Motsognir

Motsognir (Old Norse "Mótsognir", the prefix "Mót-" means "battle", the affix "-sognir" means "roarer") is the father of the Dvergar in Norse mythology.

Origin

Motsognir is the creation of Odin and his brothers, Vili and Vé, who fashioned him out of Ymir's blood and bones in the form of a maggot. These Æsir later gave him a roughly-humanoid appearance and a human-like intelligence, which the rest of the dvergar later inherited.

This interpretation of the dvergars origin is given in Snorri Sturlusons Prose Edda (Gylfaginning 14), and is quite disputed. The original text in Völuspá can easily be understood to tell a story of how the dvergar and the Æsir together gave shape and life to humans. If this is how the text should be read, the dvergar must have always existed, like the Æsir, Vanir and Álfar.

Characteristics

Like all dvergar, Motsognir avoids sunlight, fearing that it might turn him back into stone. As a result, he makes his home in Nidavellir, ("dark fields"), which in turn is a part of Svartálfheim ("dark elf home"), one of the nine worlds fixed to the world tree of Norse cosmology, Yggdrasil.

Though he is considered the foremost of the dvergar, Motsognir is barely mentioned in the body of Norse myth, and none of his works as a smith or otherwise are attested to.

Given his creation by the ruler of the gods, his relative ugliness, and his connection to smithwork, Motsognir's equivalents in classical mythology would be Hephaestus and Vulcan, although there are many differences as well.