Mímir

Under the root of the world ash that leans toward the frost giants there is water, and the water is cold and so still it holds the whole sky. A man comes to it every morning with a horn and drinks. He has been doing this long enough that there is nothing left in the nine worlds he has not heard about, and it has cost him nothing, because the well is his.

Odin came down to that water once and asked for a drink of it. Mímir named a price. The seeress in Völuspá tells Odin, with the flat certainty of someone who has already checked, that she knows exactly where his eye is: hidden deep in the famous well, and every morning Mímir drinks mead from the Father of the Slain’s pledge. It is one of the strangest pictures the Norse poets left behind. An eye lying at the bottom of dark water, and the owner of the well lifting it, or lifting something bought with it, to his mouth at first light.

Snorri Sturluson set the scene down more plainly two centuries later. Three roots hold up the ash. One reaches among the gods, one stands over Niflheim where Níðhöggr chews at it from below, and one turns toward the rime giants, and under that third root is Mímir’s well, where wisdom and understanding are stored. Mímir keeps it. He is full of ancient lore, Snorri says, because he drinks from the well out of the Gjallarhorn. Allfather came and craved one drink and did not get it until he had laid his eye in pledge.

The other story about him has nothing to do with wells at all. The Æsir and the Vanir fought until both sides were sick of it, then made peace the way peace was made, by exchanging people. The Vanir sent Njörd, who was rich, and his son Freyr. The Æsir sent Hœnir, who was tall and handsome and looked exactly like a chieftain, and they sent Mímir along with him. Hœnir was made a chief the moment he arrived. Whenever Mímir stood at his shoulder his judgements were sound. Whenever Mímir was elsewhere and something difficult came before him at the assembly, Hœnir said the same thing every time: now let others give their advice.

It took the Vanir a while, and then it did not. They seized Mímir, cut off his head and sent it back to Asgard. Odin took the head, smeared it with herbs so that it would not rot, and sang charms over it until it spoke. After that he carried it with him. It told him news out of other countries and secrets that nothing living could have told him, and it kept telling him for the rest of the story.

These two accounts do not fit together and never have. In one, Mímir is alive at his well and Odin buys a drink there. In the other he is killed early in the world’s history and reduced to a head that talks. Both sit in Völuspá a few stanzas apart, and Snorri kept both without appearing to notice the seam. The verse is older than the prose, which means the contradiction is not a medieval clerk’s mistake but something the tradition was already carrying.

Nothing anywhere says what he looked like. Not his height, not his colouring, not his age, though wisdom in these poems generally arrives wearing a long life. The only part of him anybody pictures is the head, and even the head is described only by what was done to it: the herbs worked in against the rot, the charms sung over it, the mouth opening. Whatever face a listener in a smoky hall saw when the name was spoken, they took it with them.

The name points at the function. Philologists trace Mímir to a reduplication of an Indo-European root meaning to think or to call to mind, the same root that surfaces in Sanskrit smárati and Gothic maúrnan and, eventually, in English memory. Rudolf Simek renders it as the rememberer, the wise one. The name is also stuck across half the landscape of the myth. The tree in Fjölsvinnsmál is Mímameiðr, Mímir’s tree. The well is Mímisbrunnr. The wood where Líf and Lífthrasir hide out the long winter, living on the morning dew until there is a world to come back to, is Hoddmímir’s holt. Most scholars take all three as the world ash under different names, which puts Mímir’s name on the axis of creation itself.

What kind of being he is has never been settled, and the sources argue with each other about it. Snorri, turning myth into history in the Ynglinga saga, files him among the men of Asaland, one of Odin’s own. Skáldskaparmál lists him among names for giants and builds a giant-kenning out of his name. Some readers push further: Hávamál has Odin learning nine mighty songs from the son of Bölthorn, who is his mother Bestla’s brother, and a line of scholars running from Viktor Rydberg in the 1880s through Jaan Puhvel a century later has wanted that unnamed uncle to be Mímir, which would make the wisest head in the north Odin’s blood relative on the giant side. The poems do not say.

His power is narrow and absolute inside its lane. He knows. It is not quite prophecy, which belongs to the seeress; what Mímir supplies is the answer to a question put to him, and he goes on supplying it after his body is gone, which is the part that makes him strange rather than merely clever. Death did not interrupt him. When the ash begins to shake at the end and Heimdallr lifts the horn to his mouth, Odin rides down to the well one last time, and asks.

The limits are as clear as the gift. He can be killed, and was, by neighbours who worked out over a season of council meetings that they had been cheated. He cannot act. A head can answer and do nothing else, and every disaster it is consulted about arrives on schedule regardless. Odin pays an eye, keeps the head, hears everything there is to hear, and still rides out at the end to meet the wolf that kills him. In Völuspá, while fate burns, the sons of Mím are at play, and no one has ever worked out who they were.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Mímir in Norse mythology?

Mímir is the keeper of a well of wisdom that lies beneath one of the roots of the world ash Yggdrasil, and the being Odin consults for knowledge. He is beheaded during the war between the Æsir and the Vanir, after which Odin preserves the head and carries it, and it continues to speak and give counsel.

Why did Odin give up his eye to Mímir?

Odin gave an eye as the price of a single drink from Mímir’s well, which holds wisdom and understanding. The poem Völuspá says the eye is hidden in the well and that Mímir drinks mead every morning from Odin’s pledge. Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda tells it the same way: Odin asked for one drink and did not get it until he had laid his eye down.

How did Mímir die?

The Æsir sent Mímir to the Vanir as a hostage alongside Hœnir when the two sides made peace. Hœnir proved useless at making decisions without Mímir beside him, so the Vanir concluded they had been cheated in the exchange, beheaded Mímir and sent the head back. Odin then smeared it with herbs to stop it rotting and sang charms over it so that it could speak.

Is Mímir a god or a giant?

The sources disagree. Snorri’s Ynglinga saga counts him among the Æsir, while Skáldskaparmál lists Mímir among names for giants. Some scholars have argued he is the unnamed brother of Odin’s mother Bestla mentioned in Hávamál, which would make him a giant and Odin’s maternal uncle, but no surviving text states it outright.

What does the name Mímir mean?

Mímir most likely derives from an Indo-European root meaning to think, recall or brood over, the same root that gives English the word memory. Rudolf Simek translates the name as “the rememberer, the wise one.” The name also attaches to the world tree in the forms Mímameiðr and Hoddmímir’s holt, and to the well as Mímisbrunnr.

Related Entries

Odin, Yggdrasil, Æsir, Vanir, Njord, Freyr (Frey), Heimdallr, Norns, Urd, Jötunn, Hrímþurs, Ymir, Níðhöggr, Ratatoskr, Loki