Nidavellir: the dwarven capital of Svartalfheim

Nidavellir was the capital city of the Dwarves and one of the larger settlements of Svartalfheim, raised on the waterways where the wetlands of the realm met the broad Bay of Bounty. A place of docks, markets, taverns, and mines, it was watched over by a towering statue of Odin and served by rigs that labored for Asgard. During Fimbulwinter it became the first destination of Kratos and Atreus in their search for the lost war god Tyr, and it was the home of the city official and former rebel leader Durlin.

The dark fields#

The name Nidavellir was older than the city and belonged first to the realm itself. In the dwarven tongue it meant "Dark Fields," and it was what the Dwarves called their homeland. The name Svartalfheim, "Land of the Dark Elves," was an invention of the Aesir. According to Mimir, the Aesir could not tell the difference between the Dwarves and the Dark Elves of Alfheim, and so they named the dwarven realm after the wrong people entirely. The Dwarves never accepted the error as their own, and their chief city carried the true name forward. Under the ancient accounts of the realm, Nidavellir was also remembered as the dwelling place of Motsognir, father of the Dwarfs, fashioned in the earliest days from the blood and bones of Ymir.

The city of iron#

Nidavellir stood at the heart of Svartalfheim's waterways, with rivers at both ends of the city connecting the surrounding wetlands to the larger Bay of Bounty. Boats came in at its docks, and its streets climbed past workshops, awnings, and market squares toward the sewers and passages that threaded the town together. It was among the larger cities of the dwarven people, and Durlin himself, in a runic notice warning travelers of the dangers on the roads, called it "the city of iron."

The land around it earned the warning. The wetlands beyond the city walls were the hunting ground of the Grim, creatures dangerous enough that Sindri cautioned travelers against them, and Wretches nested among the rocks of the waterline and later plagued the city's own sewer. Within its bounds, however, Nidavellir remained a relatively safe haven. Its marketplace was dominated by a giant statue of Odin, and a tavern near the center of town served as a gathering place where the dwarven musician Raeb performed. The office of the city's Safety Official, held in Durlin's day, sat beyond it, where Durlin kept his pet, a small creature called Dinner that Kratos took for a baby Kraken.

Even the weather of the realm set Nidavellir apart. While Fimbulwinter buried Midgard in snow, Svartalfheim stayed warm; Mimir observed that the great winter touched each realm differently, and in the dwarven realm it brought instead a rise in natural gas and more frequent earthquakes. Fimbulwinter never froze the dark fields, but it shook them.

Under the shadow of the All-Father#

For all its industry, Nidavellir was not a free city. The statue of Odin that loomed over its marketplace told the truth of its condition: when Atreus supposed the dwarves must simply admire the All-Father, Kratos judged that the monument had been built out of fear. The mining rigs north of the city in the Bay of Bounty labored in service of Asgard, and their smoke fouled the air over the water, a grievance Raeb raised with any traveler who would listen.

The city had once tried to throw that shadow off. Durlin, in alliance with Laufey the Just, the woman later known as Faye, led the dwarves of Nidavellir in a coup against the Aesir. During the rebellion Durlin forged a ceremonial hammer that became the symbol of the Dwarven Resistance. The uprising failed. Heimdall burned the side of Durlin's head as punishment, Laufey fought Thor and escaped the realm, and the Aesir confiscated the hammer and buried it beneath the statue of Alviss Stonefoot out in the bay, where it lay hidden for centuries. Durlin remained in the city as a minor official, drinking away the memory of his defeat.

The coming of Kratos and Atreus#

When Kratos, Atreus, and Mimir crossed into Svartalfheim during Fimbulwinter, Sindri directed them to find Durlin in Nidavellir, warning them of the Grim that haunted the country outside the city. The travelers fought off Wretches in the wetlands, took a boat down the river, and arrived to a cold welcome: an alarm sounded, and the dwarves retreated into their homes, telling Atreus to go away when he tried to speak with them. In the plaza beneath the statue of Odin they found Sindri, who fitted Atreus' bow with a drawstring imbued with Sonic magic to break the Soundstone that blocked the city's pathways, and gave them a compass that pointed toward their chosen goal.

At the tavern, Raeb greeted the father and son, pointed them toward Durlin's office, and asked that they see about shutting down the rigs polluting the air. On the way, Mimir guided them out into the Bay of Bounty to silence the mining rigs he had once helped raise for Odin, and to free a Lyngbakr that had been chained there in the days of his old service. The rigs went quiet and the smoke cleared, but the creature, grown accustomed to its bonds, would not leave its place even when freed, to Mimir's grief. Kratos hoped the breeze would bring it some comfort, and when Mimir protested that it was not enough, answered only, "It seldom is."

In his office, Durlin received the strangers coldly until he learned that his old ally Laufey had married Kratos under the name Faye, and that she was dead. Hiding his grief, and under the guise of writing them a fine for breaking his safety rules, he passed Atreus directions to the Jarnsmida Pitmines, where Tyr was held, while Dinner drew a seed of Alfheim from its tank for the boy. From Nidavellir the travelers rode a mining trolley up the mountain toward the pits, surviving an attack by Grim on the way, and found the war god alive in his cell.

Secret ways and the hammer of the revolution#

Nidavellir did not stay quiet after that first visit. The Aesir came to stalk its streets, watching for Kratos' return. When Kratos and Brok later slipped back into Svartalfheim in search of the Lady of the Forge to make the Draupnir Spear, they entered the city unseen through the Myrkr Tunnels, an abandoned service tunnel that Brok kept as one of his secret ways into the realm. At the foot of the rail line rising toward The Forge stood a berserker gravestone belonging to Hardrefill the Callous, a follower of the false King Hrolf remembered for his particular cruelty in battle, whose spirit Kratos later defeated.

The city's oldest wound was the last to close. After Odin used Durlin as a living shield against Kratos, the old rebel asked one favor: that Kratos recover the hammer of the revolution from beneath the statue of Alviss Stonefoot in the bay. It was a ceremonial thing, of no use for crafting or fighting, described in its day as "a symbol of the Dwarven resistance to Asgard's rule." Durlin believed the sight of it might do the dwarves some good and show that they had not entirely given up. Kratos drew it from its hiding place and carried it back to the tavern of Nidavellir, and the emblem of the dark fields' defiance came home to the city of iron.