  We introduce a new variant of Nodal Virtual Element spaces that mimics the
"Serendipity Finite Element Methods" (whose most popular example is the 8-node
quadrilateral) and allows to reduce (often in a significant way) the number of
internal degrees of freedom. When applied to the faces of a three-dimensional
decomposition, this allows a reduction in the number of face degrees of
freedom: an improvement that cannot be achieved by a simple static
condensation. On triangular and tetrahedral decompositions the new elements
(contrary to the original VEMs) reduce exactly to the classical Lagrange FEM.
On quadrilaterals and hexahedra the new elements are quite similar (and have
the same amount of degrees of freedom) to the Serendipity Finite Elements, but
are much more robust with respect to element distortions. On more general
polytopes the Serendipity VEMs are the natural (and simple) generalization of
the simplicial case.
