Etymology

Niflheim

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Today it means: In Germanic and Norse cosmology, the Norse underworld, location of the domain Hel and of the realm of Hel, the goddess of the dead. Full definition →

Old Norse Niflheimr ← Proto-Germanic *nibilaz
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The story

  1. Proto-Germanic · derived from*nibilaz“dark, misty”
  2. Old Norse · borrowed fromNiflheimr
  3. English todayNiflheim

From Old Norse Niflheimr (literally “world of mist”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *nibilaz (“dark, misty”), from *nebulaz (“fog, mist, darkness”) + *haimaz (“home, house, village”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.