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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 7328431" data-attributes="member: 58172">In Norse animism, there are seven kinds of nature spirits.• alfar − sky spirit (elf)• dvergar − land spirit (dwarf)• vanir − fertility-fate spirit• jǫtnar − wilderness-chaos spirit• æsir − civilization-order spirit• náir − corpse spirit• mennskar (menn) − human spirit(To avoid complex grammar for the sake of English, I improperly use the Norse plural form at all times for both singular and plural. So, ‘one alfar’ and ‘many alfar’, and so on. D&D often does this: compare, one drow and many drow, one duergar and many duergar, and so on.)The seven kinds of nature spirits appear explicitly in the poem Alvíssmál, in the book Sæmundar Edda, also called the Poetic Edda and the Elder Edda. Norse poems are probably songs set to music without musical instruments.In the poem, an æsir named Þórr ‘thunder’ challenges a dvergar named Alvíss ‘all wise’ to list the nickname that each kind of nature spirit gives for a certain cosmic feature. For example, the alfar call the ‘sky’ by the nickname ‘Splendid Roof’, but the dvergar call it by the nickname ‘Dripping Great Hall’. The nicknames evidence the viewpoints of each kind of nature spirit. The whole world appears as a circular flat floor with the horizon all around. Vaulting over this floor, is the dome of the sky. It forms a kind of hemispheric great hall. The alfar call the sky the Splendid Roof because they live high up with the sun, at the dome of the sky, above the clouds where the weather is always good, and for them the celestial dome is a lovely luminous ‘roof’, whether shining blue or glittering stars. By contrast, the dvergar call the sky the Dripping Great Hall because they live in ground, under the floor of this dome, inside the soil and the rocks that the clouds rain on, and for them the sky dome is a ‘great hall’ that leaks on the floor. The alfar and the dvergar are the animistic spirits of the sky above and the earth below, respectively.Thus the structure of the poem mentions all seven of the main kinds of animistic spirits within the Norse worldview. The nicknames supply clues that help reconstruct what each animistic spirit is about.The poem Alvíssmál lists humans as one of the kinds of nature spirits. Humans too are a significant cosmic feature that collectively has a psychic presence. Humans (mennskar) are animistic spirits, just like alfar and dvergar are.In the Old Norse language, a ‘nature spirit’ is called a vættir, literally a ‘being’. There are seven different kinds of vættir. Each kind is understood to form its own ‘clan’ (ættir). For example, the entire human species is one clan, in the sense of an extended family who descend from the same ancestors. Sometimes this Norse word is translated less accurately as ‘race’, in the sense of a ‘species’ that is humanlike. Really, these are seven different families. In the Norse view, humans collectively are a clan of nature spirits. Individuals from different clans can have relations with each other and have children together who descend from both kinds of nature spirits. There are individuals who descend from both alfar and human parentage, individuals who descend from both jǫtnar and human parentage, individuals who descend from jǫtnar and dvergar parentage, and so on.These different kinds of nature spirits coexist as neighbors, and interact like neighboring clans. The animistic ethic prioritizes the building constructive relationships with all aspects of nature.</blockquote>

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