Abstract. Let (M, g) be a compact Riemannian manifold without boundary, with dim M ≥ 3, and f : R → R a continuous function which is sublinear at infinity. By various variational approaches, existence of multiple solutions of the eigenvalue problem, is established for certain eigenvalues λ > 0, depending on further properties of f and on explicit forms of the functionK. Here, ∆g stands for the Laplace-Beltrami operator on (M, g), and α,K are smooth positive functions. These multiplicity results are then applied to solve Emden-Fowler equations which involve sublinear terms at infinity.