Aegir

Also Known As: Old Norse Ægir, a poetic word for the sea; also called Hlér, and Gymir; husband of Rán and father of the nine wave-daughters
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Norse Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He is the sea in person, a giant skilled in magic whose hall is lit by gold instead of fire and whose ale pours itself.
Role in Mythos: Aegir is the host of the gods, the brewer whose feasts frame the quarrel of Lokasenna, the kettle-quest of Hymiskviða and the whole question-and-answer of Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál.
Relation to Humans: Sailors met him as the sea itself, and his wife Rán kept a net to catch everyone who went out on the water. The poet Egill Skallagrímsson, grieving a son lost to the waves, said he would take a sword to the ale-smith if he could.

The light in Aegir’s hall came from the floor. There was no fire. Heaps of bright gold were carried in and set down among the benches, and they shone like flame on the faces of the gods, while the ale came to each drinker of its own accord and nobody had to rise to fetch it. Two servants, Fimafeng and Eldir, moved about the room so smoothly that the guests remarked on it. The prose that opens the Eddic poem Lokasenna calls the evening a great peace. It did not last the night.

Aegir’s name is simply a word for the sea. Skaldic poets used ægir the way they used any plain noun for water, and built on it: gold is Aegir’s fire, the waves are Aegir’s daughters, and a ship driven under by a storm goes, in a verse of the eleventh-century skald Hofgarða-Refr, into Aegir’s wide jaws. He answers to two other names. Snorri Sturluson, writing his Prose Edda in thirteenth-century Iceland, says a certain man was called Aegir or Hlér and lived on the island now called Hlésey, which is Læsø in the Kattegat. The Lokasenna prose calls him Gymir, and Snorri, quoting Refr’s line about Gymir’s spray-cold spae-wife, concludes that Aegir and Gymir are the same. Gymir is also the name of the giant whose daughter Gerðr marries Freyr, and nobody can say for certain whether the two Gymirs were ever one figure.

His family tree runs through the weather. The Orkneyinga saga, and the related tract How Norway Was Settled, begin with a king called Fornjot who ruled Finland and Kvenland and had three sons: Hlér, “whom we call Aegir”, Logi, and Kári. The names mean sea, fire and wind. Kári’s line runs on through Frost and Snow the old to Thorri, after whom a winter month and a midwinter sacrifice were named. Aegir’s own household is the sea by another count. His wife is Rán, and their nine daughters are the waves: Snorri lists them as Himinglæva, Dúfa, Blóðughadda, Hefring, Unnr, Hrönn, Bylgja, Bára and Kólga, and the skald Steinn calls them Aegir’s storm-glad daughters, begotten of grim frost.

Hymiskviða tells how Aegir became the gods’ brewer, and it is not a happy appointment. The gods had been feasting and wanted more to drink, so they shook divining twigs and tried the blood of a sacrifice, and the answer pointed to Aegir’s hall. The giant sat there merry as a child until Thor, the son of Odin, looked hard into his eyes and told him he would give the gods a feast at once. Aegir did the work and plotted revenge while he did it. He told Thor to bring him a kettle big enough to brew for all of them. No god could find one. Then Týr spoke up: his own father, the giant Hymir, lived east of the icy rivers of Élivágar at the edge of heaven and owned a kettle a mile deep. The rest of the poem belongs to Thor’s journey, his fishing trip with Hymir and the monstrous catch on his line. At the end he walks back into the council of the gods with the kettle on his back, and the gods drink in Aegir’s hall. The Oxford translator Carolyne Larrington suggests that the scene mirrors Scandinavian royal practice, where a king proved his power by arriving at a subordinate’s house and demanding to be fed.

Lokasenna begins where that poem ends. Aegir has the great kettle and has brewed, and the guests arrive: Odin and Frigg, Bragi and Idun, one-handed Týr, Njörd and Skadi, Freyr and Freyja, Sif, Vidar, and Loki, with many gods and elves besides. Thor is away in the east. When the company praise Aegir’s servants, Loki cannot bear it and kills Fimafeng. The gods beat their shields, howl, and chase him into the forest, then sit back down to drink. Outside, Loki meets Eldir and asks what the talk is inside. Weapons and battle, Eldir tells him, and not one friendly word for Loki. Loki goes in anyway, and the hall falls silent.

What follows is a long, vicious round of insult in which Loki drags every god’s secrets onto Aegir’s floor, until Thor comes home and threatens him with the hammer. On his way out Loki turns to the host. Ale you have brewed, he tells Aegir, but you will never hold such a feast again, and flames will play over everything you own. Henry Adams Bellows, who translated the poem in 1923, read those flames as the fire that ends the world, which makes it a curse on the house and on everything beyond it.

Snorri tells the story from the other side of the table. In Skáldskaparmál it is Aegir who travels to Asgard, a guest deeply versed in magic, and the gods, warned he is coming, receive him with good cheer and many illusions. Odin lights the hall with swords so bright that no other light is needed. Aegir is seated beside Bragi, and the questions he asks, and Bragi’s long answers about the mead of poetry, the giant Thjazi and the art of the kenning, make up the whole book. When he leaves he invites the gods to visit him in three months. That return feast is Snorri’s version of the Lokasenna night: gold on the floor for firelight, food and ale that serve themselves, a thrall named Five-Finger killed by Loki, and a second thrall named Fire-Kindler. Snorri adds one detail the poem lacks. At that feast the gods discovered that Rán owned a net in which she caught every man who went to sea.

That net explains why a grieving man could hate Aegir. Egill Skallagrímsson, the tenth-century Icelandic poet, lost his son Böðvar to a storm at sea and composed Sonatorrek, the Loss of Sons, over him. In one badly preserved stanza Egill says that if a sword could settle the matter, the ale-smith’s time would be up, and that he would go out to fight Aegir’s wife. The same poem calls gold Hlér’s fire. The host of the gods and the drowner of sons are the same figure seen from two shores.

Aegir sits awkwardly between categories, and the sources never settle it. He is called a giant in Hymiskviða, and the translator Anthony Faulkes pointed out that the Prose Edda never once calls him a god and counts him in a list of giants, even though modern writers routinely describe him as the god of the sea. Yet his wife Rán is named among the goddesses, and he eats and drinks with the Æsir as an equal, which led John Lindow to doubt how seriously the giant label should be taken. Andy Orchard read it the other way, taking the friendship with the gods as the later development. Rudolf Simek settled on a giant who has the characteristics of a sea god, which is roughly what the poets meant all along.

His powers are the sea’s powers turned domestic. He has abundance without labour: ale that brews in a vessel a mile deep, food that serves itself, gold enough to light a room. He has magic, which Snorri names plainly, and a household that swallows ships. His limits are the host’s limits. He could not refuse the gods when Thor stared him down, he could not brew without a kettle he did not own, and he could not keep the peace of his own hall once Loki walked through the door. The last word said to him in the Poetic Edda is a promise that everything he has will burn.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Aegir in Norse mythology?

Aegir is the personified sea in Norse mythology, a giant who hosts the gods at feasts in his hall. He is also called Hlér and Gymir. His wife is Rán, and their nine daughters are the waves.

Is Aegir a god or a giant?

Aegir is called a giant in the Eddic poem Hymiskviða, and the Prose Edda lists him among the giants and never calls him a god. He is still widely described as a sea god, because he is the sea in person and feasts with the Æsir as an equal. His wife Rán is counted among the goddesses.

Why is Aegir called the brewer of the gods?

In Hymiskviða, Thor forces Aegir to hold a feast for the gods, and Aegir demands a kettle big enough to brew for all of them. Thor fetches a kettle a mile deep from the giant Hymir. In Lokasenna the gods then drink at Aegir’s hall, where the ale serves itself and gold lights the room instead of fire.

What happened at Aegir’s feast in Lokasenna?

Loki killed Aegir’s servant Fimafeng when the guests praised him, was chased out, and came back to insult every god in the hall. Thor finally drove him away. On leaving, Loki cursed Aegir, saying he would never hold such a feast again and that flames would play over everything he owned.

Who are Aegir’s wife and children?

Aegir’s wife is Rán, who owns a net for catching everyone who goes to sea. Their nine daughters are the waves, named by Snorri Sturluson as Himinglæva, Dúfa, Blóðughadda, Hefring, Unnr, Hrönn, Bylgja, Bára and Kólga. The Orkneyinga saga makes Aegir a son of the giant king Fornjot and a brother of Logi and Kári.