Hunter Baron ’27

Goblins: Projections of the Human Obsession with Morality

Goblins in storytelling are a product of humanity’s preoccupation with moral concepts of good and evil. Throughout folklore, goblins played many roles: from mischievous thieves, to house servants, to creatures that could bring good fortune. While many descriptions of goblins in folklore are similar, there is an array of diversity in their classifications from culture to culture. Rigid Christian depictions of goblins, however, show them to be solely antagonistic creatures. These depictions have been picked up by popular fiction authors, shaping modern ideas of what goblins are, and solidifying them as villains in the battle between good and evil.

Goblins have a range of classification within folklore from culture to culture. Alicia Klepis describes the creature in her book entitled Goblins by stating, “While scholars often describe goblins as evil fairies, these creatures come in many forms. They range from relatively harmless hobgoblins to more violent, truly nasty creatures…” (Klepis 10). Goblins originated from folktales from France in the 14th century, with the Anglo-Norman “Gobelin.” Stories of goblins began to make their way throughout Europe, from Scandinavia to the British Isles. When the native Celts were having their land colonized, they referred to the invaders as “Robin Goblins” (Shaijan 7). This term had evolved into hobgoblin over time, and was eventually shortened to “goblin”. The term goblin in these parts of Europe was used to describe ugly, short, unprincipled fairies. Many European stories showed goblins to be mischievous thieves with the power to shapeshift. Some stories depicted goblins as house servants with behaviors that could range from insufferable to helpful. Annliya Shaijan is an assistant professor at University of Calicut with multiple publications that analyze literature, including her article: “Goblin Mythology: A Brief Study of the Archetype, Tracing the Explications in English Literature”. In this article, the more Christian depiction of goblins is shown as it explains, “Their physical descriptions reflect on the ideas closer to imps and devils than fairies. These creatures were closer to or on the border of being demonic. According to Briggs, the influence of Protestant belief edged the goblins into the category of demons, and he directly equated them with the imps from Hell.” (Shaijan 9) The physical appearances of goblins throughout folklore was seen to represent something demonic for those belonging to Christian denominations, and it affected Christian-influenced stories of goblins negatively. While many representations of goblins within folklore are similar, there is not a concrete portrayal of them.

Myths and fables of goblins were also circulating within Asian countries, including India, Korea and Japan. The Korean classification of goblins shows hints of religious influence as they act as karmic judges of good and bad people. Shaijan’s article touches on Korean goblins by stating that, “…the traditional folk religions influenced the Asian goblin tales. Korean goblin lore considered goblins as spirits of wicked people trapped in purgatory. These spirits wander the world causing hardship for people.” (8) Korean goblins (or doggabi/dokkaebi) would cause mischief to punish evil people, and would bring good fortune to good people with magical mallets that could turn things into gold. While some Korean goblins stuck to the ugly narrative, others had a cuter appearance, leaving room for ambiguity in Korean folklore. The Korean version of goblins show hints of the human fascination with morality, as the goblins would judge the character of those they come across, and treat them according to whether they were deemed as good or bad people.

Christian influences imposed a more antagonistic depiction of goblins in European folklore, notably seen in the Greek legend of the kalikantzaroi. Orthodox Christian influences made use of the kalikantzaroi legend to marginalize people born on the same day as Christ, perpetuating moral themes of impurity versus purity. This evolution of the legend of the kalikantzaroi is best describe in Professor Evangelos Avdikos’s article entitled “Differentiating Worldview: Kalikantzaroi (Goblin)-Stories, Cyclical Time and Orthodox Christian Doctrine”. The kalikantzaroi were deities from the underworld that would come up to the Earth during the Greek pagan winter solstice rituals, that are now known as the Twelve Days of Christmas, to celebrate the transition from long nights (darkness) to longer days (light). One of the original stories of the kalikantzaroi (before the effects of Orthodox Christian influence) had them attempting to cut a tree that upholds the Earth within the twelve day period, with the tree symbolizing the sun (Avdikos 189). Once they would leave after twelve days, the Earth would recover and daytime would be longer, until winter came again leading up to the return of the kalikantzaroi. Rituals for the Twelve Days of Christmas would include people disguising themselves as goblins to engage in acts that they wouldn’t normally commit as their normal selves, ranging from giving gifts to loved ones to getting revenge on love interests for being rejected by them. This range of behaviors of people in kalikantzaroi disguises shows ambiguity within the characterization of Greek goblins in their early origins. The stories of kalikantzaroi were later influenced by the Orthodox Christian population on the island of Naxos. The kalikantzaroi in Orthodox Christian stories were creatures that lived further away from the social spaces of Naxos rather than in the underworld, and they would come around Christmas time to tease people for their belief in the birth of Jesus Christ. The use of the Orthodox Christian kalikantzaroi legend marginalized people who were born on the same day as Christ, as it was impure for someone to take away attention from Christ on his birthday. In Evangelos Avdikos’s article, he says that, “Christ, doctrinally, is the one and only child, which means that any other birth on his birthday would negate the theological doctrine. But when births occur, the safest way of reinstating Christ’s exclusive hegemony over birth itself… is to classify all who are born on this day in the category of kalikantzaroi/goblins. They are marginalized, thus constituting the pole of impure otherness, which in the end glorifies and reinforces the pole of purity and religious orthodoxy.” (198) Those with the same birthday as Christ would be othered as impure, and according to legend, they would turn into goblins on Christmas Eve/Day to give the day back to Christ. This story led to violence against those who were thought to be unholy during the Twelve Days of Christmas, leaving victims with bodily infirmities, and marginalizing disabled people as symbols of anti-Christian attitude. Advikos tells a story of a woman who saw what she understood to be a goblin, and stabbed the being on her way home at night. Advikos continues this story by claiming, “The next morning a girl was found in the village with a mutilated hand. Bodily infirmity thereby epitomizes an unavoidable penalty for those who, even unconsciously, endanger Christ’s exclusive relation to the time period of the Twelve Days, and leads to the marginalization of disabled individuals to the outskirts of social place by invoking their infirmity as a sign of an anti-Christian attitude towards the Other.” (199) As bodily mutilation was a punishment for behavior that was thought to go against Christ, disabled people were consequently demonized. With themes of impurity versus purity and the transition from darkness to light (positioning the goblins as the allies for darkness), kalikantzaroi continue to show the human fascination with good versus evil within goblin folklore. The use of goblins to describe people who went against Christ simply by being born shows how Christian influences began to establish the characterization of goblins as strictly antagonistic rather than ambiguous creatures.

Most modern understanding of goblins comes from pop-culture fiction, with influence from stories such as The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein, that uses Christian morality to box in the creatures as antagonistic. Historian, Matt King, in his study entitled “Taxonomizing Goblins from Folklore to Fiction” writes, “In keeping with their tainted origins, goblins/orcs serve as a foil to the whiter, more noble races that served as protagonists of The Lord of the Rings—a familiar trope of whiteness (purity) pitted against blackness (corruption) in a conflict undergirded by a moral compass derived from contemporary Catholic morality (Stevenson 2008). Tolkien consistently refers to those with malicious intent as being ‘dark’ or ‘black’, as seen in the general moniker of the ‘Dark Lord Sauron’, the ‘Black Riders’ that served as his agents, or the lowly dark-skinned goblins/orcs that dominated his armies. Conversely, the noble elves are depicted as having fair skin and (often) blond hair” (100). Catholic and Christian practices have rigid moral codes written within them, with many human actions and desires being ruled as inherently evil with the concept of sin. Tolkien uses this idea of inherent evil in his classification of goblins as a race. Tolkien elicits the human fascination of good versus evil in his pinning of the elves up against the goblins which has racist undertones. The darker skin of the goblin race represents darkness in the context of good versus evil, while the lighter skin of the elves represents light the same way. The appearances of goblins as a race solidifies their behaviors into something inherent about their race, turning evil nature into an inherent trait for goblins throughout fiction. Tolkein’s depiction of goblins, influenced by Christian morality, has left an imprint on modern understandings of these creatures. Tolkein perpetuates a narrative of good versus evil that further cements goblins as antagonists and contributes to the human obsession of morality.

The evolution of goblins in storytelling mirrors humanity’s fascination with moral binaries. While goblins have a very ambiguous history in their classifications, Christian influences have cemented them into more antagonistic beings from their origins. From their diverse origins in folklore to their portrayal in contemporary fiction, goblins are a projection of humanity’s obsession with good and evil.

Works Cited

Avdikos, Evangelos. “Differentiating Worldview: Kalikantzaroi (Goblin)-Stories, Cyclical Time and Orthodox Christian Doctrine.” Western Folklore, vol. 74, no. 2, 2015, pp. 185–211. www.jstor.org/stable/24550794

King, Matt. “Taxonomizing Goblins from Folklore to Fiction.” Folklore, vol. 135, no. 1, 2024, pp. 87-109. doi.org/10.1080/0015587X.2023.2259727

Klepeis, Alicia. Goblins. United States, Cavendish Square Publishing, 2015.

Shaijan, Annliya. “Goblin Mythology: A Brief Study of the Archetype, Tracing the Explications in English Literature.” Global Journal of HUMAN-SOCIAL SCIENCE: A Arts & Humanities - Psychology, vol. 19, no. 4, 2019, pp. 7-9. globaljournals.org/GJHSS_Volume19/2-Goblin-Mythology-A-Brief-Study.pdf