structural:scholar_edition, quality:correction
Elves, dwarfs and other beings

Germanic religion also contained various other mythological beings, such as the monstrous wolf Fenrir, as well as beings such as elves, dwarfs, and other non-divine supernatural beings.

Elves are beings of Germanic lower mythology that are mostly male and appear as a collective. Snorri Sturluson divides the elves into two groups, the dark elves and the light elves; however, this division is not attested elsewhere. People's understanding of elves varied by time and place: in some instances they were godlike beings, in others dead ancestors, nature spirits, or demons. In Norse pagan belief, elves seem to have been worshipped to some extent. The concept of elves begins to differ between Scandinavia and the West Germanic peoples in the Middle Ages, possibly under Celtic influence. In Anglo-Saxon England, elves seem to have been potentially dangerous, powerful supernatural beings associated with woods, fields, hills, and bodies of water.

Like elves, dwarfs are beings of Germanic lower mythology. They are mostly male and imagined as a collective; however, individual named dwarfs also play an important role in Norse mythology. In Norse and German texts, dwarfs live in mountains and are known as great smiths and craftsmen. They may have originally been nature spirits or demons of death. Snorri Sturluson equates the dwarfs to a subgroup of the elves, and many high medieval German epics and some Old Norse myths give dwarfs names with the word alp or álf- ("elf") in them, suggesting some confusion between the two. However, there is no evidence that the dwarfs were worshipped. In Anglo-Saxon England, dwarfs were potentially dangerous supernatural beings associated with madness, fever, and dementia, and have no known association with mountains.

Dragons occur in Germanic mythology, with Norse examples including Níðhöggr and the world-serpent Jörmungandr. In the (late) sources for Scandinavian religion, dragons play an important role in the mythic cosmology. It is difficult to tell how much existing sources have been influenced by Greco-Roman and Christian ideas about dragons. Based on the native word (Old High German: lintwurm, related to Old Norse: linnr, "snake"), the early description in Beowulf, and early pictorial depictions, they were probably imagined as snake-like and of large size, able to spit poison or fire, and dwelled under the earth. Scholarly consensus is that Germanic dragons were originally more snake- or worm-like and could not fly, but that the idea of flying dragons entered from Greco-Roman culture. The medieval Germanic languages did not distinguish linguistically or conceptually between snakes and dragons in their mythology.