In the second, it is the world where Loki finds and captures Andvari to seize his cursed gold. In the first, the gods go to that realm to find chains strong enough to hold Fenrir, Loki’s monstrous wolf son. Svartalfheim is mentioned in only two instances, both in the collected stories of the Prose Edda. Beyond this, however, little is known about these races or their homelands. The svartálfr, which translates as “black elves,” were held separate from the “light elves,” who were called ljósálfar or hvítálfar. In most writings, the world of Svartalheim is known as the homeland of the dark elves. So who were the svartálfar who lived in this underground world? Who Lived in Svartalfheim? While the concept of light and dark elves is popular in modern fantasy, however, the descriptions of Svartalfheim and its residents in the few surviving stories set there do not seem to align with our concept of elves. The world’s name translates as “home of the black elves” and it is described as a dark, subterranean realm. They believed that there were Nine Worlds, each of which was the home of a different race of beings. The Prose Edda, a collection of Norse legends from 13th century Iceland, details the cosmology of the Norse people.
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