Bergrisar

Also Known As: singular bergrisi; Old Norse berg, “rock, crag” and risi, “giant”; often rendered mountain-giants, rock-giants or hill-giants
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Norse Mythology, Icelandic Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: Enormous size and a strength measured in hauled stone, paired in the sources with the frost-giants as the two kinds of giant the gods fortify against.
Role in Mythos: They are the threat that explains the defences, named as the reason Asgard wants a wall, the reason fire burns on Bifröst and the reason Heimdallr sits at the bridge’s end.
Relation to Humans: In the Icelandic material a bergrisi guards the land rather than menaces it, wading down to meet a hostile spirit off the south coast and turning it back. That giant became one of the four land-spirits still standing on the Icelandic coat of arms, which makes him one of the few giants in Norse myth a nation has chosen to keep.

The red in the rainbow bridge is fire, and it is burning for a reason. Snorri Sturluson has the sage Hár explain it to a visiting king without much ceremony: if every traveller who wanted to cross Bifröst could cross it, the frost-giants and the mountain-giants would walk straight up into heaven. So the flame stays lit across the span, and at the far end of it sits a watchman who needs less sleep than a bird and can hear wool growing on a sheep. Heimdallr is not stationed there against weather.

The bergrisar are the mountain-giants, and the name is exactly what it says. Berg is rock or crag, the stone of a cliff face; risi is a giant. Snorri almost never lets them stand alone in a sentence. They arrive coupled to the hrímþursar, the frost-giants, as though the two together made up a single category of thing the gods had to plan around, and the pairing shows up wherever Asgard is counting its defences. Thor’s hammer is described as the object the frost-giants and mountain-giants recognise the instant it goes up into the air, which Snorri says is no wonder, since it has broken a great many skulls among their fathers and their kinsmen. That is not a boast about Thor. It is a note about how many of them there have been.

The most detailed thing the sources do with a bergrisi is build a wall with him. Early in the settlement of the gods, when Midgard was made and Valhalla stood, a craftsman came to Asgard and offered to raise a stronghold so trustworthy and secure that it would hold against mountain-giants and frost-giants even if they got in over Midgard. He wanted three half-years for the work. His price was Freyja, and the sun, and the moon. The gods talked it over and made the bargain meaner: one winter, and if any part of the fortress stood unfinished on the first day of summer he lost the lot, and he was to take no man’s help. On Loki’s advice they let him have his stallion, Svaðilfari.

He began on the first day of winter and hauled his stone by night. The Æsir stood watching the size of the boulders that horse dragged out of the dark and found it a considerable wonder, since the animal was doing twice the labour of the man. Strong oaths and many witnesses were sworn over the deal, because giants did not care to be among the Æsir without a truce if Thor came home, and Thor was away east beating trolls at the time. Three days before summer the wall had reached the gateway.

The gods sat down in their judgement seats and asked one another which of them had advised marrying Freyja into Jötunheimar and stripping the sky of its sun and moon to hand them to giants, and the answer everyone reached was Loki, who was told he would die badly unless he fixed it. That evening a mare ran out of the woods to Svaðilfari, and the stallion tore his traces and went after her, and the pair of them ran all night with the builder chasing behind. The work fell short. When the craftsman saw the wall would not be finished he went into jötunmóð, the giant-fury, and the moment the Æsir saw for certain that a bergrisi had come among them the oaths counted for nothing. They called for Thor and Thor came at once. Mjöllnir went up. The first blow broke the builder’s skull into small crumbs, and what was left of him went down under Niflhel. Loki, some months later, produced a grey foal with eight legs.

The wall was meant to keep the bergrisar out, and the gods were already married into them. Gymir’s wife Aurboða was of mountain-giant stock, and their daughter Gerðr was the most beautiful of all women, which is how Freyr came to sit in Odin’s high seat and lose his appetite over a girl from the other side of the fence. The mill-song of Fenja and Menja runs the same way. Grinding out gold for a Danish king, the two giantesses recite their pedigree and name Iði and Aurnir among their kin, brothers of the mountain-giants, and count Hrungnir and Þjazi in the family as well.

Nobody in the old poems says what they looked like. The word itself is a puzzle: risi is nearly absent from the poetry of the pagan centuries, and where it does appear in later Icelandic writing it tends to mean a foreign giant, the Goliath sort, something imported rather than inherited. Tom Grant, working through the vocabulary in Gripla in 2019, notes that the compound bergrisi turns up in Grottasǫngr, a poem Clive Tolley dates to the twelfth century at the earliest, and suggests that the mountains in the name are what pulled these particular risar back into the company of the jötnar where an ordinary risi never belonged. The stone did the work. Call a giant a rock-giant and he stops being a stranger from a bible story and becomes something local, something with an address.

Iceland kept one. In Heimskringla, King Harald Gormsson of Denmark sends a wizard out in the shape of a whale to find a soft place in the island’s coast, and the creature finds none. A dragon comes down the valley at Vápnafjörður trailing serpents and toads that breathe poison at him. A bird with wings spanning both sides of Eyjafjörður drives him off in the north. A grey bull wades bellowing into Breiðafjörður in the west. Rounding Reykjanes, he tries to come ashore at Vikarsskeið, and a mountain-giant walks down to the water with an iron staff in his hands, his head higher than the hilltops, and a crowd of other giants at his back. The whale turned east and reported nothing but sand, wasteland and heavy surf. The Danish fleet went home. That bergrisi is still standing on the Icelandic coat of arms adopted in 1944, holding down the southwest quarter alongside the dragon, the bird and the bull.

Their power is the plain kind: bulk, reach, and the strength to move stone that other builders would need machinery for. They travel in numbers, they are old, and they are kin to everything else in Jötunheimar that the gods have reason to fear. Their weakness is equally plain, and it is not really force. It is that they can be tricked. The builder was beaten by a mare and a losing lawsuit, not by a hammer, and the hammer only arrived after the trick had worked. Fire on the bridge stops them. A watchman who can see a hundred leagues stops them. And the giant-fury that finally gives one away is the same rage that identifies him as something the oaths were never meant to protect.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the Bergrisar in Norse mythology?

The Bergrisar are the mountain-giants of Norse myth, from Old Norse berg, meaning rock or crag, and risi, meaning giant. Snorri Sturluson pairs them repeatedly with the hrímþursar, the frost-giants, as the two classes of giant that Asgard’s defences exist to stop. They are counted among the jötnar rather than treated as a separate race.

Which Norse myth features a bergrisi?

The best-known is the story of the builder of Asgard’s wall. A craftsman offered to raise a fortress proof against mountain-giants and frost-giants in exchange for Freyja, the sun and the moon, and nearly finished it with his stallion Svaðilfari before Loki, in the shape of a mare, lured the horse away. When the builder fell into jötunmóð the gods recognised him as a bergrisi and Thor killed him with Mjöllnir.

Why does Heimdallr guard the Bifröst bridge?

Heimdallr sits at the end of the rainbow bridge specifically to guard it against the bergrisar. Snorri also explains that the red in the bridge is burning fire, placed there because the frost-giants and mountain-giants would climb into heaven if the crossing were open to everyone who wanted it.

Is a bergrisi on the Icelandic coat of arms?

Yes. One of the four land-spirits on Iceland’s coat of arms, adopted in 1944, is a bergrisi, and he holds the southwest quarter. He comes from an episode in Heimskringla in which a Danish king’s wizard, swimming around Iceland in whale form, is met at Vikarsskeið by a mountain-giant with an iron staff whose head rises above the hilltops.

What did the Bergrisar look like?

The sources almost never describe them. The single physical account comes from Heimskringla and gives a bergrisi a head higher than the surrounding hills and an iron staff carried in his hands, with other giants following behind him. Beyond scale and that staff, the record is silent on their appearance.