Creating a full viking world, need an outside oppinion

[fuindordm]

If I were playing in such a game, I'd like to see magic reined in -- maybe even forbidding evocation spells. But there was a lot of powerful magic in the stories too that I would like to see come into play eventually: polymorph, powerful curses (e.g. the nidhing staff), illusions, and of course legendary magic items. I would allow spirit barbarians, eldritch knight, arcane trickster, multiclassing, and the magic initiate feat, since the eddas abound with heroes who know a little magic. I would go through the spell lists of cleric and wizard and prune them down to remove spells that I consider too flashy, or change a couple to make them fit the stories more closely (e.g. Charm Person requires the target to accept the material component as a gift, but if it works the target doesn't realize they were charmed). The rest is flavor--a human cleric casting spells pulls out a rune-inscribed amulet, a paladin smiting smears a little blood over one of the runes on her weapon, etc.

Regarding the OPs question, I'd probably equate the dark elves and light elves with fey of all kinds. "Dark elves" could include goblins, kobolds, mythical dwarves (including duergar and derro), mythical gnomes (inc. svirfneblin), and all manner of malicious fey living underground. I would make svartalfheim equivalent to the Underdark so that it can be accessed without planar travel, and toss in whatever creatures I needed for the adventure. BUT, I would reskin the monsters as necessary to preserve the Norse feel. In short, whatever monsters the characters encounter I would call "dwarves", and the different game statistics represent different tribes of dwarves. The "Light Elves" would be a catch-all for generally good (or at least not evil) fey, and Alfheim would essentially be the Feywild.

So you have three easily accessible worlds: Midgard, Svartalfheim (by finding the right tunnel), and Alfheim (by finding the right hillside cave, stone circle, fairy ring or whatnot) that adventurers can go to without higher magic. And to the adventurers, all the monsters of Svartalfheim and Alfheim are just "dwarves" and "elves" with bewildering variety, and they're probably all shapeshifters in any case so why bother trying to classify them?

Same for trolls--the standard MM troll is actually a poor fit in my opinion (except for the long noses) and the term can encompass anything from orcs to ettins, as well as hags. They probably look more similar to each other, but orcs I would just describe as a band of small trolls.

Giants work well as-is, but I would give their leaders more spellcasting ability (mostly illusions).

The PC races are all basically humans with a touch of the right ancestry, and they all look more human than not. For example, a half-orc (trollborn) is probably big and muscular, and maybe really hairy and/or ugly, but doesn't have an obviously nonhuman trait. Dwarves and gnomes are probably on the short side and dark-skinned, but that's it.
Dwarf or gnome: your family has some dark-elf heritage.
Elf or halfling: your family has some light-elf heritage.
Half-orc: your family has some troll heritage
Half-elf: changeling children or huldra
Shifter (see Eberron handout): skin-changer

Good luck with your game! I did something similar ages ago using the Hero system, and the campaign lasted 4 years. The Scandinavian world had lots of little kings and jarls who would try to attract heroes to their service, which is a good setup for getting together an adventuring party. And if you don't know it, check out Poul Anderson's "Hrolf Kraki's Saga" for some inspiration.

 

[aashintu1]

Some Forgotten Realms books reference Norse culture in the Ruathym and Luskan settings. The people from these nations are Illuskan, based on Vikings. They were predominantly pirates raiding islands and coastal areas. They were mostly berserkers, they had shamans who channelled ancestral spirits. One clan was known as the Wolves of the Seas, because a clanswoman was blessed by the ancestors to boost the warriors prowess with wolf spirits. All this is in the book Tangled Webs, which features a drow fighter/mage. She is called a dockalfar by the locals.

The main threat to these people was from a rival nation of "Vikings"; as well as sahuagin - which you could reskin as aquatic trolls. Local lore referenced dragons and krakens too.

 

[aashintu1]

I'm not sure if they are Norse or Celtic, but another threat in the book was kelpies. They were malicious plants with the spirit of a siren who lured men to their deaths, the men would think they were embracing a beautiful woman but ended up drowning.

 

[cheops]

The Vanir aren't god-like they are gods, the Vanir and the Aesir are the two houses of gods, the Vanir are the gods that had always existed in the Viking Pantheon, the Aesir are the gods that came into the pantheon from outside cultures.

This is debatable. Neither the vaner or the asar are immortal, but they do keep eternally young by eating apples of youth. They do represent two different families, but the asar are mainly mentioned in the icelandic edda, and the division between them is not clear.

The Dvargar were very active in Norse mythos, also they need to reside underground as they turn to stone when exposed to the sun (see the legend of Alviss). The Dvargar are cultured, they are renown in Norse mythology, in fact they created the three items that make Thor as powerful as he is, they crafted Mjölnir (his hammer), megingjörð (his belt of strength) and Járngreipr (his iron gloves). They also made the mystical items wielded by Odin, and the rest of the Vanir.

Dvärgarna are described as small, ugly and longnosed with dirt-colored skin and an aversion to daylight. They are crafty. Older names indicate that they were likely thought of as spirits of death, or the ghosts of ancestors (Nár, corpse; Bláinn, blue; Dáinn, death). Dvärgar are mainly described as an evil race, hostile to humans. They are probably identical to Snorres svartalfer, and ancestors to the more recent gnomes and trolls (tomtegubbar, vättar, bergatroll, etc) in subsequent nordic mythology.

The Dark Elves were a factor in Norse/Viking Mythology. Norse mythology contains both light elves (Ljósálfar who dwell in the realm of Álfheimr) and dark elves (Dökkálfar who dwell in the Earth), there is no realm indicated for their inhabitation other than that they dwell in the same plane as humans, but that they are subterranean and therefore are generally unseen by man.

Yeah, but the ljusalfer are mentioned as "asar och alfer" in the poetic edda, which seems to mean "all the gods", that is asar and vaner. The way Snorre speaks about svartalfer and svartalfheim makes it probable that they are in fact dvärgar. The fairys are in fact the etymological inheritors of the alfer in nordic mythology (fairy = älvor).

 

[Viking Bastard]

There are a lot of theories of the origin/difference between the Æsir and the Vanir, that the Vanir were simply older gods that were supplanted by newer gods (and vice-versa), that they were the gods of the people living in Scandinavia before the Germanic invasion (and it's really the story of Germanic invasion and victory followed by the fusion of the old and new cultures), that the Vanir are the Finnish/Sami gods, or that it's just a story with no real historical meaning. Ultimately we don't know. There's nothing to indicate, that I've heard of, that the two groups were treated any differently. The Vanir seem to have been more popular in Sweden than elsewhere, so maybe that gives us some clues, but what gods saw worship and which didn't was very regional.

We have no idea who the light elves were supposed to be. Dark elves are dwarves, but the only thing we have on the light elves are a namedrop. I'd just use D&D elves, myself. Icelandic elf folklore was lifted pretty whole sale from Celtic/Irish mythology, presumably brought over with Irish slaves (Viking age Icelanders enslaved so many Irishmen that modern Icelanders are one third genetically Irish), and generally not considered to have any connection to the álfar of Norse mythology.

Keep in mind that Norse trolls are nothing like D&D trolls. Just use Ogres and Giants and call them Trolls and Jötunns.

 

[cheops]

You could also use goblins and orcs as stand-ins for trolls i think. And deep gnomes.

 

[Herr der Qual]

This is debatable. Neither the vaner or the asar are immortal, but they do keep eternally young by eating apples of youth. They do represent two different families, but the asar are mainly mentioned in the icelandic edda, and the division between them is not clear.

The Vikings/Norse/Germanic mythology is unique for a few things a couple of them are that A.) Being a god doesn't make you immortal per-say. B.) They had an end of the world theory. They were the only polytheistic religion to believe in an apocalypse.

Dvärgarna are described as small, ugly and longnosed with dirt-colored skin and an aversion to daylight. They are crafty. Older names indicate that they were likely thought of as spirits of death, or the ghosts of ancestors (Nár, corpse; Bláinn, blue; Dáinn, death). Dvärgar are mainly described as an evil race, hostile to humans. They are probably identical to Snorres svartalfer, and ancestors to the more recent gnomes and trolls (tomtegubbar, vättar, bergatroll, etc) in subsequent nordic mythology.

Yes but if you go through the mythology they were created at the same time as humans, each of the nine realms has inhabitants. Also, they factor very heavily into the mythology of the gods.

Yeah, but the ljusalfer are mentioned as "asar och alfer" in the poetic edda, which seems to mean "all the gods", that is asar and vaner. The way Snorre speaks about svartalfer and svartalfheim makes it probable that they are in fact dvärgar. The fairys are in fact the etymological inheritors of the alfer in nordic mythology (fairy = älvor).

Snorri's Edda says that Álfheimr is the "third heaven"or "all the heavens" not that the Ljósálfar are gods. If the Dökkálfar are dwarves, that means also that the Ljósálfar are a type of dwarf, Dökk (dark/black) álfar (fairy/elf), Ljós (white/light) álfar(fairy/elf). Again the Dökkálfar were never stated to live anywhere but inside the earth, the Dvergr (sorry I spelled it wrong earlier) dwell in Nidavellir, and only in Nidavellir.




And to answer someone else, Kelpies are fey, mostly considered Celtic mythos, one could make an argument for their inclusion in Germanic/Norse/Viking folklore

 

[Umbran]

Here's a note for consideration.

A "viking world" has a significant problem, in that the culture you're talking about (late-Norse) had as one of its centerpieces the act of going on expeditions. The name, "Viking", comes from the word víking, or expedition.

If your vikings don't have other people to go out and raid, they aren't vikings. And entire world of people who go out and making pirate raids on each other doesn't seem particularly sustainable. Your Vikings need, in some sense, the equivalent of a relatively wealthy mainland Europe to plunder.

Now, you can step back a bit to have your Vikings be somewhat earlier Norse, but those folks were a bit less battle-oriented.

 

[cheops]

The vikings were only a small part of a much larger population of tradesmen, farmers, craftsmen, hunters, fishermen, and so on. The ethymological origins of the word viking is not agreed upon, some viable explanations include 1) laying in ambush with ships in a cove ("vik"), 2) people from the kingdom of "viken" (not proven to have existed), 3) a word for trading the crew of oarsmen from before learning how to sail with actual sails, and 4) the latin word "vicus" meaning town of trade, indication that the vikings were known as tradesmen first and foremost.

 

[Umbran]

The vikings were only a small part of a much larger population of tradesmen, farmers, craftsmen, hunters, fishermen, and so on.

Yes, but the mythology he's drawing on takes a *very* large influence from the viking raiding activity. And that activity generally calls for raiding someone richer than yoru own people, or it doesn't make a whole lot of economic sense.