Alfheim
Alfheim (elf home) In Norse mythology, home of the light elves or dwarfs, as well as of the god Frey. It was located in the air between heaven and earth. In the Prose Edda Snorri Sturluson makes a distinction between light and dark elves: “There is yet that place, which is called Alfheim; there lives that people, who are called the light-elves, but the dark-elves dwell down in the earth, . . . The light-elves are fairer than the sun in appearance, but the dark-elves are blacker than pitch.” Sir Walter Scott, in his poem “Thomas the Rhymer,” in Contributions to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: Imitations of the Ancient Ballad, uses the words Elfland and Elflyn land.
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SOURCE:
Encyclopedia of World Mythology and Legend, Third Edition – Written by Anthony S. Mercatante & James R. Dow– Copyright © 2009 by Anthony S. Mercatante
