Bestiary · Watchman God
Heimdall
Heimdall: the Norse watchman of the gods. Born of nine mothers. He can hear grass growing. His horn Gjallarhorn will sound the beginning of Ragnarök.
Primary Sources
- Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda / Gylfaginning (c. 1220)
- Rígsþula (Poetic Edda): Heimdall as Rígr, ancestor of human social classes
- Völuspá (Poetic Edda): Gjallarhorn and Ragnarök
Related Beings
Heimdall stands at the top of the Bifröst, the rainbow bridge between the world of gods and the world of humans. Snorri says he needs less sleep than a bird, can see a hundred leagues in any direction by day or night, and can hear grass growing on the earth and wool growing on sheep. He was born of nine mothers, all sisters, all at the same time. The sources do not explain how.
Gjallarhorn
His horn hangs by the world tree Yggdrasil. When Heimdall blows it, the sound carries across all the worlds. He will sound it once more, at the beginning of Ragnarök. The Völuspá says: “Loud blows Heimdall, the horn is aloft.” After that line, the world ends.
Rígr
The Rígsþula tells how a figure called Rígr, identified as Heimdall in the poem’s prose introduction, wandered among humans and fathered the three social classes. He slept with three couples in three houses: a hovel, a farmstead, and a hall. From them came Thrall (the slave), Karl (the farmer), and Jarl (the nobleman). The watchman of the gods doubled as the ancestor of human society.
The Last Fight
At Ragnarök, Heimdall and Loki face each other. They kill each other. The watchman and the trickster, the guardian of the threshold and the breaker of every boundary, destroy each other at the end. The symmetry is too clean to be accidental.