https://www.ouvroir.fr/deshima/index.php?id=684 Publications de Auteurs Laurent Di Filippo fr 0 https://www.ouvroir.fr/deshima/index.php?id=683 Since its launch in 1974, the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) contains many references to the “Scandinavian medieval narratives”. In addition to characters and monsters, these references are used for the construction of space in different game universes and even for the organization of the multiverse, which encompasses different levels of existence where deities live. Through an analysis of the content of different works on the game and more specifically of the campaign framework Planescape (1994), this contribution proposes to explore the ways in which the references to Scandinavian medieval stories are used by the game’s authors to construct the structure of D&D’s multiverse. The first references to Scandinavian medieval narratives within the multiverse have developed from the foundations laid by Gary Gygax, one of the creators of D&D, and have then evolved through the different editions and transformed over time. In addition to this, the deployed Nordic imaginary is associated with moral principles inspired by axiologies from the fantasy literature and in particular the novels of authors such as Poul Anderson and Michael Moorcock. It thus contributes to the “structuring procedures” of the games’ fictional space which situate the Scandinavian gods on different moral scales than Greek, Hindu, Native American and other deities. Hence, far from representing a travel back to the origins, these references always produce meanings that are always renewed and hybridized. Moreover, by observing the game more in detail, the observer sees that a specific games’ imagined geography is deployed within the D&D cosmology, one quite different from the usual representations of the concepts of “Borealism” and “Nordicity”. This genuinely mythical geography is inspired by the Eddas in order to give the planes of existence a truly mythical atmosphere in order to make them divine places, way beyond the physics of more classical universes. mer., 01 oct. 2025 14:51:14 +0200 mer., 03 déc. 2025 10:58:08 +0100 https://www.ouvroir.fr/deshima/index.php?id=683