Alfheim (, " elf home ") is one of the Nine Worlds and home of the Light Elves in Norse mythology and appears also in Anglo-Scottish ballads under the form Elfhame ( Elphame, Elfame ) as a fairyland, sometimes modernized as Elfland ( Elfinland, Elvenland ).

( from Icelandic for " Æsir faith ", pronounced, in Old Norse ) is a form of Germanic neopaganism which developed in the United States from the 1970s.

In Norse mythology, the dragon Fafnir ( best known in the form of a dragon slain by Sigurðr ) bears on his forehead the Ægis-helm ( ON ægishjálmr ), or Ægir's helmet, or more specifically the " Helm of Terror ".

Ægir is an Old Norse word meaning " terror " and the name of a destructive giant associated with the sea ; ægis is the genitive ( possessive ) form of ægir and has no direct relation to Greek aigis.

This form of amok appears to resemble the berserker of the Norse, the cafard or cathard ( Polynesia ), mal de pelea ( Puerto Rico ), and iich ' aa ( Navaho ).

* Old Norse: The definite article was the enclitic-inn ,-in ,-itt ( masculine, feminine and neuter nominative singular ), as in álfrinn " the elf ", gjǫfin " the gift ", and tréit " the tree ", an abbreviated form of the independent pronoun hinn, cognate of the German pronoun jener.

Successive defeats by the Norse would force the Picts and Scoti to cease their historic hostility to each other and unite in the 9th Century, to form the Kingdom of Scotland.

A kenning ( ; derived from Old Norse ) is a type of literary trope, specifically circumlocution, in the form of a compound ( usually two words, often hyphenated ) that employs figurative language in place of a more concrete single-word noun.

Old Norse kennings take the form of a genitive phrase ( báru fákr " wave ’ s steed " = “ ship ” ( Þorbjörn hornklofi: Glymdrápa 3 )) or a compound word ( gjálfr-marr " sea-steed " = “ ship ” ( Anon.

Noting that the modifying component in Germanic compound words can take the form of a genitive or a bare root, he points to behavioural similarities between genitive determinants and the modifying element in regular Old Norse compound words, such as the fact that neither can be modified by a free-standing ( declined ) adjective.

Midgard ( an anglicised form of Old Norse ; Old English, Old High German, Gothic Midjun-gards ; literally " middle enclosure ") is the name for the world ( in the sense of oikoumene ) inhabited by and known to humans in early Germanic cosmology, and specifically one of the Nine Worlds and in Norse mythology.

The Gaelic name would then be derivable from the Norse form.

According to Albert Sturtevant, " far as the element Rata-is concerned, Bugge's hypothesis has no valid foundation in view of the fact that the Norse word Rata ( gen. form of Rati *) is used in

The Norn language was a form of Old Norse, which continued to be spoken until the 18th century when it was replaced by an insular dialect of Scots known as Shetlandic, which is in turn is being replaced by Scottish English.

Valhalla is mentioned in euhemerized form and as an element of remaining Norse pagan belief in Heimskringla.

Scotland took its present form when it regained territory from the Norse between the 13th and the 15th centuries ; the Western Isles and the Isle of Man remained under Scandinavian authority until 1266.

For example, the Old Norse word hrossvalr means ' horse-whale ' and is thought to have been passed in an inverted form to both Dutch and the dialects of northern Germany as walros and Walross.

While the Old Norse month name ýlir is similarly attested, the Old Norse corpus also contains numerous references to an event by the Old Norse form of the name, jól.

The indigenous pre-Christian belief system of the Anglo-Saxons was a form of Germanic paganism and therefore closely related to the Old Norse religion, as well as other Germanic pre-Christian cultures.

As a result, the written form of English includes the spelling patterns of many languages ( Old English, Old Norse, Norman French, Classical Latin and Greek, as well as numerous modern languages ) superimposed upon one another.

The Old Norse form of the name was Mors.

In Norwegian Nynorsk and Icelandic the Old Norse form has survived to this day ( in Icelandic only as a less used synonym to gluggi ), in Swedish the word vindöga remains as a term for a hole through the roof of a hut, and in the Danish language ‘ vindue ’ and Norwegian Bokmål ‘ vindu ’, the direct link to ‘ eye ’ is lost, just like for ' window '.

The Norse discovery was documented in the 13th century Icelandic Sagas and was corroborated by recent L ' Anse aux Meadows archeological evidence.

This would have been a burial fitting a king who was famous for his wealth in Old Norse sources.

The first known use of the word ball in English in the sense of a globular body that is played with was in 1205 in in the phrase, "" The word came from the Middle English bal ( inflected as ball-e ,-es, in turn from Old Norse böllr ( pronounced ; compare Old Swedish baller, and Swedish boll ) from Proto-Germanic ballu-z, ( whence probably Middle High German bal, ball-es, Middle Dutch bal ), a cognate with Old High German ballo, pallo, Middle High German balle from Proto-Germanic * ballon ( weak masculine ), and Old High German ballâ, pallâ, Middle High German balle, Proto-Germanic * ballôn ( weak feminine ).

Though Columbus was not the first European explorer to reach the Americas ( having been preceded by the Norse expedition led by Leif Ericson in the 11th century ), Columbus's voyages led to the first lasting European contact with America, inaugurating a period of European exploration and colonization of foreign lands that lasted for several centuries.

Saint Columba ( 7 December 521 – 9 June 597 AD )— also known as Colum Cille, or Chille ( Old Irish, meaning " dove of the church "), Colm Cille ( Irish ), Calum Cille ( Scottish Gaelic ), Colum Keeilley ( Manx Gaelic ) and Kolban or Kolbjørn ( Old Norse )— was a Gaelic Irish missionary monk who propagated Christianity among the Picts during the Early Medieval Period.

Old East Norse is in Sweden called Runic Swedish and in east Denmark Runic Danish, but until the 12th century, the dialect was roughly the same in the two countries.

Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which only had 16 letters.

A change that separated Old East Norse ( Runic Swedish / Danish ) from Old West Norse was the change of the diphthong æi ( Old West Norse ei ) to the monophthong e, as in stæin to sten.

Old East Norse was once widely spoken in the northeast counties of England.

The haugbui ( from the Old Norse word haugr meaning " howe " or " barrow ") was a mound-dweller, the dead body living on within its tomb.

The haugbui was rarely found far from its burial place and is a type of undead commonly found in Norse saga material.

Crossbreeding was possible between elves and humans in the Old Norse belief.

Titled, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, the book was composed in an English language recreation of Old Norse alliterative verse.

When the gods knew that Fenrir was fully bound, they took a cord called Gelgja ( Old Norse " fetter ") hanging from Gleipnir, inserted the cord through a large stone slab called Gjöll ( Old Norse " scream "), and the gods fastened the stone slab deep into the ground.

The Norse name for the planet Venus was Friggjarstjarna ' Frigg's star '.

The first element in the name Forsetlund ( Old Norse Forsetalundr ), a farm in the parish of Onsøy (' Odins island '), in eastern Norway, seems to be the genitive case of Forseti, offering evidence he was worshipped there.

In the Norse creation account preserved in Gylfaginning ( VIII ) it is stated that during the creation of the earth, an impassable sea was placed around the earth like a ring:

In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap (" mighty gap ") was the vast, primordial void that existed prior to the creation of the manifest universe.

In medieval Norse, the garment was known as vapntreyiu, lit.