Nidavellir

Nidavellir is by far my favorite language in the spiral not only because it's the most complicated, but also because it seemingly appears everywhere. Nidavellir has been known about and was partially translated a couple of years ago, but the main reason why it stumped so many players is because it has separate runes for upper and lower case letters. In my search of the language a few years ago, I found many forums posts and even another website dedicated to deciphering the cryptograms hidden in the games, yet all of them had incorrectly translated the alphabet. The main reason why I call this language Nidavellir is because it is primarily found in that area of Grizzleheim, under Northguard. The Nidavellir runes, much like Bear, are inscribed in the stone walls, stairs, floors, and doors of the dungeons. Here are some examples:

As you can see above, I used the stairs and other runes that were difficult to see in order to fill in the gaps of the incompletely translated language. Prior to my work, "The Wisdom of the Sword" was one of the very few instances of Nidavellir that was found and deciphered. Other players initially believed that the alphabet was simply uppercase and that the other remaining runes were a completely separate language, often referred to as "Raven" because they were also found in Ravenscar. However, I quickly realized that this "Raven" language looked very similar to some of the runes used in Nidavellir, and that's when I discovered that the language was derived from Hungarian runes, like how Bear is derived from Norse runes. I crosschecked the Hungarian runes with both the "Raven" and Nidavellir letters and I proved that they were both the same language, they each just used a different assortment of upper and lower case letters.

What also helped me figure out these translations was the Grizzleheim lore itself. The "Raven" script in Ravenscar was really just Nidavellir that read "ever winter," the ravens' ultimate goal in controlling the world. Additionally Hragar, as told in the questline "The Lore of the Runes," is said to have been one of the first kings of Grizzleheim who taught other bears how to read and use runes. For a long time I assumed that the cryptograms were complete gibberish until I realized that they did not translate into regular English words but actually spelled out the names of Wizard101 characters. 

Now, the main reason why I was so focused on deciphering Nidavellir is not because it proved to be an interesting set of cryptograms, but because it is actually used on the concept map of Marco Pollo in Pirate101. I talk about Nidavellir and how I used it on the map extensively on my other website, Decoding the Map of Marco Pollo, but here's the brief version of it: on the map is a message that reads "HOW Did You Learn Our DifFicult Language," which is probably a nod to how difficult it is to translate Nidavellir given the separate runes for upper and lower case letters. This message, though, is used again in Grizzleheim in another reference to the "Lore of the Runes" questline. So, Nidavellir seems to be used only in Grizzleheim and on the map, right? Absolutely not. Like Celestian, Nidavellir is used in all sorts of old and new housing items and strange decorations found in many strange places. In fact, it's so hard to miss because the runes often just look like random glyphs or filigrees. Here are some examples I've been able to find throughout the Spiral, although there are probably more instances that I've missed:

Well, that was a lot of information. As I said before, Nidavellir is the most interesting language to me because it's used in so much lore and because it's so complicated. I'm just a person who loves puzzles, so deciphering Nidavellir messages has always been fun for me. However, I've still got my work cut out for me since I still have not found every single upper case and lower case letter to full translate the alphabet. For now, here's what I've found: