Eir

Also Known As: Old Norse Eir, from a word meaning help, mercy or protection; named as a goddess in the Prose Edda, as a valkyrie in the name lists, and as a maiden of Menglöð in Fjölsvinnsmál
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Norse Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Eir is the finest healer among the Norse goddesses, and in one poem she sits on a hill whose name means the hill of healing.
Role in Mythos: She is listed third among the goddesses in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda as the best of physicians, while other lists count her among the valkyries.
Relation to Humans: Sick women who climbed the hill where she sits were said to come down well. The maidens of that hill, Eir among them, were said to help and protect people who made offerings to them at their altars.

There is a hill in an old Icelandic poem that the sick have reason to love. A woman who has been ill for a year can climb it and come down well. Nine maidens sit at the top, gathered at the knees of a tenth woman, the lady of a hall ringed with fire. The eighth of the nine is called Eir.

Her name is an ordinary Old Norse word. It means help, or mercy, or protection, the sort of word a person might say with a hand on someone’s shoulder. That is nearly all the plain evidence there is. She has no parents on record, no husband, no hall, and no story in which she does anything from start to finish. What survives is a few lines scattered across three kinds of text, and they do not agree about what she is.

The best known line comes from Snorri Sturluson, the Icelandic chieftain who wrote his handbook of myth and poetry around 1220. In it a king in disguise asks to hear about the goddesses, and gets a list of sixteen. Frigg comes first, as she should. Sága is second. Eir is third, ahead of far more famous names, and she is given a single remark. She is the best of physicians. Then the list moves on to the next goddess, and Snorri never mentions her skill again.

Later in the same book the ground shifts. Snorri’s handbook ends with long lists of names for poets to draw on, and there the goddesses are counted over again. Eir is missing. She turns up instead a little further on, among the valkyries, the women who ride out to the battlefield and choose who dies. It is an odd place for a healer. It may not be as odd as it looks, since valkyries in some stories can wake the dead and stand over the wounded, and a woman who decides which fighters live has a kind of medicine in her hands. Still, the two lists sit in one book and do not match.

The third text is the poem with the hill. It is called Fjölsvinnsmál, and it survives only in late paper copies, though its matter is older. A young traveller, Svipdagr, walks up to a hall guarded by a giant watchman, a wall of flame and two hounds. He cannot get in, so he asks questions. What is the tree called. What is the gate called. What is the name of the hill where the lady sits. The watchman tells him it is Lyfjaberg, the hill of healing, and that it has long been a comfort to the sick and the sore. Then the traveller asks who the maidens are that sit so peacefully at the lady’s knees, and the watchman names them one by one. Hlíf, Hlífþrasa, Þjóðvarta, Björt, Bleik, Blíð, Fríð, Eir, Aurboða. Several of those names mean things like shelter, bright and kind. The watchman adds that the maidens give help to anyone who makes offerings to them at the holy place, and keep such people out of danger. A few lines later the hounds fall quiet, the gate swings open, and the traveller turns out to be the man the lady has been waiting for. The maidens are not mentioned again.

So a goddess, a valkyrie and a handmaid share one name. The simplest reading is that they are the same figure seen from three sides, a divine woman whose business is keeping people alive. Some who study these texts read it that way and treat the hill maidens as guardian spirits of healing. Others are more wary. One view holds that she began as a valkyrie and that Snorri promoted her. Another doubts she was ever worshipped at all. The texts cannot settle it. No temple of hers is known, and no place in Scandinavia carries her name.

What the name did have was a long working life in poetry. Norse poets liked to call a woman by a goddess’s name with something added, and Eir was a favourite. Tenth century court poets used her this way, and so does a verse in the saga of Gísli, where a woman is an Eir of riches. The habit lasted. Around the year 1300 someone in the trading town of Bergen cut a business note into a wooden stick and then, on the same stick, added a line of verse complaining that women were costing him his sleep. He called the woman an Eir. The stick lay in the wet ground of the wharf for more than six hundred years.

Her power, as far as anyone wrote it down, is one thing. She heals, and she does it better than any other. The hill adds a little to that. It works for those who make the climb and for those who bring gifts. The limits are just as clear. Nothing says she can raise the dead, or cure a god, and when Baldr was struck down nobody in the stories sent for her. She is not said to carry herbs or a knife. Her record is one sentence of praise and a seat on a hill.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Eir in Norse mythology?

Eir is a Norse goddess of healing. Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, written around 1220, lists her third among sixteen goddesses and calls her the best of physicians. Her name is an Old Norse word meaning help, mercy or protection.

Is Eir a goddess or a valkyrie?

The sources call Eir both. The Prose Edda names her as a goddess in one section and lists her among the valkyries in the name lists at the end of the same book, where she is missing from the list of goddesses. A third text, the poem Fjölsvinnsmál, makes Eir one of nine maidens who attend the lady Menglöð.

What is Lyfjaberg?

Lyfjaberg is the hill of healing in the Old Norse poem Fjölsvinnsmál. The lady Menglöð sits there with nine maidens, including Eir. The poem says that a sick woman who climbs the hill becomes well, and that the maidens help those who make offerings to them.

Are there any myths about Eir?

No story survives in which Eir takes an active part. She appears only in lists and in a short passage of Fjölsvinnsmál that names her among the maidens on Lyfjaberg. No source gives her parents, a husband or a home of her own.

Was Eir worshipped by the Vikings?

There is no firm evidence that Eir was worshipped. No temple or place name of hers is known, and some researchers doubt she had a cult. Her name was widely used by poets as a way of saying woman, including on a rune stick from Bergen carved around 1300.