Elves: Did you mean...?

Elves and dwarves represent minor divine figures in Norse mythology. Elves (álfar) and dwarves (dvergar) have in common their talent for creating precious objects, skill, agility, and moral ambiguity. Dwarves appear...

It is said that the early Norse settlers of Iceland in the Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE) believed it was the home of the gods because of the tale of the creation of the world in Norse religion. In the time before...

Norse cosmology divided the universe into nine realms. The center of the universe was the great world-tree Yggdrasil and the nine realms either spread out from the tree or existed in levels stretching from the roots...

Elements of Norse mythology abound in The Lord of the Rings, and none is so compelling as the ring itself. The One Ring is reminiscent of magic rings in Norse lore, especially Odin's Draupnir or Andvaranaut from the...

Midgard is the realm of human beings in Norse mythology. The Old Norse word garðr literally means an enclosure (yard), and miðr (middle) refers to its position as a circle with both an interior ocean, and an outer ocean beyond which...

The Glooscap tales are legends of the Eastern Algonquin nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy – the Abenaki, Mi'kmaq, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Wolastoqiyik – featuring the supernatural entity Glooscap, who is depicted sometimes...

Menehune is the term applied to short-statured, forest-dwelling creatures of Hawaiian mythology and is part of a common mythology throughout Polynesia that describes secretive, supernatural beings with human-like attributes. Mysterious...

The norns were supernatural female entities responsible for the fates of all living beings in Viking Age Scandinavia. Associated with Yggdrasil, the world tree and central element of the nine realms of Norse cosmology...

I was intrigued by the title of Nancy Marie Brown’s latest book Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland’s Elves Can Help Save the Earth. In many ways, I am the ideal audience for this...

The Vikings were originally diverse Scandinavian seafarers from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark (though other nationalities were later involved) whose raids and subsequent settlements significantly impacted the cultures of Europe and were...