Orcs, Elves, and the One Cliché to Rule Them All

[Reverend Zombie]

daesthai said:

I was under the impression that Tolkien's elves came from a Finnish background and his love of The Kalevala.

From what I know, the Kalevala (& Tolkien's learning Finnish in order to read it) was certainly the inspiration for the language of the elves, and the stories in it served as inspiration for Tolkien's stories (just as Beowulf and various other sources did).

But I do not know if there are actually elves in the Kalevala. Their absence from it would preclude it as source of inspiration for the idea of elves as such.