Dose anyone know where the elven race started from?

Question

as in first book or writing that began it all

Answer 1

Invented by the Vikings, popularized in fantasy books and movies by JRR Tolkein.

Answer 2

good question - I don't know the first time they were recorded on page but in early Celtic mythology elves were often associated with the dead.  A man traveling home on a dark road at night sees a party of people go by.  Amoung them he recognizes a friend of his from the village and calls out to the man but his friend doesn't hear him.  Arriving home the man finds that his friend just died and is laid out in his bed while his family is in mourning.  Also babies that were taken away and replaced with changlings that sickened and died is a common theme and girls that grew sickly and died were sometimes said to have been wasting away for an elven lover, so I suspect originally elves were a death motif of some kind.  I've also heard the myth that they are angels that refused to fight on either side during Lucifer's rebellion in heaven and so God cast them out onto the earth.  While not at all scriptural, its an interesting one too.  I'm not sure which myth came along first.