Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

father must therefore be counted among the oldest in the cosmogony. The personified
representatives of water and earth, like the day, are the children of his daughter.
What Gylfaginning tells of Narvi is that he was of giant birth, and the first one
who inhabited Jotunheim (Nörvi eða Narfi hét jötunn, er byggði fyrst Jötunheima -
Gylfaginning 10). In regard to this we must remember that, in Gylfaginning and in the
traditions of the Icelandic sagas, the lower world is embraced in the term Jotunheim, and
this for mythical reasons, since Niflheim is inhabited by rime-thurses and giants (see No.
60), and since the regions of bliss are governed by Mimir and by the norns, who also are
of giant descent. As the father of the lower-world dis, Nott, Narvi himself belongs to that
group of powers, with which the mythology peopled the lower world. The upper
Jotunheim did not exist before in a later epoch of the cosmogonic development. It was
created simultaneously with Midgard by Odin and his brothers (Gylfaginning).
In a strophe by Egil Skallagrimson (Egil's Saga, ch. 56), poetry, or the source of
poetry, is called niðerfi Narfa, "the inheritance left by Narvi to his descendants." 2 As is
well known, Mimir's fountain is the source of poetry. The expression indicates that the
first inhabitant of the lower world, Narvi, also presided over the precious fountain of
wisdom and inspiration, and that he died and left it to his descendants as an inheritance.
Finally, we learn that Narvi was a near kinsman to Urd and her sisters. This
appears from the following passages:
(a) Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, 4. When Helgi was born norns came in the night
to the abode of his parents, twisted the threads of his fate, stretched them from east to
west, and fastened them beneath the hall of the moon. One of the threads nipt Nera cast
to the north and bade it hold for ever. It is manifest that by Neri's (Narvi's) kinswoman is
meant one of the norns present.
(b) Sonatorrek 25. The skald Egil Skallagrimson, weary of life, closes his poem
by saying that he sees the dis of death standing on the ness (Digraness) near the gravemound
which conceals the dust of his father and of his sons, and is soon to receive him:
2 This stanza is much disputed, and the text is extremely dubious. The kenning is either niðjerfi Narfa, kindrink
of Narfi, or niðjerfi Narfa aurmýils, kin-drink of Narfi of stone, which both mean the "drink of
dwarves (or giants)" i.e. poetry. Here Narvi can be the name of any giant.
Erfi doesn't mean "inheritance," but rather "funeral drink." Either Rydberg or his source has confused the
word with erfð, inheritance.