The name translates as "the dormant one" or "the one slumbering" (akin to the Danish and Norwegian "dvale" and Swedish "dvala", meaning "sleep", "unconscious condition" or "hibernation").
In the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, Dvalinn is mentioned as a name in the listing of dwarves, and again in a later stanza as a leader taking a host of dwarfs from the mountains to find a new dwelling place: In Hávamál, Dvalinn is said to have introduced the writing of runes to the dwarfs, as Dáinn had done for the elves and Odin for the gods.
In Hervarar saga, Dvalinn is one of a pair of dwarves (including Durin) who forged the magic sword Tyrfing.
In the Sörla þáttr, an Icelandic short story written by two Christian priests in the 15th century, Dvalinn is the name of one of the four dwarves (including Alfrigg, Berling and Grer) who fashioned a necklace which was later acquired by a woman called Freyja, who is King Odin's concubine, after she agreed to spend a night with each of them.
Rich Burlew has Dvalin as the first king of the Dwarves, an ascended demigod of the Northern Pantheon in The Order of the Stick.