hyndluljoth 53
Freya, respectively, where they lived until they were
called upon to help the gods fight at Ragnarok, the
battle at the end of time.
Many of the surviving manuscripts of Norse
mythology include attempts to give the gods human
origins, a process known as euhemerism. Thirteenth-
century writer Snorri Sturluson, for example, writes
in his prologue to G ylfaginning that Odin was first a
great leader from Asia who traveled north, settling his
sons into kingships in the lands that would become
Scandinavia. Members of royal families also attempted
to link their ancestry to the gods, often developing
elaborate genealogies back to some of these stories
and hiring poets to write sagas that would show how a
human king was actually related to a god.
H vergelmir (Roaring
Cauldron) The well or
spring in Niflheim from which gush the 11 rivers
called the Elivagar. The third root of the World
Tree, Yggdrasil, hangs over the poisonous vapor
that rises from Hvergelmir. Nearby lives Nithog,
the corpse-eating dragon that nibbles on the roots of
the sacred tree.
H ymir (Dark One)
A fierce giant. Hymir owned
a large cauldron that the gods wanted for brewing
their beer. Thor and Tyr journey to Hymir’s hall to
steal the cauldron.
The oldest source of this conflict between Hymir
and Thor is found in the Eddic Poem H ymiskvitha ,
which is translated into English as The Lay of Hymir.
Snorri Sturluson retells the story in greater detail
in G ylfaginning , the first section of the P rose
E dda .
In Hymiskvitha, Tyr, the Norse god of war, says
that Hymir is his father, but scholars are unclear why
he makes such a claim, since many more sources say
that Odin is Tyr’s father.
H ymiskvitha (H ymiskvi Ð a ; The Lay of Hymir)
The poem in the P oetic E dda that tells the story of
Thor and Tyr’s visit to the giant Hymir and of their
quest to fish for the Midgard Serpent, Jormungand.
The purpose of Thor’s journey to Hymir was to steal
a cauldron from him, which the gods wanted to use
to brew their beer.
While debate exits over the dating and com-
position of the poem, it appears to have been first
written down in Iceland in the late 1100s. Some
experts suggest that the scribe who wrote it down
condensed several poems into one. The main story of
Hymiskvitha, however, which is that of Thor killing
Odin with his ravens Hugin and Munin. From the
18th-century Icelandic manuscript SÁM 66, in the
care of the Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland
the Midgard serpent, is much older and dates well
back into the 900s. Hymiskvitha is found in the C odex
R egius and in the A rnamagnean C odex .
H yndla The giantess visited by the goddess
Freya, who asked Hyndla to reveal the lineage of her
human lover, Ottar. The story is told in the P oetic
E dda in H yndluljoth (Lay of Hyndla).
H yndluljoth (H ynduijo Ð ; H yndluljod ;
Lay of Hyndla) A poem found in the P oetic E dda .
This poem was included in an Icelandic manuscript
compiled in the late 14th century, but it was most
likely written down in the 12th century.
Hyndluljoth contains many stories. One is of
Freya’s visit to Hyndla, who is apparently the bride
of a giant, lives in a cave, and rides a wolf. It also
presents information on the main Aesir gods.
Part of this poem is known as the “Shorter
Voluspa.” Hyndluljoth, like the full V oluspa , perhaps
the most important poem in the Poetic Edda, contains
a question-and-answer session and tells a story of
Loki, the trickster god.