Heimdall

For the borough in Norway, see Heimdal.

Heimdall (Old Norse Heimdallr, the prefix Heim- means world, the affix -dallr is of uncertain origin, perhaps it means pole, bright, or valley) is one of the Æsir in Norse mythology.

Characteristics

Heimdall is the guardian of the gods who will blow the Gjallarhorn if danger approaches Asgard. His senses are so acute that he can hear the grass grow and he can see to the end of the world; he also requires no sleep at all. He is moreover the guardian of the Bifrost Bridge.

He was the son of nine different mothers (possibly the nine daughters of Ægir, called billow maidens) and was called the White God. His hall was called Himinbjörg (Sky Mountain) and his horse was Gulltoppr (Gold-top). Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda relates that a kenning for sword is head of Heimdall because Heimdall was struck by a man's head and that this is treated in the poem Heimdalargaldr, a poem unfortunately no longer extant. Similarly, a kenning for head is sword of Heimdall. The meaning may lie in Heimdall also being called "ram", the weapon of a ram being its head, including the horns. Georges Dumézil (1959) suggested that this might also be why Heimdall is called White-god.

Heimdall's nickname Hallinskíði ("Bent Stick") also appears as a kenning for "ram", perhaps referring to the bent horns on a ram's head. Heimdall's nickname Gullintanni ("Golden-Toothed") would refer to the yellow coloring found in the teeth of old rams. A third name for Heimdall is Vindhlér ("Wind Shelter"). Dumézil cites Welsh folklore sources which tell how ocean waves come in sets of nine with the ninth one being the ram:

We understand that whatever his mythical value and functions were, the scene of his birth made him, in the sea's white frothing, the ram produced by the ninth wave. If this is the case, then it is correct to say that he has nine mothers, since one alone does not suffice, nor two, nor three.

Old Welsh practice, modern French practice and modern Basque practice is to refer to white-capped waves as sheep.

Surviving representations

Snorri also calls Heimdall a son of Odin, perhaps a foster son.

Heimdall was destined to be the last of the gods to perish at Ragnarök when he and Loki would slay one another.

The first stanza of eddic poem Völuspá proclaims:

I ask for a hearing of all the holy races
Greater and lesser, kinsman of Heimdall.

The eddic poem Rígsthula explains in what way these races are kinsmen of Heimdall, explaing who the god Ríg, identified with Heimdall in a short prose introduction, apparently fathered the three classes of humankind as understood by the poet, the youngest of which fathered in turn Kon the Young (Old Norse Kon ungr) understood as the first immortal king (Old Norse konungr). See Ríg for details.

Hilda R. Ellis Davidson in Gods and Myths of Northern Europe sees a link between Heimdall and the Vanir as do some others, partly based on stanza 15 of the eddic poem Þrymskviða:

Then Heimdall spoke, whitest of the Æsir,
Like the other Vanir he knew the future well.

However other can be also translated even, which would mean instead that Heimdall had foresight "even" as do the Vanir.

The lost Heimdallargaldr may have contained the following adventure which was also referenced in Úlfr Uggason's skaldic poem Húsdrápa of which only fragments are perserved:

Once, Freya woke up and found that someone had stolen Brisingamen. Heimdall helped her search for it and eventually found the thief, who turned out to be Loki and they fought in the form of seals at Vágasker 'Wave-skerry' and Singasteinn, wherever they may be. Heimdall won and returned Brisingamen to Freya.

In Sörla þáttr, the story is changed and instead Loki hands the jewelry to Odin, who won't give it back to Freyja until she has promised to start the battle of Hedin and Högni.

In the Old English epic, Beowulf, Brosingamen, is brought back to the shining citadel (perhaps Valhalla or Asgard) by Hama (Heimdall). But Hama flees from the "cunning hostility" of Eormenric indicating extreme euhemerism, for Eormenric almost certainly would have had no part in the tale known to the Norsemen.

Heimdall could hear a leaf fall.

Homologues in related Indo-European religions

Georges Dumézil considers Heimdall an old Indo-European god, a type of god he calls first god which is different from being the highest god. The Thessalian god of Romans Janus would be the Roman reflex to this concept. But there are other first gods. Heimdall is also a frame god, one who appears at the beginning and remains until the end.

Dumézil suggested that the Hindu counterpart was the god Dyaus, one of the eight Vasus, who reincarnated as the frame hero Bhishma in the epic Mahabharata, he and his seven brothers being born to a mortal king by the River Ganges who herself had taken on mortal form. But the seven other brothers are returned to their immortal forms by being drowned by their mother immediately after birth. Only Dyaus was compelled to live a full life on earth in the form of Bhishma. Bhishma is destined to never hold power himself or have any direct descendants but acts as an ageless uncle on behalf of the line of lords that tortuously descend from his half-brothers, including finally the five Pandava brothers who represent four classes of society: royalty, noble warrior, lower class club-bearing warrior, and herdsmen. Bhishma is the last to die in the great battle of Kurukshetra.

However Branston (1980) considers the character Heimdall to be cognate with the Vedic Agni god of fire, who is in many Vedic texts is born from the waters or hides within the waters and who is born from two, seven, nine, and ten mothers in various sources, the ten mothers being sometimes explained as the ten fingers which can manipulate a bore-stick to produce fire. This accords with Viktor Rydberg's theories on Heimdall.

Modern popular culture

References and representations of Heimdall infrequently appear in modern popular culture, usually as a horn sounding guard of some kind.

References

Dumézil, Georges (1959). "Comparative Remarks on the Scandinavian God Heimdall", Gods of the Ancient Northmen. Ed. Einar Haugen, trans. Francis Charat (1973). Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520035070.

External links

Sayers, William (1993). "Irish Perspectives on Heimdallr". (PDF) Alvíssmál 2. Freie Universität Berlin. ISBN 3861356015.

Norse gods

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