Divinity Atlas

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Two Names, and Everything the Gods Own

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Two Names, and Everything the Gods Own

The poetry names Nidavellir, the dark fields, as the place of the dwarves. Snorri names Svartalfaheim, the home of the black elves, and describes dwarves living there. Whether these are one place under two names or two places that a later systematiser merged is not resolvable from the texts, and the entry carries both names for that reason.

What matters is what comes out of it. Nearly every object that gives a god their identity was made by dwarves, and most of them in a single wager. Loki, having cut off Sif's hair, is sent to get replacements and provokes a smithing contest: from it come the golden hair, the ship Skidbladnir that folds into a pocket, the spear Gungnir that never misses, the ring Draupnir that drips eight more rings every ninth night, the boar Gullinbursti, and the hammer Mjolnir with its handle too short because Loki, as a fly, bit the smith's eyelid.

The gods do not make things. They commission, steal or win them. The one class of being with the skill is not divine, lives underground, and is repeatedly cheated in the bargain. For a mythology produced by a society that valued craftsmanship highly, that is a pointed arrangement, and it is stated too consistently to be accidental.

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