Alfheimᛚ

Alfheim is the luminous realm of the Ljosalfar, the light elves, described in the Prose Edda as more radiant than the sun. The sources say the gods gave it to the god Freyr as a childhood gift, and beyond that offer little further detail.

A realm of light

Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda names Alfheim among the nine realms and gives it a single vivid description: its people, the Ljosalfar, are fairer to look upon than the sun. Unlike Asgard or Midgard, no myth is set within Alfheim's borders in the surviving texts, and no named landscape feature, river, or hall survives to describe it further. What remains is mostly this one striking image of brightness, paired with the realm's ownership.

Freyr's teething-gift

The commentary attached to the Poetic Edda's Grimnismal states that the gods gave Alfheim to Freyr as a tannfe, the traditional gift marking a child's first tooth. Freyr, a Vanir god tied to fertility, harvest, and peace, and son of Njord, rules a realm whose brightness fits his own association with sunlight and growing things. The gift places Alfheim inside the wider story of the Aesir-Vanir peace, since Freyr and his family came to live among the Aesir after that war ended, carrying Vanaheim's inheritance with them into a realm of their own.

Light elves and dark elves

Snorri draws a sharp contrast between two kinds of elves. The Ljosalfar of Alfheim are brighter than the sun, while the dokkalfar, the dark elves, are described as blacker than pitch and dwelling below in the earth.

The dark elves' underground home and dark colouring closely resemble the dwarves of Svartalfheim, and some scholars treat dokkalfar and dwarves as the same beings under different names rather than two distinct peoples.