Norse PantheonRealm
Svartalfheim
The underground realm of the dwarves (dark elves), master craftsmen who forged Mjolnir, Gungnir, and other legendary items.
About Svartalfheim
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.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda, Gylfaginning
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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