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Key Details
Type
RealmMythology
Norse Pantheon
Realm
Mythological / Non-physical
About This Location
Dark elves, or dwarves, depending on the sentence
Snorri puts dark elves in Svartalfheim and also treats dwarves as underground smiths who make Draupnir, Gungnir, and the hair of Sif. The Poetic Edda has dwarves in halls of stone and does not cleanly separate dvergar from svartalfar. Nidavellir overlaps the same workshop. There is no cult geography. Read Svartalfheim as a prose address for the makers of cursed and holy objects, and admit Snorri's terms wobble.
Primary Sources
“The dwarves had been generated in the earth, like maggots in flesh, and they live in the earth and in stones.”
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