Today I took part in a remote conference organised by Matthias Egeler and Jón Jónsson and hosted jointly by the Institute for Scandinavian Studies at Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main and the University of Iceland in Strandir. Entitled ‘Living with Elves and Fairies’, the conference marked the publication of Egeler and Jónsson’s publication of a treatise on elves by Ólafur Sveinsson and featured contributions from leading scholars of the social supernatural including Jeremy Harte, Terry Gunnell, Tommy Kuusela, Simon Young and Diane Purkiss.

My own contribution to the conference was a paper on laumės, the supernatural women of Baltic folklore who are perhaps the closest thing that Lithuania and Latvia have to fairies. Entitled ‘Laumės as Mirrors of Women’s Work, Enforcers of Taboos and Deity-substitutes in Baltic Folklore’, the paper examined the role of laumės within the world of women in traditional Baltic society and their presence in the landscape and place-names in Lithuania and Latvia.