The Bosmer are the primary inhabitants of the forests of Valenwood, and everyone’s fourth favorite playable Elven race in the Elder Scrolls. Despite their home never serving as the primary focus of one of the games, Bosmer NPCs have ended up becoming some of the most iconic, perhaps because of how relatable they are.
The Bosmer, or Wood Elves if you aren’t completely down the rabbit hole yet (I am), are hard to pin down. With a lot of the other Elven races in the Elder Scrolls, you can get a general idea of what their deal is, just based on how the NPCs you meet in the games behave.
Orcs are gruff and to the point. Altmer are haughty and judgemental. Dunmer smoke three packs a day.
But the Bosmer, the Bosmer are just kind of weird.
They have dark, bug like eyes.
They have short men and tall women
And some of them even have antlers
But when it comes to any noticeable character archetype, they’re just weird. They say funny things:
And they always provide the humorous, low stakes starter quests you find straight out of the tutorial.
And not that it means anything, but I think it’s worth mentioning that a plurality of the population of the Shivering isles are actually Bosmer
But maybe we’re looking at this all wrong, and the Bosmer seem so weird compared to other Elves because they aren’t actually Elves at all.
Now before we go down this particular branch of the rabbithole, a quick rundown on how Elder Scrolls lore works. Unlike with, say, a book, there is no omniscient narrator teaching us the history of Tamriel, or explaining the mechanics of Oblivion and Nirn. With the exception of the occasional, and limited, QnA with Bethesda employees, the only source of 100% accurate Elder Scrolls lore is what you see through the eyes of your player character. And even this is filtered through the abstract realities of gameplay.
So our understanding of this fictional world is limited by the understanding of the fictional people who inhabit it, and this can lead to seemingly contradictory parts of the lore. Of interest in particular for this post is the origins of the Bosmer. The more popular theory (or at least I think it’s more popular, I don’t interact with people enough to actually know what they think), is that a portion of the early Mer coming to Tamriel settled in the forests of Valenwood, and overtime transformed from what were essentially Altmer into what we now know as the Bosmer. But there are a few issues with this:
- One, this is simply a very unusual occurence within the Elder Scrolls. The human races of Tamriel are basically only differentiated culturally, showing very nominal physical differences. The Altmer, Dunmer, and Orsimer all have vastly different physical appearances, but these differences also have explicitly magical origins. It’s just not very common in the lore to go from this:
- To this:
- And two, the in universe sources for this origin do not originate with the Bosmer, but instead with the various Aldmeri Dominions, political unions (or conquests) between the Altmer of the Summerset Isles and the Bosmer of Valenwood, and also usually the Khajiit of Elsweyr. Summerset dominates these unions, creating an obvious incentive to emphasize the connection between Altmer and Bosmer.
The Bosmer themselves hold that they do not originate from outside Tamriel, but were instead shaped from a primordial ooze by the god Y’ffre, separating them from the other Elves of the Elder Scrolls, who originate from an expedition to Tamriel in the ancient past. Before this they, along with the forests of Valenwood themselves, were shapeshifters, constantly shifting from one form to another when not reverted to their natural, goo-like state called the Ooze.
This legend is also where the Green Pact originates, the rules that prevent the Bosmer from harming the plant life of their home.
Now there are a few reasons to lend credence to this story as the true origin of the Bosmer. The first is the existence of several supporting legends surrounding this origin. One is known as the Wild Hunt, a magical ritual where a group of Bosmer return to the ooze, becoming shapeshifting monsters that rain terror down upon their enemies. This ritual has been recorded in the histories of groups outside of Valenwood, including the Nords of Skyrim, who believe historical monarch Borgas was assassinated by one.
A stronger piece of supporting evidence comes from the Khajiit, whose own creation myth matches that of the Bosmer, despite otherwise being culturally quite distinct. They believe that the Daedric Prince Azura, in secret, taught some members of the Ooze how to maintain their shape without giving up a variety of forms, which the Khajiit use to explain their hominid-feline appearance, as well as the variety of forms newborn Khajiit take based on the phases of the moon. The most humanoid of these “furstocks”, the Ohmes, loosely possess an Elven appearance, just like the Bosmer.
And finally, and most importantly, we can actually see the Ooze in-game, specifically the Elder Scrolls Online, where you can meet several “changelings”, nature spirits who match the Bosmeri description of life before their stable forms. One of them, Selene, even mentions being closer to the primordial world than you and your contemporaries. Furthermore, there is a location in Valenwood called Ouze, tarpits that house the souls of Bosmer who have violated or rejected the Green Pact. These spirits, like the Bosmer’s beliefs dictate they should be, are shapeshifters.
So really, the Bosmer aren’t Elves, but rather Ooze (and by extension so are the Khajiit). Meaning you could separate the playable races of the Elder Scrolls series into Men, Elves, and Ooze. And also lizards. But this raises the question of what is an Elf? We could say it was ancestry, as the Altmer, Dunmer, and Orsimer all clearly trace their origins back to the Aldmer, the early Elves that came to Tamriel long before the events of the game. This is the interpretation that lets us rather confidently state that “the Bosmer aren’t Elves”. But if we look at it as a matter of identity, things are quite a bit more complicated. Although they don’t believe they share an origin, the Bosmer in game still consider themselves Elves.
So really, it comes down to the perspective you take. Viewing it from the perspective of history and the origins of various forms of life in the Elder Scrolls, they are not Elves. But if we view it from a socio-cultural perspective, looking at how they are treated and how they understand themselves, then they very much are.
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