If you’ve ever played Skyrim, or just heard other people talk about it, you’ve definitely heard of the mysterious and beautiful place known as Sovngarde.
The Skyrim player hears about it from time to time, and can’t help but be impressed and fascinated by that magical, legendary place. For those who wish to bring some Elder Scrolls magic to their daily life, there is now a Sovngarde font that you can install on your computer. And then you can feel like you’re in Skyrim while you’re enjoying your morning coffee, or doing some work, or just hanging out with friends online!
This article is a thorough walkthrough of what the Skyrim Sovngarde font is, how to install it for Skyrim, as well as make it work on your Windows machine.
But First, What Is Sovngarde?
In short, Sovngarde is a heaven-like place where the spirits of Nord heroes reside forever. In a sense, it is the Nord version of Heaven, or Valhalla.
To earn your eternal place in Sovngarde, one must die and complete some quests to be judged worthy by its native god, Shor. Here’s an in depth video if you wish to learn more about Sovngarde:
But we’re not going to talk about only the Sovngarde from the game. The truth is that Skyrim has inspired many things outside of gaming as well. For example, today I’ll tell you everything about the new Skyrim inspired Sovngarde font, available for both Skyrim and your Windows system.
Skyrim Sovngarde Font
The Sovngarde font is a small, yet awesome project I started some time ago. My goal is to make the most realistic version of the text for this particular type of writing system. You can help me by writing suggestions and examples in the comments section.
Some background: the Skyrim Sovngarde font was inspired by my frequent use of the Skyrim map in Google Earth. I noticed that the Elder Scrolls V has a huge topographical map of its world, which is super cool. You may have already noticed it when you view the Skyrim worldspace in Creation Kit, but when you export it to your Skyrim directory, it can be viewed by pressing f4 and entering “coc riverwood.” It’s often very helpful to open the map in this way when developing mods.
The Skyrim terrain is clearly based on some real life terrain, but it is not 100% accurate.
I was inspired enough by the game map that I wanted to start drawing out some of my ideas about Sovngarde – which is where you go after you die in a Nord-like way.
When I think about it in relation to the real world, Sovngarde is like Wikipedia – The Matrix of all knowledge, which you see when you die in a heroic way. It’s this place that exists outside life and death, where your actions can be understood by others. In other words, instead of just being memory or history, your life becomes something that has meaning.
It’s the explanation for why you did what you did, or how it fits into history. I don’t know about you but I think that is truly awesome!
How to Install The Skyrim Sovngarde Font?
To get the Skyrim Sovngarde font on your computer, just follow these steps:
1. Download it from my Dropbox account here or copy this link into your browser: https://db.tt/Nl7Igw2k.
2. Save it to a directory of your choice. I recommend something like “My documents” so you can find it again later if you want to uninstall.
3. If necessary, install your OS’s font previewer. Look in your control panel or do a search for “Font Viewer.” It should take a few seconds after opening it before the Skyrim Sovngarde font appears on screen.
4. You can now choose it as a system font so you can see what it looks like where ever text is rendered on your computer. I decided to name the file “Sovngarde” so you can find it easily in your fonts list, but you don’t have to follow my example here.
Why Use This Font?
As I mentioned before, the idea behind this font is that it’s like how the game world interprets your actions in Skyrim. For instance, if you help people, do quests for them and play nice, Sovngarde represents these acts by giving you an afterlife full of good spirits to associate with.
On the other hand, if you kill people and play as an evil character, Sovngarde represents these acts by giving you an afterlife full of bad spirits to associate with.
Regardless of how you feel about your deeds in Skyrim, you can now turn your computer into a Sovngarde interface using the Sovngarde font. True Skyrim fans will definitely appreciate it!
Next, the font may improve readability in the game itself. I think it’s against the spirit of Skyrim to have so much text in the game be impossible to see. This font gives you a better viewing experience by making all written text appear exactly how it does in the game.
Additionally, I’m sure this will be useful to anybody who creates mods involving any fancy text – that you will actually be able to read, for a change!
