So I have a couple friends in Norway, one who grew up on the countryside whose family have some folk traditions, and one who lives in the city but has a great interest in folklore. Both of them are baffled and appalled at the idea that anyone would want to work with vættir, as they say those are evil. A better bet might be tusser. Now that's not a term I can find much English info on. At first I assumed we are all mistaken, but could it be that vættir is something different in Icelandic?
I’m not so familiar with Norwegian folk customs but yeah, the word vættr as we tend to use it in the sort of general discourse is heavily influenced by Icelandic and even the Icelandic huldufólk ‘hidden-people.’ In Old Norse anything living was a vættr (this itself a narrowing of meaning as it originally just meant ‘thing’). I think the best translation of ON vættr into Norwegian would probably be vesen. Óðinn and Loki both get called rǫg vættr ‘ragr/argr wight’ in various sources. In some places it might have been used in place of specifically harmful or troublesome wights until that became the primary meaning. Whereas in Icelandic it typically refers to the four landvættir guardians of Iceland. Icelandic conceptions of invisible beings may also have been influenced somewhat by folk custom from the British isles that didn’t reach the Scandinavian peninsula. Of course even the more positive of them were always considered potentially dangerous.
In Scandinavian I know there is at least some linguistic remodeling that might point to a strong perceived connection between vættir and jǫtnar resulting in vætte/vätte and jætte/jätte. Although I don’t think that happened in Norway specifically.
The word tusser is cognate to þursar (/þussar) which are far more explicitly dangerous than vættir both in Old Norse and even moreso in Modern Icelandic. (The re-borrowing back into Icelandic, tussa, is one of the most offensive things you can say in Icelandic, especially to a woman, btw. Don’t do it). But lexical drift works in mysterious ways. Based on the descriptions on Bokmål WIkipedia and Den Store Norske leksikon I’d say tusser sound an awful lot like what I’d tend to call huldufólk (note that they have to translate þurs, and to Norwegian troll rather than tuss).
I don’t actually know why a Norwegian would consider a vette more dangerous than a tusse but if Norwegian folk custom is as diverse as its dialects it seems very reasonable to me that it could be a regional thing.
I wonder if your friends recognize alver/alvar and if they would include them under the subheading of vætte/vetter.
Maybe @hedendom would have something to say about this. Whatever you find out, I would be interested in hearing about it.
