General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Elves

Elves (Danish: Nisser) is a Danish-language horror-fantasy television series released on Netflix on November 28, 2021, in which a family spending Christmas on a remote Danish island discovers that the woods are inhabited by real, monstrous elves.¹^•² The Danish title Nisser refers to the small elf-like household creatures of Nordic folklore, a word sometimes translated into English as "gnomes" or "goblins".³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Nisser (Danish), released internationally as Elves⁴
Premiere	November 28, 2021, on Netflix; all six episodes released the same day⁵
Format	One season of six episodes of roughly 24 to 25 minutes each⁶^•⁷
Creator	Stefan Jaworski, who wrote the series; directed by Roni Ezra¹
Production	Miso Film, produced by Elise H. Lund; shot in the greater Copenhagen area¹
Status	Ended after one season⁵
Reception	IMDb 5.6/10 from about 5,500 votes; Rotten Tomatoes 44% Tomatometer and 30% Popcornmeter⁸^•²

Spoilers

Premise

Hoping to bond again during the Christmas holiday, a family of four journeys to an out-of-the-way island in the Danish archipelago, where they discover that it is run by people belonging to a deeply devout community who coexist with savage beings inhabiting the forest, which turn out to be elves. When the daughter, Josefine, finds an injured baby elf and brings it home, she disrupts that balance and sets off a life-or-death struggle for faith, family, and survival.¹^•⁹

The islanders keep the creatures contained behind a fenced-off section of forest and appease them with animal sacrifices. According to the Guardian's review, the island's backstory involves a lumber mill whose arrival changed the land and its balance, an accident, and the mill's closure, after which part of the forest was fenced off. Once the fence is breached, the elves begin to roam the island freely.³^•¹⁰

Cast and characters

The cast includes Sonja Sofie Engberg Steen as Josefine, Milo Campanale as her brother Kasper, Lila Nobel as mother Charlotte, Peder Thomas Pedersen as father Mads, Vivelill Søgaard Holm as Liv, a local teenager who becomes Kasper's love interest, Ann Eleonora Jørgensen as Karen, the island's leader, Rasmus Hammerich as Møller, and Lukas Løkken.¹^•¹¹

Production

Netflix announced the series on October 6, 2020, as a Danish Netflix original from the creators and executive producers behind The Rain. It is based on an original idea by Jannik Tai Mosholt and Christian Potalivo, who served as executive producers together with Peter Bose and Jonas Allen of Miso Film, a Copenhagen-based production company founded in 2004.¹ Peter Bose, Miso Film's CEO, described the show as "a Christmas horror show exploring the premise 'What if Elves were real and dangerous?'".¹

The series was shot entirely in the greater area of Copenhagen, with production beginning shortly before the October 2020 announcement.¹

Release and reception

All six episodes were released on Netflix on November 28, 2021, in most markets, with some regions receiving the series on November 29.⁵^•¹² The series carries a TV-14 rating in the United States and a 15 certificate in the United Kingdom.²^•⁵

On IMDb the series holds a 5.6/10 rating from about 5,500 votes, with individual episode ratings declining from 6.2 for the premiere to 5.8 for the finale.⁸ Rotten Tomatoes reports a 44% average Tomatometer from nine critics and a 30% Popcornmeter audience score.²

Critical response. The Danish film magazine Ekko called the series an effectively creepy Christmas calendar with inspiration from Gremlins and Jurassic Park, praising the convincing creature design and the performances of Rasmus Hammerich and Ann Eleonora Jørgensen while criticizing the dialogue.⁷ The Guardian's Lucy Mangan found the elves themselves effective, "rising off the forest floor, made of rasping bark and creaking malevolence", but judged the human characters thinly drawn and the plot's environmental message familiar, concluding that the short episode length of under half an hour each kept the series watchable.³ Common Sense Media noted that the thriller builds suspense without constant gratuitous violence but relies on clichéd gender roles.¹³

The nisse folklore behind the title

Nisser, according to Nordic folklore, are tiny beings resembling elves that dwell unseen within homes and barns, becoming especially lively at Christmastime.¹⁴ The traditional Danish nisse resembles what Americans would recognize as a gnome, complete with a little red hat, a figure far gentler than the murderous woodland beings of the series.³ Netflix's marketing positioned the show as transforming these local myths, which it described as having great resonance in the Nordic region, into a modern Christmas story with a touch of horror.¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Unscripted, reality, and web-native series › Web-native and streaming-original series › Genre web series: horror, thriller, science fiction, and mystery

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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