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Key Details
Type
RealmMythology
Norse Pantheon
Realm
Mythological / Non-physical
About This Location
Mist-world, before the worlds
Niflheim is the cold pole of Snorri's cosmogony: eleven rivers (Elivagar) running from the spring Hvergelmir, ice meeting Muspelheim's sparks to wake Ymir. The Poetic Edda prefers Niflhel as a death-region. Snorri sometimes slides Niflheim, Niflhel, and Hel together. There is no temple, no festival, no excavated gate. It is a prose diagram of frost as a first material. Read it as origin chemistry, not as a tourist underworld.
Primary Sources
“First there was Niflheim in the north. From it flowed those rivers called Elivagar.”
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