How Gnomes Have Evolved

When discussing a short history of the gnomes, one must take into account their ubiquity in all our lives. For the simple fact of the matter is, that as long as humans have been around, as a species we've always lived with gnomes, in whatever incarnation they appeared in. The Vikings called them trolls, the Anglo-Saxons called them goblins or elves, the Arabians called them djinn and the ancient Chinese referred to them as spirits of rock, earth, water and the wind. Gnomes have always been a part of the human condition and have always hovered at the periphery of the unknown and the borderlands of our imaginations, flitting halfway between reality and illusion.

Gnomes have been known to be highly mobile

As anyone who has seen the movie Amelie will attest, gnomes are highly mobile, but secretive creatures. They tend to sneak out when the homeowner is fast asleep and go on joyrides throughout the night, romps through the fields and forests behind your house as well as all-expenses paid trips around the world from whence they will proceed to send back highly humorous and imaginative postcards from tourist destinations worldwide.

A short history of the gnomes would also be incomplete if it didn't reference the greatest gnome of all, Santa Claus, who flies through the midwinter night on his reindeer-led sleigh to bring presents to all the good children and coals and dusty onions for the bad. Santa also has an army of gnomes (or elves as some uncouth modernists call them) who work in his toy factory up at the North Pole churning out thousands of the latest toys. Santa's gnome agents have also set up highly lucrative contracts with some of the world's largest toy-makers and distributors to assure that they are producing toys which kids love all over the world.

How they came to be scary

Let us also not forget that gnomes have also been considered scary by many cultures. Or, rather than scary, simply mischievous fey folk who are looking for pacification and a bit of fun at the expense of a witless individual. This is why people leave cookies and milk out for the spirits of the earth (really gnomes) in Iceland and other Scandinavian countries.

Gnomes have also been known as elves and were thought to be the cause of the mysterious and painful stitches that we get in our sides when we run too fast. People living in the middle ages knew that this was not just some simple physics and a quirk of our anatomy, but they understood readily that gnomish archers were waiting diligently in the sidelines to shoot us with their malicious stings and arrows and hinder our daily activities as much as they could, for the sake of fun.

All gnomes draw their power from the scariest gnome of all - Loki - that mischievous delinquent who appears in many forms and plays many pranks. Loki is considered the greatest gnome of all and the cause of all things silly, funny and trollish throughout the world.

Copyright Campaign for Gnomal Ascendancy 2009