A comment that struck me in the "Beyond Skyrim" discussions was "the Nords have led the anti-Elven charge for far too long" and it got me thinking: Is that really true?

Looking back at the history of Tamriel, then we have at least one period we can say with certainty that they led an anti-Elven charge: Up until their wars with the Falmer ended. The Skyrim Conquests seem to be a bit different in nature, being more old fashioned imperialism than wars of extermination, but lets count it as well for the sake of argument. Heck, let's even count their involvement in overthrowing the Ayleids and the Battle at Red Mountain.

The Battle of Red Mountain happened around year 700 of the 1st Era, 3000-ish years prior to the Great War. What has the Nords done to "lead an anti-Elven charge" since then?

Most of the anti-Elven stuff for the rest of the 1st Era seem to be on the Alessian Empire. It was the Reman Emperors that began the 80 Year War with Morrowind. Tiber Septim had already unified all the human nations under his rule when he began to expand into the elven nations. There have been border disputes between the Dunmer and Nords, but there does not appear to have broken out any major wars between the two nations since the Battle of Red Mountain. Border disputes that, as is said in a minor questline near the Rift/Morrowind border in ESO, has gone both ways. Nords raid Dunmer and Dunmer raid Nords ad infinitum.

Of course, there is a certain level of distrust of elves in the Nordic culture, but I think that actions speak louder than words. The Nords allied with the Dunmer in the 2nd Era and enacted the Decree of Monument after the Red Year, which are the two most recent large-scale actions on Skyrim's side against elven kind. Really, can the Nords be said to have acted like enemies of elven kind since the Way of the Voice was established?

Given that the Cyrods have their own Falmer incident(the Ayleids), and their imperialism into elven nations has been rather consistent since the rise of the Alessian Empire, it seems to me that the Imperials are much more of an enemy to the elves than the Nords are. Only as an ally(Alessian) or province(Reman and later) of the Cyrodilic Empire does the Nords seem to have engaged with elven-kind much at all.

Now, maybe this will change with the rise of the Aldmeri Dominion and there will be a north/south hostility situation thing, but if that will happen, it hasn't yet.