This is the land of the Dark Elves (a shadowy, Goblin-like folk given to curious magics and grim jests) and the master craftsmen of all nine worlds, the Dwarves. Great dark mounds reach to the sky as if the Earth were about to give birth to something of abnormal size. There is a rugged and rocky land, covered with somber dark woods in dark green and red and purple: the earth is wrinkled with underground burrowings and pitted with caves and holes. Westward beyond the great isles of Vinland one comes to a place where the sky is always overcast, and the light always dim: while the lands of the Giants are bright with flame or brilliant as ice, and that of the Light Elves is misty but luminous, here it is simply murky. Travels to the east are not as reliably lethal as travels to the north or south, but it is not recommended for the unwary or the socially inept. They are beautiful but unpredictable: some are kind and generous, but others are treacherous and often cruel- those who visit their misty, wooded lands and their shimmering, insubstantial cities had best have their wits about them (and a gift for flattery is often useful). These are the outliers of the great land of the Alfar, the Light elves.
Jotunheimer is also the land of the Jotuns, the giants of frost and ice, and many of them will stamp you flat rather than say hi (if the elephant-sized white wolves don’t get you first!)Ĭrossing the calm green waters of the East one begins to encounter curious misty green isles, dense with forest and wild flowers, full of both light and shadow.
The skies glow with a brilliant, eternal Aurora Borealis, and the cities are made of shining ice. To the north, if one follows the frozen isles and peninsulas northward from Scandinavia (bundle up!) one may encounter a frozen land of blue pines taller than redwoods, mountains Himalaya-high that glitter so fiercely that they can blind, and rivers so cold that a 10-second dip will kill you. Beyond are rivers of liquid flame, forests of hot many-colored metal, jewels which grow as living things, and cities which shine with every color of flame: wonders not for mortals, for in Muspelheim, besides the dangers of being burned to death in a rain of hot ash, the Giants of Fire are not kindly to creatures of damp, cool flesh and blood. If a ship travels south through the treacherous currents, reef-girdled isles and suffocating heat of the Southern Ocean, after many days one may sight a line of darkness on the horizon: this resolves itself into the smoke of many volcanoes, lying beyond a shoreline of great cliffs that shine like brass. These are the bounds of Midgard, home of men and the center-point of the nine worlds.įor those who would travel beyond the world, four worlds may be reached by everyday human means. Above, unreachably far, is the impenetrable Vault of Heaven, below which circle the Sun, Moon, and stars. The world is encircled by sea: the icy Ocean of the north, the stormy Ocean of the west, the muggy Ocean of the South and the placid green Ocean of the East. There is no China or East Asia or Australia, and no America, although west of a shrunken and actually somewhat green Greenland lie a group of large islands, with a combined area as large as all of western Europe. Arabia exists in a distorted form, while Siberia and the Russian steppe curve south-east to mountains, to the south of which is the blunt peninsula of India. The Mediterranean is somewhat shrunken and foreshortened, while Africa is a thin strip of populated northern coast, a wide strip of desert, and a somewhat narrower strip of hot jungle, with steaming-hot, island-spotted sea southwards. There are more large isles in the northern seas.
The Scandinavian Peninsula is familiar-looking, if a bit larger than in our world, as are the British Isles, northern Germany and Russia. In the spirit of "Dharmic" world and "Old Testament Cosmology", a world where the writers of the Nordic Sagas had their facts right.