heimskringla 47
forth a beautiful son named Heimdall. (Snorri Stur-
luson provides a different list of names for Aegir’s
daughters in his S kaldskaparmal , but scholars have
not been able to explain the differences in the two
lists as they have survived in existing manuscripts.)
The nine mothers nurtured their son on the
strength of the earth, the moisture of the sea, and the
heat of the Sun. The new god thrived so well on this
diet that he was soon tall enough and strong enough
to hasten to Asgard, the home of the gods.
There the gods endowed Heimdall with marvel-
ously keen senses and named him guardian of the
Rainbow Bridge.
H eimskringla (The Orb of the Earth)
Heimdall with Gjallarhorn. From the 18th-century
Icelandic manuscript SÁM 66, in the care of the
Árni Magnússon Institute of Iceland
Heimdall was clever, too. He had the brilliant
idea of sending the thunder god, Thor, to Jotunheim
dressed as a girl in bridal dress in order to get back
Thor’s magic hammer from the giant Thrym, who
had stolen it.
Heimdall’s hearing was so acute and finely tuned
that he could hear the grass pushing up from under
the earth and the wool growing on a sheep’s back.
Heimdall needed so little sleep that it seemed he was
always awake and alert.
Heimdall’s Nine Mothers One obscure and
fragmented myth, related in the H yndluljoth of
the P oetic E dda , told the following story about the
origins of Heimdall, the watchman of the bridge
Bilrost.
One day when the great god Odin walked along
the seashore, he came across nine beautiful giant-
esses, sound asleep on the sand. They were the wave
maidens, daughters of the sea god, Aegir. Their
names were Alta (Fury), Augeia (Sand Strewer),
Aurgiafa (Sorrow-Whelmer), Egia (Foamer), Gialp
(Howler), Greip (Gripper), Jarnsaxa (Ironstone),
Sindur (Dusk), and Ulfrum (She-Wolf ). Odin was so
enchanted with their beauty that he married all nine
of them, and together the nine giantesses brought
A com-
pilation of sagas intended to be read as history,
compiled by Icelandic leader, historian, and writer
Snorri Sturluson and probably written between
1223 and 1235 a.d.
In Hemiskringla, Snorri set out to create a history
of the kings of Norway by compiling many sagas and
tales. According to his preface to the work, Snorri
relied heavily on the poems of skalds for the informa-
tion he passes on. These skaldic poems were stories
and poems passed by word of mouth from generation
to generation and were part of the oral tradition that
preceded written manuscripts. An individual poet
composed the poems, but many people retold them
over time, giving credit to the skald as they did so.
Heimskringla begins with Ynglinga Saga, which is
the story of the Ynglingar, the kings of Sweden who
were believed to be descendents of the gods, specifi-
cally of Frey, who was known in these legends as a
son of Odin. After a brief geographical introduction,
Snorri begins this first saga by telling of the life of
Odin, a great human warrior. Snorri’s version of
Odin in Heimskringla, is a brave, successful, revered,
and even feared leader, but not a god. Here Snorri is
trying to show how people turned Odin into a god
through their stories, or mythologized him.
According to Snorri, Odin traveled out of Asia
and eventually arrived in the northland, founding a
kingdom there to leave to his sons. Throughout the
rest of the Heimskringla, Snorri includes details from
mythology. He tells of Odin’s preserving Mimir’s
(2) severed head so that it can speak prophecies, of
Odin’s magical feats, of his prophecies, and even
of the two ravens that flew out from him each day
and brought back to him the news of the land. This
is much the same story that Snorri presents in his
prologue to G ylfaginning , his great retelling of
Norse mythology.