could not move or speak until they themselves seemed to flit about in a sort of wavering dance, and then vanish, one by one.
The same informant claimed to later have seen the kobolds first-hand. She described them as "diminutive black dwarfs about two or three feet in height, and at that part which in the human being is occupied by the heart, they carry the round luminous circle first described, an appearance which is much more frequently seen than the little black men themselves." The Heinzelmännchen
Heinzelmännchen
The Heinzelmännchen are a race of creatures appearing in a tale connected with the city of Cologne in Germany.The little house gnomes are said to have done all the work of the citizens of Cologne during the night, so that the inhabitants of Cologne could be very lazy during the day...
of Cologne resemble short, naked men, and the Klabautermann
Klabautermann
A Klabautermann is a water kobold who assists sailors and fishermen on the Baltic and North Sea in their duties. He is a merry and diligent creature, with an expert understanding of most watercraft, and an unsupressable musical talent. He also rescues sailors washed overboard. The name comes from...
, a kobold from the beliefs of fishermen and sailors of the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
, typically appears as a small, pipe-smoking humanlike figure wearing a yellow nightcap-style sailor's hat and a red or grey jacket.
Other kobolds appear as animals. Folklorist D. L. Ashliman
D. L. Ashliman
D. L. Ashliman is an American folklorist and writer. He maintains a website on folk and fairy tales through the University of Pittsburgh.-Works:*Fairy Lore: A Handbook. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2005....
has reported kobolds appearing as wet cats and hens, and Arrowsmith and Moorse mention kobolds in the shape of bats, casts, roosters, snakes, and worms. Thorpe has recorded that the people of Altmark believed that kobolds appeared as black cats while walking the earth. The kobold Heinzelmann could appear as a black marten
Marten
The martens constitute the genus Martes within the subfamily Mustelinae, in family Mustelidae.-Description:Martens are slender, agile animals, adapted to living in taigas, and are found in coniferous and northern deciduous forests across the northern hemisphere. They have bushy tails, and large...
and a large snake.
Most often, kobolds remain completely invisible. Although King Goldemar
King Goldemar
King Goldemar is a dwarf or kobold from Germanic mythology and folklore. By the Middle Ages, Goldemar had become the king of the dwarfs in German belief. In the fairy tale "The Friendship of the Dwarfs", the author Villamaria depicts Goldemar as a "mighty dwarf king" with a queen and a court of...
(or Goldmar), a famous kobold from Castle Hardenstein
Castle Hardenstein
Hardenstein Castle is a ruined castle in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The remains lie east of Herbede on the Ruhr River, surrounded by mountains, and are not easily accessible. Nearby ruins show that the castle was once part of an important mining centre, probably dating to the Middle Ages;...
, had hands "thin like those of a frog, cold and soft to the feel", he never showed himself. The master of Hundermühlen Castle, where Heinzelmann lived, convinced the kobold to let him touch him one night. The kobold's fingers were childlike, and his face was like a skull, without body heat. One legend tells of a female servant taking a fancy to her house's kobold and asking to see him. The kobold refuses, claiming that to look upon him would be terrifying. Undeterred, the maid insists, and the kobold tells her to meet him later—and to bring along a pail of cold water. The kobold waits for the maid, nude and with a butcher knife in his back. The maid faints at the sight, and the kobold wakes her with the cold water. In one variant, the maid sees a dead baby floating in a cask full of blood; years before, the woman had born a bastard child, killed it, and hidden it in such a cask. Legends tell of those who try to trick a kobold into showing itself being punished for the misdeed. For example, Heinzelmann tricked a nobleman into thinking that the kobold was hiding in a jug. When the nobleman covered the jug's mouth to trap the creature, the kobold chided him:
If I had not heard long ago from other people that you were a fool, I might now have known it of myself, since you thought I was sitting in an empty jug, and went to cover it up with your hand, as if you had me caught. I don't think you worth the trouble, or I would have given you, long since, such a lesson, that you should remember me long enough. But before long you will get a slight ducking.
When a man threw ashes and tares about to try to see King Goldemar's footprints, the kobold cut him to pieces, put him on a spit, roasted him, boiled his legs and head, and ate him. The Heinzelmänchen of Cologne marched from the city and sailed away when a tailor's wife strewed peas on the stairs to trip them so she could see them. In 1850, Keightley noted that the Heinzelmänchen "[had] totally disappeared, as has been everywhere the case, owing to the curiosity of people, which has at all times been the destruction of so much of what was beautiful in the world."
House spirits
House kobolds usually live in the hearth area of a house, although some tales place them in less frequented parts of the home, in the woodhouse, in barns and stables, or in the beer cellar of an inn. At night, such kobolds do chores that the human occupants neglected to finish before bedtime: They chase away pests, clean the stables, feed and groom the cattle and horses, scrub the dishes and pots, and sweep the kitchen. Other kobolds help tradespeople and shopkeepers. A Cologne legend recorded by Keightley claims that bakers in the city in the early 19th century never needed hired help because, each night, the kobolds known as Heinzelmänchen made as much bread as a baker could need. Similarly, bieresal, kobolds who live in the beer cellars of inns, bring beer into the house, clean the tables, and wash the bottles and glasses. This association between kobolds and work gave rise to a saying current in 19th-century Germany that a woman who worked quickly "had the kobold".
A kobold can bring wealth to his household in the form of grain and gold. A legend from Saterland
Saterland
Saterland is a municipality in the district of Cloppenburg, in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is situated between the cities of Leer, Cloppenburg, and Oldenburg...
and East Friesland, recorded by Thorpe in 1852, tells of a kobold called the Alrûn. Despite standing only about a foot tall, the creature could carry a load of rye in his mouth for the people with whom he lived and did so daily as long as he received a meal of biscuits and milk. The saying to have an Alrûn in one's pocket means "to have luck at play". However, kobold gifts may be stolen from the neighbours; accordingly, some legends say that gifts from a kobold are demonic or evil. Nevertheless, peasants often welcome this trickery and feed their kobold in the hopes that it continue bringing its gifts. A family coming into unexplained wealth was often attributed to a new kobold moving into the house.
Kobolds bring good luck and help their hosts as long as the hosts take care of them. The kobold Heinzelmann found things that had been lost. He had a rhyme he liked to sing: "If thou here wilt let me stay, / Good luck shalt thou have alway; / But if hence thou wilt me chase, / Luck will ne'er come near the place." Three famous kobolds, King Goldemar, Heinzelmann, and Hödekin, all gave warnings about danger to the owners of the home in which they lived. Heinzelmann once warned a colonel to be careful on his daily hunt. The man ignored the advice, only to have his gun backfire and shoot off his thumb. Heinzelman appeared to him and said, "See, now, you have got what I warned you of! If you had refrained from shooting this time, this mischance would not have befallen you." The kobold Hödekin, who lived with the bishop of Hildesheim in the 12th century, once warned the bishop of a murder. When the bishop acted on the information, he was able to take over the murderer's lands and add them to his bishopric.
In return, the family must leave a portion of their supper (or beer, for the bierasal) to the spirit and must treat the kobold with respect, never mocking or laughing at the creature. A kobold expects to be fed in the same place at the same time each day, or in the case of the Hütchen, once a week and on holidays. One tradition says that their favourite food is grits or water-gruel. Tales tell of kobolds with their own rooms; the kobold Heinzelmann had his own chamber at the castle, complete with furnishings. and King Goldemar was said to sleep in the same bed with Neveling von Hardenberg. He demanded a place at the table and a stall for his horses. Keightley relates that maids who leave the employ of a certain household must warn their successor to treat the house kobold well.
Legends tell of slighted kobolds becoming quite malevolent and vengeful, afflicting errant hosts with supernatural diseases, disfigurements, and injuries. Their pranks range from beating the servants to murdering those who insult them. One holyman visited the home of Heinzelmann and refused to accept the kobold's protests that he was a Christian. Heinzelmann threatened him, and the nobleman fled. Another nobleman refused to drink to the kobold's honour, which prompted Heinzelmann to drag the man to the ground and choke him near to death. When a kitchen servant got dirt on the kobold Hödekin and sprayed him with water each time he appeared, Hödekin asked that the boy be punished, but the steward dismissed the behaviour as a childish prank. Hodeken waited for the servant to go to sleep and then strangled him, tore him limb from limb, and threw him in a pot over the fire. The head cook rebuked the kobold for the murder, so Hodeken squeezed toad blood onto the meat being prepared for the bishop. The cook chastised the spirit for this behaviour, so Hodeken threw him over the drawbridge into the moat. According to Lüthi, these abilities reflect the fear of the people who believe in them. Thomas Keightley has attributed the feats of kobolds to "ventriloquism and the contrivances of servants and others."
Archibald Maclaren has attributed kobold behaviour to the virtue of the homeowners; a virtuous house has a productive and helpful kobold; a vice-filled one has a malicious and mischievous pest. If the hosts give up those things to which the kobold objects, the spirit ceases its annoying behaviour. Heinzelmann punished vices; for example, when the secretary of Hudenmühlen was sleeping with the chamber maid, the kobold interrupted a sexual encounter and hit the secretary with a broom handle. King Goldemar revealed the secret transgressions of clergymen, much to their chagrin. Joseph Snowe has related the tale of a kobold at Alte Burg: When two students slept in the mill in which the creature lived, one of them ate the offering of food the miller had left the kobold. The student who had left the meal alone felt the kobold's touch as "gentle and soothing", but the one who had eaten its food felt that "the fingers of the hand were pointed with poisoned arrowheads, or fanged with fire." Even friendly kobolds are rarely completely good, and house kobolds may do mischief for no particular reason. They hide things, push people over when they bend to pick something up, and make noise at night to keep people awake. The kobold Hödekin of Hildesheim roamed the walls of the castle at night, forcing the watch to be constantly vigilant. A kobold in a fishermen's house in Köpenick on the Wendish Spree reportedly moved sleeping fishermen so that their heads and toes lined up. King Goldemar enjoyed strumming the harp and playing dice. One of Heinzelmann's pranks was to pinch drunken men to make them start fights with their companions. Heinzelmann liked his lord's two daughters and scared away their suitors so that the women never married.
Folktales tell of people trying to rid themselves of mischievous kobolds. In one tale, a man with a kobold-haunted barn puts all the straw onto a cart, burns the barn down, and sets off to start anew. As he rides away, he looks back and sees the kobold sitting behind him. "It was high time that we got out!" it says. A similar tale from Köpenick tells of a man trying to move out of a kobold-infested house. He sees the kobold preparing to move too and realises that he cannot rid himself of the creature. The lord of the Hundermühlen Castle disliked Heinzelmann and tried to escape him by taking up residence with his family and retinue elsewhere. Nevertheless, the invisible kobold travelled along with them as a white feather, which they discovered when they stayed at an inn.
Why do you retire from me? I can easily follow you anywhere, and be where you are. It is much better for you to return to your own estate, and not be quitting it on my account. You see well that if I wished it I could take away all you have, but I am not inclined to do so.
Exorcism
Exorcism
Exorcism is the religious practice of evicting demons or other spiritual entities from a person or place which they are believed to have possessed...
by a Christian priest works in some tales; the bishop of Hildesheim managed to exorcise Hödekin from the castle. Even this method is not fool-proof, however; when an exorcist tried to drive away Heinzelmann, the kobold tore up the priest's holy book, strewed it about the room, attacked the exorcist, and chased him away. Insulting a kobold may drive it away, but not without a curse; when someone tried to see his true form, Goldemar left the home and vowed that the house would now be as unlucky as it had been fortunate under his care. Actions a Hütchen considers insulting include giving him clothing, rushing him in his work, burning the house down, and leaving a wagon wheel in front of it.
Mine spirits
Mediæval European miners believed in underground spirits. The kobold filled this role in German folklore and is similar to other creatures of the type, such as the English bluecapBluecap
A bluecap or blue cap is a mythical fairy or ghost in English folklore. They inhabit mines and appear as small blue flames. If miners treat them with respect, the bluecaps lead them to rich deposits of minerals. Like knockers or kobolds, bluecaps can also forewarn miners of cave-ins. They are...
, Cornish knocker and the Welsh coblynau
Coblynau
Coblynau are mythical gnome-like creatures that are said to haunt the mines and quarries of Wales. They are said to be half a yard tall, and very ugly. Like Knockers, they are dressed in miniature mining outfits...
. Stories of subterranean kobolds were common in Germany by the 16th century. Superstitious miners believed the creatures to be expert miners and metalworkers who could be heard constantly drilling, hammering, and shoveling. Some stories claim that the kobolds live in the rock, just as human beings live in the air.
Legends often paint underground kobolds as evil creatures. In medieval mining towns, people prayed for protection from them. They were blamed for the accidents, cave-ins, and rock slides that plagued human miners. One favoured kobold prank was to fool miners into taking worthless ore. For example, 16th-century miners sometimes encountered what looked to be rich veins of copper or silver, but which, when smelted, proved to be little more than a pollutant and could even be poisonous. These ores caused a burning sensation to those who handled them. Miners tried to appease the kobolds with offerings of gold and silver and by insisting that fellow miners treat them respectfully. Nevertheless, some stories claim that kobolds only returned such kindness with more poisonous ores. Miners called these ores cobalt after the creatures from whom they were thought to come. In 1735, Swedish chemist Georg Brandt
Georg Brandt
-External links:** by Uno Boklund in: Charles C. Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography , vol. 2, pages 421-422....
isolated a substance from such ores and named it cobalt rex. In 1780, scientists showed that this was in fact a new element, which they named cobalt
Cobalt
Cobalt is a chemical element with symbol Co and atomic number 27. It is found naturally only in chemically combined form. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal....
.
Tales from other parts of Germany make mine kobolds beneficial creatures, at least if they are treated respectfully. Nineteenth-century miners in Bohemia and Hungary reported hearing knocking in the mines. They interpreted such noises as warnings from the kobolds to not go in that direction. Other miners claimed that the knocks indicated where veins of metal could be found: the more knocks, the richer the vein. In 1884, spiritualist Emma Hardinge Britten reported a story from a Madame Kalodzy, who claimed to have heard mine kobolds while visiting a peasant named Michael Engelbrecht: "On the three first days after our arrival, we only heard a few dull knocks, sounding in and about the mouth of the mine, as if produced by some vibrations or very distant blows. . . ." Kobolds are sometimes indifferent to human miners so long as they are left alone. They are content to simply mine ore themselves, collect it, and haul it away by windlass
Windlass
The windlass is an apparatus for moving heavy weights. Typically, a windlass consists of a horizontal cylinder , which is rotated by the turn of a crank or belt...
.
Water spirits
Klabautermann
A Klabautermann is a water kobold who assists sailors and fishermen on the Baltic and North Sea in their duties. He is a merry and diligent creature, with an expert understanding of most watercraft, and an unsupressable musical talent. He also rescues sailors washed overboard. The name comes from...
(also spelt Klaboterman and Klabotermann) is a creature from the beliefs of fishermen and sailors of Germany's north coast, the Netherlands, and the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
, and may represent a third type of kobold or possibly a different spirit that has merged with kobold traditions. Belief in the Klabautermann dates to at least the 1770s. According to these traditions, Klabautermanns live on ships and are generally beneficial to the crew. For example, a Klabautermann will pump water from the hold, arrange cargo, and hammer at holes until they can be repaired. The creatures are thought to be especially useful in times of danger, preventing the ship from sinking. The Klabautermann is associated with the wood of the ship on which it lives. It enters the ship via the wood used to build it, and it may appear as a ship's carpenter.
The Klabautermann's benevolent behaviour lasts as long as the crew and captain treat the creature respectfully. A Klabautermann will not leave its ship until it is on the verge of sinking. To this end, superstitious sailors in the 19th century demanded that others pay the Klabautermann respect. Ellett has recorded one rumour that a crew even threw its captain overboard for denying the existence of the ship's Klabautermann. Heinrich Heine has reported that one captain created a place for his ship's Klabautermann in his cabin and that the captain offered the spirit the best food and drink he had to offer. Klabautermanns are easily angered. Their ire manifests in pranks such as tangling ropes and laughing at sailors who shirk their chores.
The sight of a Klabautermann is an ill omen, and in the 19th century, it was the most feared sight among sailors. According to one tradition, they only appear to those about to die. Another story recorded by Ellett claims that the Klabautermann only shows itself if the ship is doomed to sink.
In media
German writers have long borrowed from German folklore and fairy lore for both poetry and prose. Narrative versions of folktales and fairy tales are common, and kobolds are the subject of several such tales. Kobolds appear in a number of other works. For example, in his BibleLuther Bible
The Luther Bible is a German Bible translation by Martin Luther, first printed with both testaments in 1534. This translation became a force in shaping the Modern High German language. The project absorbed Luther's later years. The new translation was very widely disseminated thanks to the printing...
, Martin Luther
Martin Luther
Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
translates the Hebrew lilith
Lilith
Lilith is a character in Jewish mythology, found earliest in the Babylonian Talmud, who is generally thought to be related to a class of female demons Līlīṯu in Mesopotamian texts. However, Lowell K. Handy notes, "Very little information has been found relating to the Akkadian and Babylonian view...
in Isaiah
Book of Isaiah
The Book of Isaiah is the first of the Latter Prophets in the Hebrew Bible, preceding the books of Ezekiel, Jeremiah and the Book of the Twelve...
34:14 as kobold. In Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
's Faust
Goethe's Faust
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust is a tragic play in two parts: and . Although written as a closet drama, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages...
, the kobold represents the Greek element of earth:
- Salamander shall kindle,
- Writhe nymph of the wave,
- In air sylph shall dwindle,
- And Kobold shall slave.
- Who doth ignore
- The primal Four,
- Nor knows aright
- Their use and might,
- O'er spirits will he
- Ne'er master be.
Similarly, a kobold is musically depicted in Edvard Grieg
Edvard Grieg
Edvard Hagerup Grieg was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is best known for his Piano Concerto in A minor, for his incidental music to Henrik Ibsen's play Peer Gynt , and for his collection of piano miniatures Lyric Pieces.-Biography:Edvard Hagerup Grieg was born in...
's lyric piece, opus 71, number 3. Likewise, kobold characters such as Pittiplatsch
Pittiplatsch
Pittiplatsch, also known as Pitti for short, is a German fictional kobold character who was very famous in East Germany , especially as a puppet character on children's television...
and Pumuckl
Pumuckl
Pumuckl is a Kobold from a German radio play series for children. He is a descendant of the Klabautermänner.He is invisible to people around him except for the master carpenter Eder with whom Pumuckl lives....
appear in German popular culture. Der Kobold, Op. 3, is also Opera in Three Acts with text and music by Siegfried Wagner
Siegfried Wagner
Siegfried Wagner was a German composer and conductor, the son of Richard Wagner. He was an opera composer and the artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival from 1908 to 1930.-Life:...
; his third opera and it was completed in 1903.
Kobolds are referenced in the Larry Niven
Larry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...
novel Protector
Protector (novel)
Protector is a 1973 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe. It was nominated for the Hugo in 1974, and placed fourth in the annual Locus poll for that year....
. Jack Brennan, after becoming a super-intelligent humanoid, creates an artificial world that he calls Kobold in the outer reaches of the Solar System
Solar System
The Solar System consists of the Sun and the astronomical objects gravitationally bound in orbit around it, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.6 billion years ago. The vast majority of the system's mass is in the Sun...
. The name is a reference to Jack Brennan's dual roles as a trickster (using his superior intellect and technology to baffle humans on Earth) and as a self-appointed protector of humanity.
The Kobold Heinzelmann is an important character in the novel American Gods
American Gods
American Gods is a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novel by Neil Gaiman. The novel is a blend of Americana, fantasy, and various strands of ancient and modern mythology, all centering on a mysterious and taciturn protagonist, Shadow. It is Gaiman's fourth prose novel, being preceded by Good Omens ,...
by Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman
Neil Richard Gaiman born 10 November 1960)is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book...
.