50 hnitbjorg
name Hlin appears often in the poem V oluspa , but
her character remains unclear to modern scholars.
H nitbjorg
The mountain stronghold where
the giant Suttung hid the mead of poetry, which
he stole from the dwarfs Fjalar and Galar. Odin
used the carpenter’s auger, Rati, to drill through the
mountain and shape-shifted into a serpent in order
to slither through the hole.
Although this story is told in the poem H avamal ,
Snorri Sturluson mentions the name Hnitbjorg for
the mountain in S kaldskaparmal . Snorri also says
that the kenning “Liquor of Hnitbjorg” refers to
the gift of poetry people receive when they drink the
mead protected by the mountain.
H nossa (N ossa )
The daughter of the goddess
Freya and od. Her name means “jewel.” Snorri Stur-
luson wrote that she was so beautiful that her name
could be given to anything that is precious or lovely.
H oddmimir ’ s W ood Another name for the
sacred tree Yggdrasil, used in V afthrudnismal (Lay
of Vafthrudnir). It was from Hoddmimir’s Wood that
the two humans Lif and Lifthrasir emerged at the
end of the world, after Ragnarok.
H odur (H od )
The blind god. His father was
Odin; his mother, Frigg; and his brother, Balder.
Hodur unwittingly killed Balder with the help of the
trickster god Loki and a sprig of mistletoe. Hodur
in turn was killed by Vali, the avenger, another son
of Odin. After Ragnarok (the end of the world),
Hodur and Balder were reconciled and together
returned from Hel’s underworld to the new world.
H oenir (H onir )
The god of silence. He was
one of the three original Aesir gods who, along
with his brothers Odin and Lothur, created the
world according to the Eddic poem V oluspa . (See
creation.) In his P rose E dda , Snorri Sturluson
calls Hoenir Vili and Lothur Ve.
After the Aesir/Vanir War, Hoenir went to live
with the Vanir as part of an exchange of gods. With
him went the wise Mimir (2). The Vanir gods became
angry when Hoenir appeared to be indecisive and
not quick-witted, always relying on Mimir to make
decisions. Because Hoenir was Odin’s brother, the
Vanir did not harm him but instead killed Mimir and
sent his head back to Odin.
Hoenir is associated with Odin and Loki in the
stories “Idunn’s Apples” (see under Idunn) and
Hodur in the act of killing Balder with a sprig of
mistletoe. From the 18th-century Icelandic manu-
script SÁM 66, in the care of the Árni Magnússon
Institute in Iceland
“Otr’s Ransom” (see under Otr), when he accom-
panied the two gods on journeys to Earth.
Hoenir survived Ragnarok, the end of the world.
Not much is known about this silent god.
horse The horse plays an important role as a
helper in Norse mythology, but archaeological and
historical evidence suggests that the ancient people
of Scandinavia also worshipped the horse as a divine
creature.
The Germanic tribes that were the ancestors of
the Norse regarded horses as mouthpieces of the
gods and tried to learn about the future from their
snorts and neighs. Evidence from the Migration
Period and the Viking Age suggests that the people
of the north sacrificed large numbers of horses and
even made horses fight one another as a way of
determining which one to sacrifice. People also saw a
link between horses and fertility.
Horses provided a medium for the gods to
travel between the lands of the living and the dead
and carried the gods and giants on their journeys.