A fantastical history of fairies

What do you picture when you imagine a fairy? Most probably a childlike creature with wings, perhaps perched on a flower. But this is a far more modern image than we might think. As Matthias Eagler explains to Lauren Good in this episode of the History Extra podcast, fairies didn't get their wings until the 1780s, and long before that they were viewed, along with their elven counterparts, as much more human. than other.

Matthias traces the history of how we've perceived these creatures and why these perceptions can reveal so much about the society that dreamt them up. Hello Matthias, thank you so much for joining me today. Hello, Lauren. It's great to be here and thank you very much for your interest in my work on that most obscure of topics of fairies. Most of those listening I'm sure will picture these elves and fairies

as lovely, almost childlike creatures. But as your book points out, they haven't always been like this, have they? Indeed, they have not. If you read traditional stories from 19th century Iceland, their fairies are almost impossible to distinguish from human beings. So the typical way how an encounter is described is that person X meets a person on the road, assumes

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