Andvari and Andvarafors

“There was a dwarf named Andvari, who had long lived in the fall in the likeness of a pike, and in which he supplied himself with food.”

2. Andvari I am named, Oin was my father named; many a cataract have I passed. A luckless Norn in times of old decreed, that in the water I should wade.

“Thereupon Odin sent Loke to the home of the swarthy elves, and he came to the dwarf whose name is Andvare, and who lived as a fish, in the water.”

The prose before the poem, in Thorpe’s version, says that the Æsir came to Andvarafors, the waterfall of Andvari, where the dwarf lived as a pike. The otter Otr, brother of Regin and Fafnir, was killed there. Hreidmar demanded gold for the death. Loki borrowed Rán’s net, caught the pike and learned the dwarf’s name. Andvari handed over his gold, kept one ring, lost that too, and went into his stone, cursing the gold.

Snorri tells the same tale in Skáldskaparmál but says Odin sent Loki to the home of the swarthy elves, where Andvare lived as a fish in the water. The poem names the waterfall and does not name a land; Snorri names a land and does not name the waterfall.

The ring is later called Andvaranaut, Andvare’s gift, in Snorri. The translation used here suggests the name Andvari may come from a word for cautious or timid; this is a guess in a glossary, not a settled etymology.

Snorri’s black-elf country is Svartálfaheimr, which has its own entry, but the poem’s waterfall is not tied to it by any text. The link between the two sources is only that both tell of the same dwarf, the same gold and the same curse.