Note 10 — The Ballad of Alvis

Men, etc.: nothing could more clearly indicate the author’s mythological inaccuracy than his confusion of the inhabitants of the nine worlds. Men (dwellers in Mithgarth) appear in each of Alvis’s thirteen answers; so do the gods (Asgarth) and the giants (Jotunheim). The elves (Alfheim) appear in eleven answers, the Wanes (Vanaheim) in nine, and the dwarfs (who occupied no special world, unless one identifies them with the dark elves of Svartalfaheim) in seven. The dwellers “in hell” appear in six stanzas; the phrase probably refers to the world of the dead, though Mogk thinks it may mean the dwarfs. In stanzas where the gods are already listed appear names elsewhere applied only to them,—“holy ones,” “sons of the gods” and “high ones,”—as if these names meant beings of a separate race. “Men” appears twice in the same stanza, and so do the giants, if one assumes that they are “the sons of Suttung.” Altogether it is useless to pay much attention to the mythology of Alvis’s replies.