They are old.
Older than the gods as we know them.
Born of rot and transformation.
Born when the first giant was slain, and the world was made from his corpse.
From the flesh of Ýmir came the earth.
From his bones, the mountains.
From the maggots in his skin, the Dvergar.

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The dwarfs.

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Not the cheerful miners of modern tales.
Not bearded beer-swilling blacksmiths in cozy mountain halls.
The Dvergar of the old stories are something stranger.
Shaped by darkness. Bound to stone. Creators of the finest treasures in all the Nine Worlds.

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They are not gods.
They are not giants.
They are not Alfar.
But they stand near all three, just far enough to be their own.

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Their names fill stanzas.
Over a hundred are listed in the old poems.
They rarely speak, but they make.
They shape the sacred.

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From their forges came six of the greatest treasures known to the gods:
Mjölnir – the hammer of Thor, unstoppable and returning.
Gungnir – Óðin’s spear, unerring in its strike.
Draupnir – the ring that multiplies itself by nine.
Gullinbursti – the golden boar, radiant and tireless.
Sif’s golden hair – living strands that grow from her head like real hair.
Skíðblaðnir – the ship that sails without wind and folds into a pouch.

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Two families crafted them.
The sons of Ivaldi.
And the brothers Brokkr and Eitri.
Loki, as usual, was in the middle of it.
Deceiving, wagering, instigating.

They are also the makers of Brísingamen, the necklace Freyja could not resist.
She lay with the smiths to have it.
It was that precious.

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Some dwarfs, like Fjalar and Galar, were far less generous.
They killed Kvasir, the wisest of beings, and brewed the Mead of Poetry from his blood.
They hoarded it until Óðin took it from them.

Others, like Norðri, Suðri, Austri, and Vestri, are said to hold up the sky itself.

They dwell in the deep.
Underground.
In the bones of the world.
Sunlight is their undoing.
Alvíss, who dared to marry Thor’s daughter, learned that the hard way.
He was outwitted, questioned until dawn, and turned to stone with the morning light.

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They are guardians of thresholds.
Of gold.
Of memory.
Of death.
And perhaps, of birth.

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Some say they helped shape the first humans.
That Ask and Embla were molded by dwarfs, and given life by gods.
If that is true, then their hands are in us too.

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Snorri called them Svartálfar—black elves.
He placed them in Svartálfaheimr.
Maybe they were Alfar once, or kin to them.
Maybe they are the shadowed line of the same blood.

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Volundr—master smith and one of the only named Alfar—is said to have learned from two dwarfs.
He is called ancestor to the English.
He stands between races and names, just like the Dvergar do.

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The lore is tangled.
The names shift.
But the thread is clear.

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The Dvergar are the keepers of what is made and what is buried.
They hold the forge, the grave, the vault.
They shape what others only pray for.
They create what even gods depend on.

And they remember.

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Signs and Symbols
Forges, anvils, bellows.
Gold and gems.
Etched tools and weapons of beauty and precision.
Intricate knots and mechanisms.
Deep stone halls.
Secret names.
Heavy rings passed down through bloodlines.
Runes carved in dark places.

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Associated Names
Dvergar. Dwarf. Dweorg. Twerg. Svartálfar.