Winifred Hodge Rose
(This story is my imagined ‘prequel’ to the Rigsthula (Poetic Edda), which tells of Rig-Heimdall’s travels and works in Midgard. It incorporates some of the many theories that exist about Heimdall’s parentage, symbolism, and his nature. This story ends where Rigsthula begins.)
Rolling waves, turning under, turning over, turning around. Foam and froth on the surface, deep, sinewy currents writhing underneath. Salt, stinging and invigorating: the sea-cold draft of life. Shards of light through the water: sun-dazzle, moonbeams, lightning flashes, wuldor-furls in multi-colors hanging in the northern skies, shimmers of eerie light from the depths, foxfire gleams in the tumbling waves. Rolling, churning, over and over.
Like butter in the churn, the churning waves roll up a tiny mote of being. Back and forth, back and forth it rolls. It gathers salt, the savor of life. It gathers sun-dazzle and moonbeam, lightning, sky-light, sea-light, dawn and dusk, all as refracted prismatic patterns in the water, and rolls those prisms of light into itself. It gathers flecks of amber, floating on the waves, and rolls those, too, into itself. This tiny being begins to shimmer with its own prismatic light.
Songs of power weave about the little one, sonorous echoes of wind and water. Whale-songs, seal-songs, seabird songs, songs of the sea-elves, echoing like distant horn-calls, calling souls into otherworldly matter. The being vibrates to the power of the eerie calls, the rushing waves, the whistling winds, the plangent chanting of the wave-maidens as they cradle it and roll it in the churning waters. Its inrushing souls bring many powers with them.
Day by day this being grows, and takes on the Hama, the ensouled shape, of an infant God. Brilliant with multi-colored light, he at last attains the perfection of form that is needed for birth into the Worlds. The time comes for him to leave the watery womb of the nine wave-mothers who have churned and rolled him into being, and be born onto the land.
Each wave-mother in turn takes him in her arms to cradle and to kiss goodbye, then passes him on. Himinglæva kisses him, and Bloðughadda; Hefring and Kolga. Dufa kisses him; Uðr, Hronn, Bylgja and Bara give him salty kisses. One by one they roll him toward the misty shore, until the ninth wave lays him at last upon the sand. The daughters of Ægir turn away with echoing cries of farewell, and plunge into the deep. The baby, alone upon the gritty shore, gasps in his first breath of air, filled with önd, and lets out a vigorous wail.
It’s a strange place, this world where he has landed: shallow and flat, not rising far above the sea. Swathed in misty clouds, drifting thinly. Still, almost silent, except for a strange creaking sound in the distance, and heavy vibrations on the ground like giant footsteps. The creaking and the footsteps draw closer to the baby, louder in the damp air. Soon, a long, pole-shaped shadow appears through the mists: the handle of a gigantic mill—the World-Mill itself, being doggedly propelled by nine Giantesses. Their heavy stamping jiggles the baby, and he ceases his wailing momentarily, gazing around, but soon starts up again.
Heavy steps come closer, shaking the Earth. Gjalp and Greip stamp; Eistla and Eyrgjafa and Angeyja dig their toes into the sand and push. Ulfrun and Imðr and Atla chant in deep tones. Jarnsaxa perks up her ears and calls on the others to stop.
Hearing the wail, the Giantesses pause in consternation. A baby crying! Such a thing must be impossible! There was no way a baby could arrive on their shores, nor any way for them to produce a child themselves, while they were engaged their years-long stint of steadily turning the World Mill. Peering through the mists toward the sound, they discern a brightness through the mists. There–that is where the sound is coming from.
The World-Mill must not cease its motion: the turning of the Earth and the Stars depend upon it. Jarnsaxa and Eyrgjafa leave their posts to find the babe, while the other giantesses continue turning the Mill.
And there he is, shining white, with flickers of rainbow colors lighting the air around him. Wailing and alone and hungry, newborn to the Worlds. Jarnsaxa picks him up and cuddles him as they return to the others. The giant-women’s eyes light up as the babe is passed to each of their embraces, walking along in rhythm with the World-Mill.
“Our child,” they cry.
“A gift from the Sea!”
“He lights the world with his brightness! See him shimmer!”
“Our young tree, straight and strong; he will be known as our descendant, come from our roots.”
“We name him Heimdall, world-shimmer, tree-pillar, bow of the heavens!”
Atla searches out precious herbs, and Ulfrun enchants them with her rune-galdors. Eistla brews them in the cauldron, and the giant-women each drink of this alveig. Soon, rich milk flows from their breasts to feed the babe.
Nourished on the bounty of his nine great mothers, young Heimdall quickly grows tall and strong. He cares for their flock of sheep, bounding along like a young ram himself, while his mothers push the World-Mill. He carves the horn of a big old ram, slaughtered for the pot, into a blowing horn, and maddens his foster-mothers by blowing it incessantly. His lungs and chest grow stronger with this exercise, and he develops a mighty voice.
But Heimdall is not always noisy. The strange, otherworldly island where they live is so still, surrounded by sea and air. Except for the giantesses, Heimdall, and their sheep, nothing else disturbs the silence there, nor treads the grasses that tremble in the wind. Heimdall likes to sit and listen to the silence: the growing of the grass, the distant creak of the Mill, whispers of the wind. He sends his hearing out across the Sea, farther and farther, as he grows year by year, and his senses become more powerful.
A young man now, tall and strong and shining, he stands often on the misty shore, straining to hear more clearly the faint sounds he senses from across the Sea, borne upon the wind. These are not sea-sounds; he knows those. Not island-sounds, nor wind-sounds, nor the sound of his foster-mothers at their mill-work. These are whispers, grunts of effort, groans of strain, faint laughter, calls and shouts, the lowing of strange beasts.
It begins to dawn on him: there are more worlds out there, more than this misty island and the World-Mill. Heimdall goes to his mothers, questioning his own understanding of the world around him. Jarnsaxa answers him.
“My son, you are right. There are other worlds out there, worlds that we came from, worlds where Aesir and Vanir, Alfar and Dwarves live. Worlds of Jotnar and Humans and other beings. Soon our turn at the World-Mill will end. We will return to Jotunheim, and other giantesses will come to take our place. All of us must leave here, and your worlds, my son, are not the same as our world. You must go elsewhere.”
Imðr tells him: “We are your roots. But you are the Tree, growing tall above the ground, growing into Worlds we do not know.”
Eyrgjafa says, “You must build yourself a boat of driftwood, and entrust yourself to the Sea from which you came, my son. Soon the time will come for us to part.”
Heimdall gathers driftwood, borrows Jarnsaxa’s great iron knife, and carves the logs to fit snugly together. He carves wooden pegs to fasten them, and caulks the seams with gum boiled from fish scales and bones, and the roots of herbs. He knows nothing of sails and oars, and his boat possesses neither.
The time comes for the parting of the ways. Torn between his reluctance to part from his foster-mothers, and his curiosity about all the strange sounds he can hear from the distant horizons, he stands uncertainly on the shore, looking from one side to the other. His foster-mothers step forward one by one, embracing him and giving their blessings.
Heimdall finally turns away from them, toward his tiny boat bobbing in the gentle waves. He pushes off from the shore, then steps into the boat and kneels down, looking ahead over the horizon.
As the flat island of the World-Mill drifts out of sight behind him, he hears a gentle singing and splashing around the boat. Faces and floating hair appear in the water, white hands reach up to the rim of the boat. Fascinated, Heimdall watches as the boat is surrounded by the wave maidens singing to him.
“We are your mothers!” they sing. “Remember us, remember our song. Remember the cold, vital, surging sea from which you were born!”
And Heimdall does. He is overwhelmed with a surge of memory, memory of the restless sea, the soft foam, the echoing calls of sea-beasts, the gentle embraces of his wave-mothers. Overcome, he lies back in his little boat, gazing at the sky, and drifts into a long sleep, as the wave-maidens guide his boat on its journey across the sea.
Heimdall dreams. He dreams of a great Tree, with a Wellspring at its roots, and strangely shaped fruits hanging from its boughs. Heimdall climbs that Tree to gather the fruits, but when he reaches the first fruit, he sees it is not a fruit, but rather an angular shape surrounded by a round, empty space. He puts his face to the space and feels a cool moisture, as though he is peering through a waterfall. As the moisture spreads around his head, his mind is overwhelmed with meaning—the meaning of that angular shape hanging in empty space, and the cosmic powers that it bears. The meaning condenses into a seed, embedded in his Hugr, and he knows it is a rune, a whisper of mystery.
During his long sleep as his wave-mothers push his boat across the sea, Heimdall harvests all the rune-fruits and turns them into seeds of wisdom stored in his Hugr, ready to sprout at his wish and his need.
After a timeless time, the little boat crunches up onto a pebbly beach. Alerted by the unusual noise, Heimdall awakens. Splashing waves and eerie song draw his attention to the sea and his wave-mothers, who are bidding him farewell. He stands at the rim of the water, his arms held out toward them, and gives them his thanks and farewell.
As Heimdall turns away from the sea and begins walking inland, he notices that he has grown taller and stronger; he is a full-grown, full-bearded man now. How long had he been sleeping in the boat, as it crossed the unknown seas that separate the worlds?
He feels like a new being, a man, a God, full of gifts and knowledge unknown to him until now. Dreams and songs have nurtured his growth while he slept. Seeds have been implanted in him, and are growing rapidly in the air of this new world, ready to be shared with others. He needs another name to celebrate this change.
Heimdall shakes his head and keeps on walking as he muses on this. After a timeless time, he comes upon a farmstead, where he sees a few animals, and small muddy fields of crops and vegetables. Heimdall walks up to the turf-covered hut, knocks on the doorpost, and glances inside where he sees a middle-aged man and woman seated by a fire in the center of the hut. They look up at him, and call out “Welcome, traveler! Please come in and tell us your name.”
“Call me Rig,” he says, and steps over the threshold.
First published in Idunna: A Journal of Inclusive Heathenry, #128, Winter 2023