SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

MfMIR: TWO MYTHS OR ONE?
By JACQUELINE SIMPSON
ALTHOUGH the passages concerning YIimir have been
1i many times discussed," he remains one of the more
perplexing figures in Norse mythology, and it has been
frequently held that the references to him reflect at least
two markedly divergent traditions.
On the one hand, Mimir is a being, probably a giant,
who guards a well under the roots of Yggdrasill; the texts
embodying this version are Vgluspa 28, together with
Snorri's commentary on it, and a remark of Snorri's in
the course of his account of the Doom of the Gods:
But under the root that runs towards the frost-giants is
Mimir's Well, in which wisdom and understanding are hidden,
and he whose well it is is called Mimir. He is full of knowledge,
because he drinks from the well out of the horn Gjallarhorn.
All-Father came there and asked to have a drink from the well,
but he did not get it until he had given his eye as a pledge.
So it says in the V Qluspri:
I know well, 61'5inn,
where you hid your eye
in that famous
well of Mimir.
Every morning
Mimir drinks mead
from Val-Father's pledge.s
Then 61'5inn rides to Mimirs Well and takes counsel from
Mimir for himself and his host. Then the ash Yggdrasill
trembles ....3
On the other hand Mimir can also be represented as
a severed head uttering words of wisdom when questioned
by 66inn; in this connexion his name appears in the form
Mimr, not Mimir, a differentiation which de Vries considers
significant. 4 In the Poetic Edda the clearest text
1 See Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte (znd ed., 1956), I
245-8, and references there given.
'Gylfaginning ch. 14; Finnur Jonsson, Snorri Sturluson, Edda (1926), 21.
, Gylfaginning ch. 50; ed, cit. 63.
• loco cit. A third form of the name, Mimi, is implied by the name
Mlmameior in Fjolsvinnsmal 19-22.