Dvergar
The dvergar are skilled supernatural beings in Norse mythology whose creations shape the power of gods and the structure of the cosmos. They forge objects including Þórr’s hammer, Óðinn’s spear, Freyr’s ship, and the gods’ binding for Fenrir. Sources also connect them with stone, earth, death, knowledge, and the making of poetry, while giving no single consistent account of their appearance, society, or origin.
Written by Nanna Seiðborin, Norse cultural educator and founder of Voice of Seiðr.
Published: August 10, 2026
Last reviewed: August 10, 2026
The modern dwarf is immediately recognizable. He is short, bearded, broad through the shoulders, carrying an axe or hammer, and probably standing somewhere near a mine, forge, mountain, or barrel of ale. That image owes something to Germanic tradition, but much of its familiar shape was organized by later folklore, literature, fantasy, and especially the enormous influence of J.R.R. Tolkien.
The Old Norse dvergar are much harder to contain. They are makers, owners, bargainers, killers, fathers, brothers, guardians, avengers, and possessors of dangerous knowledge. They live in or move through stone and earth, but the surviving sources do not consistently confine them underground. They create treasures for the gods, although that does not make them servants of the gods. Some are coerced, cheated, threatened, or killed for what they possess. Others manipulate events themselves.
Even their physical appearance is less clearly described than modern retellings usually admit. The sources identify particular beings as dvergar, but they rarely stop to explain what a dvergr is supposed to look like. The familiar image may be useful in art and storytelling, but it should not be mistaken for a complete historical description.
To understand the dvergar, we have to begin with what the surviving sources actually give us, including the places where those sources do not agree.
What Does Dvergar Mean?
Dvergar is the Old Norse plural of dvergr. In English, the usual translation is dwarfs or dwarves.
A practical pronunciation is:
DVAIR-gar
The first sound begins with dv, spoken together. The middle vowel is approximately like the vowel in air, although Old Norse pronunciation cannot be reproduced perfectly through ordinary English spelling. The English word dwarf belongs to the same broader Germanic word family as Old Norse dvergr, Old English dweorg or dweorh, and Old High German twerg. The word is old, but that does not mean every Germanic culture understood these beings in exactly the same way.
For this guide, dvergar refers specifically to the beings found in medieval Old Norse and related Scandinavian material. It does not automatically include every dwarf-like figure from later European folklore or modern fantasy.
Where Do the Dvergar Come From?
The sources preserve more than one answer. In Völuspá, the gods gather to decide who should create the company of the dvergar. Mótsognir is named as the greatest among them and Durinn as the second. The poem then says that the dvergar made many human-shaped figures from the earth, following Durinn’s instruction.
This passage is difficult, and translations vary because the wording does not give us a simple modern creation narrative. It connects the dvergar with earth, shaping, counsel, and the earliest ordering of the world, but it does not plainly say that all dvergar began as maggots or that they were created in precisely the way Snorri later describes.
The passage is followed by the Dvergatal, a long catalogue of dvergar names. These include Nýi and Niði, Norðri and Suðri, Austri and Vestri, Dvalinn, Bívǫrr, Bávǫrr, Bömburr, Nóri, Án, Óinn, Mjöðvitnir, Gandálfr, Þorinn, Þráinn, Fíli, Kíli, Fundinn, Náli, and many others. Several of these names later became familiar through Tolkien, but Tolkien’s characters should not be read back into the Norse poem.
The complete Old Norse text and translation of the creation passage and Dvergatal can be read in Edward Pettit’s open-access edition of Völuspá.
Snorri’s Account of Their Origin
Snorri Sturluson gives a different and much more explicit explanation in Gylfaginning. According to Snorri, the dvergar first came to life like maggots within the flesh and blood of Ymir, the primordial being from whose body the gods constructed the world. The gods then gave the dvergar consciousness and human-like shape. Snorri says they live in the earth and stones, just as the maggots had lived within Ymir’s flesh.
This is the origin of the often-repeated claim that the dvergar began as maggots in Ymir’s corpse. It is an important medieval account, but it should not automatically be treated as the single original Norse belief. Snorri was writing in thirteenth-century Christian Iceland, organizing older poetic material into a more continuous cosmology. Sometimes he preserves information unavailable elsewhere. Sometimes he explains ambiguities, reconciles traditions, or imposes a system upon material that may never have formed one unified system.
The careful answer is therefore that Snorri describes the dvergar as beings who arose within Ymir’s body, while Völuspá preserves an older and less easily interpreted creation passage connecting them with earth and deliberate shaping.
Are Dvergar Small?
The surviving mythological poems do not consistently describe the dvergar as miniature people. Some later Norse prose and broader Germanic folklore portray dwarf figures as unusually small, physically misshapen, or otherwise distinct from ordinary humans. That material matters when studying how the tradition developed. It does not allow us to claim that every earlier audience automatically imagined every dvergr as a tiny, bearded underground blacksmith.
In Alvíssmál, Þórr insults Alvíss’s appearance, describing him as pale around the nose and resembling a þurs. That tells us Alvíss looks strange or unhealthy to Þórr. It does not provide a general measurement for all dvergar.
Reginn, who is identified as a dvergr in the heroic tradition surrounding Sigurðr, appears capable of teaching, plotting, forging weapons, traveling, and interacting directly with human society. Nothing in his central role depends upon his being extremely short.
This does not prove that dvergar were never imagined as small. It means the confident modern description is more specific than the early sources allow.
Dvergar, Stone, and the Earth
The relationship between dvergar and stone is much better supported than a universal claim about their height.
Snorri places them within the earth and stones. Several stories associate individual dvergar with rocks, mountains, caves, or underground spaces. In Ynglingatal, the king Sveigðir follows a dvergr into a stone and never returns. The story does not explain whether the stone conceals another dwelling, opens into another world, or marks an encounter with death. The dvergr simply stands at the threshold, calls the king inside, and the stone closes behind him.
Dvergar names and poetic language also carry associations with stone, earth, sleep, death, concealment, and altered states. These associations have led scholars to explore possible connections between the dvergar and the dead. The evidence is suggestive rather than conclusive. We should not casually redefine them as ancestors or spirits of the dead, but their connection with earth appears to carry more than a simple occupational reference to mining.
Stone is where wealth is hidden, where metal is taken, where the dead may be placed, and where human access becomes limited. The dvergar repeatedly appear at that boundary between what the human world can see and what the earth holds within itself.
The Four Dvergar Who Hold the Sky
Snorri names four dvergar positioned beneath the corners of the sky:
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Norðri, North
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Suðri, South
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Austri, East
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Vestri, West
The sky itself is made from Ymir’s skull, and these four dvergar support it at the cardinal directions.
This places the dvergar directly within the physical construction and continuing stability of the cosmos. Their role is not limited to making jewelry and weapons. Four of them stand within the architecture of the world, holding the sky above everything that lives beneath it.
Their names also appear in the Dvergatal, although Völuspá does not explain their cosmological function there. That explanation comes from Snorri’s organization of the material.
The Makers of the Gods’ Power
The gods possess some of the most famous objects in Norse mythology, but they do not make many of those objects themselves.
The dvergar do.
They produce:
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Mjölnir, Þórr’s hammer
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Gungnir, Óðinn’s spear
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Draupnir, Óðinn’s multiplying ring
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Skíðblaðnir, Freyr’s ship
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Gullinbursti, Freyr’s golden-bristled boar
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Sif’s golden replacement hair
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Gleipnir, the binding placed upon Fenrir
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Brísingamen, according to the later Sörla þáttr
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The Mead of Poetry, through the killing of Kvasir and the mixing of his blood with honey
This does not mean that every dvergr is a smith or that craftsmanship is their only defining characteristic. It does establish that specialized knowledge, material transformation, and the ability to create impossible objects belong repeatedly to their stories.
The gods may wield these treasures, but the knowledge required to create them resides elsewhere.
The Sons of Ívaldi
When Loki cuts off Sif’s hair, Þórr threatens to break every bone in his body unless he replaces it.
Loki goes to the beings Snorri calls the sons of Ívaldi, who create three objects:
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New hair for Sif, made of gold that will grow like natural hair
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Gungnir, the spear that becomes Óðinn’s weapon
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Skíðblaðnir, Freyr’s ship, which always receives a favorable wind and can be folded small enough to carry
The sons of Ívaldi are not developed as individual characters within the story. Their identities matter primarily through what they know how to make.
The hair changes the nature of gold itself. The spear does not fail. The ship answers the wind and collapses beyond the apparent limits of its materials. Their craft does more than shape matter. It alters what matter is capable of doing.
Brokkr, Eitri, and Loki’s Wager
After seeing the sons of Ívaldi’s work, Loki boasts that no one could create three objects equal to theirs. He wagers his own head with the dvergr Brokkr, claiming that Brokkr’s brother Eitri, named Sindri in some manuscript traditions, cannot match them.
Eitri places a pigskin in the forge and tells Brokkr to work the bellows without stopping. Loki transforms into a fly and bites Brokkr in an effort to ruin the work. The first object becomes Gullinbursti, Freyr’s golden boar, whose bristles shine through darkness.
The second becomes Draupnir, Óðinn’s ring, from which eight rings of equal weight drop every ninth night.
During the third attempt, Loki bites Brokkr’s eyelid so severely that blood runs into his eye. Brokkr stops briefly to wipe it away. The result is Mjölnir, a hammer that will not fail when thrown, but its handle is shorter than intended.
The gods judge Mjölnir the greatest treasure because it provides protection against the jötnar. Brokkr wins the wager and attempts to take Loki’s head. Loki argues that he promised his head, not his neck, so Brokkr cannot cut one without taking part of the other. Unable to claim the agreed payment, Brokkr sews Loki’s lips shut.
This is a story about magnificent objects, but it is also about labor, sabotage, ownership, payment, and the use of clever language to escape an obligation. The gods receive the treasures. The dvergar do the work. Loki creates the disruption, controls the competition, and attempts to evade its cost. Snorri preserves the story in Skáldskaparmál.
Gleipnir and the Binding of Fenrir
The gods first attempt to restrain Fenrir with the chains Læðingr and Drómi. Fenrir breaks both. They then send Skírnir into Svartálfaheimr to obtain a binding made by dvergar. The result is Gleipnir, a ribbon-like restraint made from six impossible ingredients:
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The sound of a cat’s footfall
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A woman’s beard
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The roots of a mountain
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A bear’s sinews
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A fish’s breath
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A bird’s spittle
Snorri explains that these things cannot now be found because they were used in Gleipnir. The dvergar create something capable of restraining a force the gods cannot contain through ordinary strength. Gleipnir works because it is made from absences, impossibilities, and qualities beyond physical possession.
The story gives the dvergar knowledge of materials the ordinary world cannot even recognize as materials.
Are Dvergar and Svartálfar the Same?
Snorri uses the terms svartálfar, usually translated “black elves,” and dökkálfar, “dark elves,” in ways that have caused centuries of confusion.
He says the ljósálfar, or light elves, live in Álfheimr and are fairer than the sun, while the dökkálfar live below the earth and are blacker than pitch. Elsewhere, he says Loki travels to Svartálfaheimr and meets the sons of Ívaldi, while the beings producing Gleipnir and other treasures are identified as dvergar.
This has led many readers to conclude that svartálfar and dvergar are simply two names for the same beings. That is possible within parts of Snorri’s system, but it is not securely established across Old Norse tradition as a whole. The earlier poetic sources do not present a clear taxonomy in which every dvergr is a svartálfr and every svartálfr is a dvergr. Snorri may be combining traditions, using overlapping vocabulary, or organizing different beings by location and appearance.
The responsible conclusion is that Snorri closely associates svartálfar with dvergar, but the surviving evidence does not prove that the terms were universally interchangeable.
Alvíss and the Danger of Daylight
In Alvíssmál, the dvergr Alvíss arrives to claim Þórr’s daughter as his promised bride. Þórr says the agreement was made while he was away and refuses to surrender her without testing Alvíss’s knowledge.
Þórr asks what different beings call the earth, sky, moon, sun, clouds, wind, calm, sea, fire, forests, night, seed, and ale. Alvíss answers by giving the names used by humans, gods, Vanir, jötnar, álfar, and dvergar. The poem makes him exactly what his name suggests: All-Wise.
Þórr keeps the questioning going until sunrise. When daylight reaches Alvíss, he is overcome, apparently turned to stone.
This is the strongest source behind the claim that sunlight turns dvergar to stone. It proves that the motif applies to Alvíss in this poem. It does not necessarily establish a universal biological rule governing every dvergr in every source. The poem also shows that the dvergar possess their own language or vocabulary for the world. Alvíss is not merely a craftsman. He carries knowledge of how different beings understand and name reality. The complete poem can be read in Pettit’s open-access edition of Alvíssmál.
Fjalarr, Galarr, and the Mead of Poetry
The dvergar Fjalarr and Galarr kill Kvasir, a being created from the mingled saliva of the Æsir and Vanir. Kvasir is so wise that no one can ask him a question he cannot answer. The brothers drain his blood into vessels and mix it with honey, creating the Mead of Poetry. Anyone who drinks it becomes a poet or scholar.
They then kill the jötunn Gillingr and his wife. Gillingr’s son Suttungr captures them and strands them on a rock that will soon be covered by the sea. To save themselves, they give him the mead as compensation for his parents’ deaths. This story does not portray the dvergar as noble guardians of inspired wisdom. Fjalarr and Galarr acquire Kvasir’s knowledge through murder, transform it through craft, and surrender it when their own lives are threatened.
Poetry is created through an act of violence, moved through compensation, guarded through kinship, and eventually stolen by Óðinn. The story makes inspired speech a substance with a history of blood, intelligence, ownership, and theft.
Andvari and the Cursed Gold
In Reginsmál, Loki captures the dvergr Andvari, who lives in a waterfall in the form of a fish. Loki forces him to surrender his gold. Andvari attempts to keep one ring, but Loki takes it as well. Andvari then places a curse upon the treasure, declaring that it will bring death to those who possess it. The gods use the gold to compensate Hreiðmarr for the killing of his son Otr. The payment does not settle the violence. It carries the curse forward into the family.
Fáfnir kills his father to take the treasure. Reginn plots Fáfnir’s death and raises Sigurðr as the weapon through which he hopes to recover it. Sigurðr kills Fáfnir, then kills Reginn after learning that Reginn intends to betray him.
The hoard passes through coercion, legal compensation, inheritance, greed, kin-slaying, and revenge. Andvari cannot prevent Loki from taking what belongs to him, but he can change what ownership of that treasure will mean.
Reginn and Fáfnir
Reginn is called a dvergr in the heroic material, while his brother Fáfnir becomes a dragon after taking their father’s wealth. Their brother Otr lives in the form of an otter when Loki kills him.
This family complicates the idea that dvergar form a tidy biological species recognizable through one body type. These brothers transform, cross apparent categories, and participate in human heroic society in different ways.
Reginn is an accomplished smith and Sigurðr’s foster father. He forges the sword Gram after Sigurðr breaks the earlier swords Reginn makes for him. He teaches, plans, remembers, manipulates, and carries a personal claim against his brother.
His skill does not make him morally trustworthy. His grievance is real, but so is his willingness to use Sigurðr to pursue it.
Are There Female Dvergar?
The major mythological poems and Snorri’s central narratives overwhelmingly name male dvergar. That has sometimes led to the claim that female dvergar did not exist. The evidence does not support such certainty. Fáfnismál refers to some nornir as Dvalinn’s daughters, and Snorri similarly says that some nornir come from the family or lineage of the dvergar. Whether those figures should themselves be classified as female dvergar is unresolved, but the language gives the dvergr Dvalinn descendants described as daughters.
Later saga literature contains more explicit references to the wives, daughters, and sisters of dvergar. That material cannot automatically be projected backward into pre-Christian religion, but it does show that medieval Norse storytellers were capable of imagining female dvergar and dvergar families.
The absence of prominent named female dvergar in the Eddic myths tells us about the stories that survived. It does not prove that medieval people believed no female dvergar could exist.
Were the Dvergar Worshipped?
There is no clear evidence of a widespread historical cult specifically devoted to the dvergar. We do not have a known dvergar equivalent of álfablót or dísablót, nor a secure body of temples, priesthoods, sacrifices, or ritual instructions directed toward them. That does not prove that no individual ever addressed, feared, honored, or made an offering to a being understood as a dvergr. Domestic and local practices leave uneven evidence, and many ordinary religious actions were never recorded.
Still, the sources do not justify presenting dvergar worship as an established feature of pre-Christian Norse religion.
Modern Heathens may choose to engage with the dvergar through personal practice, especially in relation to craft, land, stone, metal, making, or ethical exchange. That belongs to modern religious development unless it is supported by specific historical evidence.
The distinction does not make the practice meaningless. It makes its historical status honest.
Are the Dvergar Connected with Seiðr?
The dvergar make objects with properties that exceed ordinary craft, possess hidden knowledge, change form, pronounce curses, and work with impossible materials. Modern readers may reasonably describe much of this as magical.
The surviving sources do not clearly identify the dvergar as a class of seiðr practitioners.
That matters because seiðr is not simply an Old Norse word for everything supernatural. A binding such as Gleipnir, the curse placed upon Andvari’s gold, and the transformation of Kvasir’s blood into the Mead of Poetry may all belong to a world saturated with supernatural power without becoming examples of seiðr by default.
The dvergar are strongly associated with specialized knowledge and the ability to alter the capacities of matter. That is the claim the sources can support. Calling their entire craft seiðr would flatten distinctions the material does not give us permission to erase.
What the Dvergar Make Possible
The dvergar repeatedly create the things that allow other beings to become fully themselves within the mythology.
Þórr becomes the wielder of Mjölnir. Óðinn receives Gungnir and Draupnir. Freyr receives Skíðblaðnir and Gullinbursti. The gods gain the only binding capable of holding Fenrir. Poets receive inspiration through a substance first created by Fjalarr and Galarr.
The glory usually travels with the one who carries the object. The labor, knowledge, injury, coercion, wager, and payment remain behind with its maker.
This is one of the clearest threads running through the dvergar stories. Power has a material history. Someone found the substance, understood it, shaped it, and paid the cost of bringing it into form. The dvergar remind us that possessing power and knowing how to create it are not the same thing.
The Ethics of Exchange
Exchange with the dvergar is rarely casual. Loki steals Andvari’s gold and receives a curse. He wagers his head against Brokkr’s work and escapes through manipulation of the agreement. The gods require treasures and bindings that only the dvergar can produce. Suttungr acquires the Mead of Poetry as compensation for the murder of his parents. Reginn uses Sigurðr to pursue a claim born from a corrupted payment.
These stories repeatedly ask who owns knowledge, who benefits from labor, what constitutes fair payment, and whether an agreement reached under threat can settle anything. The answer is usually uncomfortable. Compensation can transfer wealth without restoring relationship. A cleverly worded agreement can be technically satisfied while violating its purpose. An object can be perfectly made and still carry the conditions of its making into every hand that later holds it. The dvergar do not merely create magical things. Their stories preserve the memory of what happens when skill becomes something others believe they are entitled to possess.
Dvergar in Modern Heathen Practice
Modern engagement with the dvergar should begin by allowing them to remain stranger than fantasy has made them.
They are not simply cheerful workshop spirits waiting to bless every craft project. The sources portray beings with their own possessions, kinship, grievances, knowledge, boundaries, and capacity for retaliation. Several of their encounters with gods and humans begin with coercion or theft.
A modern practice inspired by them might therefore pay close attention to the ethics of making:
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Learning the properties of the materials being used
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Respecting the source of those materials
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Honoring skilled labor
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Maintaining tools rather than treating them as disposable
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Paying people fairly for what they know and make
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Keeping agreements in spirit as well as wording
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Recognizing that an object carries the story of its creation
These are modern applications drawn from the stories, not reconstructed instructions for an ancient dvergar cult. The worldview beneath them is nevertheless old and valuable. Matter is never merely inert. Skill changes relationship. Making creates obligation. What we bring into the world continues to carry something of the hands, choices, and exchanges that formed it.
What We Actually Know
The surviving Old Norse sources establish that:
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The singular form is dvergr and the plural is dvergar.
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Völuspá preserves an early creation passage and a catalogue of dvergar names known as the Dvergatal.
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Snorri says the dvergar first came to life within Ymir’s body and were given consciousness and human-like form by the gods.
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Snorri places them within earth and stone.
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Norðri, Suðri, Austri, and Vestri support the sky at its four directions in Snorri’s cosmology.
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Dvergar create many of the gods’ most important objects.
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Alvíss possesses extensive cosmological and linguistic knowledge.
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Andvari owns a treasure taken from him by Loki and curses it after being forced to surrender it.
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Fjalarr and Galarr create the Mead of Poetry from Kvasir’s blood and honey.
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Dvalinn is described as having daughters associated with the nornir.
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Later saga literature contains clearer references to female dvergar and family relationships.
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The sources do not provide one consistent physical description applying to every dvergr.
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The sources do not clearly establish that every dvergr turns to stone in sunlight.
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Snorri associates dvergar with Svartálfaheimr, but the terms dvergar and svartálfar cannot safely be treated as universally interchangeable.
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There is no clear evidence for an organized historical cult devoted specifically to the dvergar.
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Their supernatural skills should not automatically be classified as seiðr.
What we do not possess is one complete pre-Christian explanation of what the dvergar were. The sources preserve overlapping identities: beings of earth and stone, makers of divine treasures, bearers of knowledge, owners of wealth, members of families, participants in cosmic order, and dangerous partners in exchange.
The inconsistency is not something we need to repair. It is part of the evidence. The dvergar survive in the places where thought becomes material, where ownership meets power, and where the hand that makes a thing may understand far more about it than the person who eventually carries it.
Continue Exploring
Explore the related guides to:
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Fenrir
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The Mead of Poetry
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Mjölnir
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Gungnir
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Draupnir
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Gleipnir
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Svartálfaheimr
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Craft, Exchange, and Sacred Obligation
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Stone, Earth, and the Hidden Powers of the Land
For deeper teaching on craft, ownership, reciprocity, and what the dvergar reveal about the power carried within made things, continue inside Voice of Seiðr on Patreon.
Cite This Guide
Seiðborin, Nanna. “Dvergar: The Dwarfs of Norse Mythology.” Voice of Seiðr. Published August 10, 2026. Last reviewed August 10, 2026. https://www.voiceofseidr.com/dvergar
Sources and Further Reading
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The Poetic Edda, particularly Völuspá, Alvíssmál, Reginsmál, Fáfnismál, and Sigrdrífumál
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Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda, particularly Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál
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Snorri Sturluson, Ynglinga saga
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Ármann Jakobsson, “The Hole: Problems in Medieval Dwarfology”
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Ármann Jakobsson, “Enabling Love: Dwarfs in Old Norse-Icelandic Romances”
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Lotte Motz, The Wise One of the Mountain: Form, Function, and Significance of the Subterranean Smith
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Claude Lecouteux, work concerning dwarfs and household or land spirits in Germanic tradition
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Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology
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John Lindow, Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs
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Ugnius Mikučionis, “Dwarfs’ Family Relations and Female Dwarfs in Some Medieval Nordic Sources”
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Open Book Publishers: The Poetic Edda: A Dual-Language Edition