3 ms·

I disagree that “älvdalen” could not mean valley of the älvor.

• gerikson 5y ago
  Grammatically, yes but practically, no. There are multiple rivers with "älv" as a suffix in Sweden, among them the biggest and most economically/historically significant. This means that any possessive formed by "älv-" automatically would refer to a river. If you'd set your Swedish language fantasy world where there's a place called "Älvdalen", readers would be confused. It would be like calling Minas Tirith Stockholm.