Rán – Goddess of the Sea

In Norse mythology, Rán (Old Norse: [ˈrɒːn]) is a goddess and a personification of the sea. Rán and her husband Ægir, a jötunn who also personifies the sea, have nine daughters, who personify waves. The goddess is frequently associated with a net, which she uses to capture sea-goers. According to the prose introduction to a poem in the Poetic Edda and in Völsunga saga, Rán once loaned her net to the god Loki.

Rán and her husband, Ægir, are the parents of the Nine Daughters who are the personification of the waves.  Their daughters are: Blóðughadda (bloody-hair), Dröfn (foaming sea), Bylgja (billow), Himinglæva (transparent on top), Uðr (frothy wave), Dúfa (pitching wave), Hefring (lifting wave), Hronn (welling wave) and Kolga (coldwave). Odin was said to have fallen in love with all the nine daughters and had one son with all nine of them. That son is Heimdallr, who would later grow up to become the guardian of the Bifrost. Rán and Ægir live in a golden hall in the deepest depths of the sea, named Ægirheim.

Rán is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled during the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; the Prose Edda, written during the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson; in both Völsunga saga and Friðþjófs saga hins frœkna; and in the poetry of skalds, such as Sonatorrek, a 10th-century poem by Icelandic skald Egill Skallagrímsson.

In many ways, Rán acts out the darker and more destructive side of the sea’s nature; unlike Ægir who comes across as friendly but might then turn on you, Rán makes no bones about being a ravager. She is beautiful, but her teeth are sharp and pointed and her fingers are clawed. When she smiles, your blood runs cold—or it ought to. Her hobby is collecting dead souls, with which she populates Ægirheim. While Aegir is both an “honorary” Æsir and an “honorary” Vanir, and tries to balance alliances with all of them, there is no question where Ran’s alliances lie. She is on good terms with Hel, the goddess of Death, and prefers the company of the older gods. Once upon a time, Rán was allegedly offered human sacrifices. She was fed, so she wouldn’t serve herself. Saxon pirates tithed to Rán, allegedly casting one in ten captives overboard in hopes of ensuring safe passage. Rán and Ægir predate and defy classification and thus are neither Æsir nor Vanir, although they socialize with both. Rán is an oracular spirit. It is safer to request her assistance on land.

Etymology

The Old Norse common noun rán means ‘plundering’ or ‘theft, robbery’. In turn, scholars view the theonym Rán as meaning, for example, ‘theft, robbery’. On the etymology of the theonym, scholar Rudolf Simek says, “although the meaning of the name has not been fully clarified, Rán was probably understood as being ‘robber’ … and has nothing to do with [Old Norse] ráða ‘rule’.

Because Rán is a personification of the sea, skalds employ her name in a variety of kennings to refer to the sea. Examples include Ránar-land (‘Ran’s land’), -salr (‘Rán’s hall’), and -vegr (‘Rán’s way’), and rán-beðr (‘the bed of Rán’) and meaning ‘the bed of the sea’.

Attestations

Sonatorrek

Rán and Ægir receive mention in the poem Sonatorrek attributed to 10th century Icelandic skald Egill Skallagrímsson. In the poem, Egill laments the death of his son Böðvar, who drowned at sea during a storm:

Old Norse: Mjök hefr Rán rykst um mik; emk ofsnauðr at ástvinum. Sleit marr bönd mínnar áttar, snaran þátt af sjalfum mér.

Nora K. Chadwick translation: Greatly has Rán afflicted me. I have been despoiled of a great friend. Empty and unoccupied I see the place which the sea has torn my son.

In one difficult stanza later in the poem, the skald expresses the pain of losing his son by invoking the image of slaying the personified sea, personified as Ægir (Old Norse ǫlsmið[r] ‘ale-smith’) and Rán (Ægis man ‘Ægir’s wife’):

Old Norse: Veiztu um ϸá sǫk sverði of rækak, var ǫlsmið[r] allra tíma; hroða vágs brœðr ef vega mættak; fœra ek andvígr Ægis mani.

Bjarni Einarsson translation: You know, if I took revenge with the sword for that offence, Ægir would be dead; if I could kill them, I would fight Ægir and Rán.

Poetic Edda

Rán receives three mentions in the Poetic Edda; twice in poetry and once in prose. The first mention occurs in a stanza in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, when the valkyrie Sigrún assists the ship of the hero Helgi Hundingsbane as it encounters ferocious waters:

Henry Adams Bellows translation But from above did Sigrun brave Aid the men and all their faring; Mightily came from the claws of Ron The leader’s sea-beast off Gnipalund.

Carolyne Larrington translation And Sigrun above, brave in battle, protected them and their vessel; the king’s sea-beasts twisted powerfully, out of Ran’s hand toward Gnipalund.

In the notes for her translation, Larrington says that Rán “seeks to catch and drown men in her net” and that “to give someone to the sea-goddess is to drown them.”

The second instance occurs in a stanza found in Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar. In this stanza, the hero Atli references Rán while flyting with Hrímgerðr, a female jötunn:

Henry Adams Bellows translation: “Witch, in front of the ship thou wast, And lay before the fjord; To Ron wouldst have given the ruler’s men, If a spear had not stuck in thy flesh.”

Carolyne Larrington translation: ‘Ogress, you stood before the prince’s ships and blocked the fjord mouth; the king’s men you were going to give to Ran, if a spear hadn’t lodged in your flesh.’

Finally, in the prose introduction to Reginsmál, Loki visits Rán (here rendered as Ron) to borrow her net:

[Odin and Hœnir] sent Loki to get the gold; he went to Ron and got her net, and went then to Andvari’s fall and cast the net in front of the pike, and the pike leaped into the net.

Translator Henry Adams Bellows notes how this version of the narrative differs from how it appears in other sources, where Loki catches the pike with his own hands.

Prose Edda

The Prose Edda sections Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal contain several references to Rán. Section 25 of Skáldskaparmál (“How shall sea be referred to?”) manners in which poets may refer to the sea, including “husband of Rán” and “land of Rán and of Ægir’s daughters”, but also “father of Ægir’s daughters”.

In the same section, the author cites a fragment of a work by the 11th century Icelandic skald Hofgarða-Refr Gestsson, where Rán is referred to as ‘Gymir’s … völva’:

Standardized Old Norse Ok sem kvað Refr: Fœrir bjǫrn, þar er bára brestr, undinna festa opt í Ægis kjǫpta *ursǫl Gymis vǫlva.

Anthony Faulkes translation And as Ref said: Gymir’s spray-cold spæ-wife often brings the twisted-rope-bear [ship] into Ægir’s jaws [under the waves] where the wave breaks.

The section’s author comments that the stanza “[implies] that they are all the same, Ægir and Hler and Gymir. The author follows with a quote from another stanza by the skald that references Rán:

But sea-crest-Sleipnir [ship], spray-driven, tears his breast, covered with red paint, out of white Ran’s mouth [the sea’s grasp].

Chapter 33 of Skáldskaparmál discusses why skalds may refer to gold as “Ægir’s fire”. The section traces the kenning to a narrative surrounding Ægir, in which the jötunn employs “glowing gold” in the center of his hall to light it “like fire” (which the narrator compares to flaming swords in Valhalla). The section explains that “Ran is the name of Ægir’s wife, and the names of their nine daughters are as was written above … Then the Æsir discovered that Ran had a net in which she caught everyone that went to sea … so this is the story of the origin of gold being called fire or light or brightness of Ægir, Ran or Ægir’s daughters, and from such kennings the practice has now developed of calling gold fire of the sea and of all terms for it, since Ægir and Ran’s names are also terms for the sea, and hence gold is now called fire of lakes or rivers and of all river-names.”

In the Nafnaþulur section of Skáldskaparmál, Rán appears in a list of goddesses (Old Norse ásynjur).

Völsunga saga and Friðþjófs saga hins frœkna

Rán receives a single mention in Völsunga saga. Like in the prose introduction to the eddic poem Reginsmál (discussed above), “they sent Loki to obtain the gold. He went to Ran and got her net.”

In the legendary saga Friðþjófs saga hins frœkna, Friðþjófr and his men find themselves in a violent storm, and the protagonist mourns that he will soon rest in Rán’s bed:

Old Norse Sat ek á bólstri í Baldrshaga, kvað, hvat ek kunna, fyr konungs dóttur. Nú skal ek Ránar raunbeð troða, en annar mun Ingibjargar.”

Eiríkr Magnússon and William Morris translation (1875): “On bolster I sat In Baldur’s Mead erst, And all songs that I could To the king’s daughter sang; Now on Ran’s bed belike Must I soon be a-lying, And another shall be By Ingibiorg’s side.”

The protagonist then decides that as they are to “go to Rán” (at til Ránar skal fara) they would better do so in style with gold on each man. He divides the gold and talks of her again:

Nú hefir fjórum of farit várum lögr lagsmönnum, þeim er lifa skyldu, en Rán gætir röskum drengjum, siðlaus kona, sess ok rekkju.

“The red ring here I hew me Once owned of Halfdan’s father, The wealthy lord of erewhile, Or the sea waves undo us, So on the guests shall gold be, If we have need of guesting; Meet so for mighty men-folk Amid Ran’s hall to hold them.”

Scholarly reception and interpretation

According to Rudolf Simek, “… Rán is the ruler of the realm of the dead at the bottom of the sea to which people who have drowned go.” Simek says that “while Ægir personifies the sea as a friendly power, Rán embodies the sinister side of the sea, at least in the eyes of the late Viking Age Icelandic seafarers.”

UPG and Folklore

According to Rudolf Simek, “… Rán is the ruler of the realm of the dead at the bottom of the sea to which people who have drowned go.” Simek says that “while Ægir personifies the sea as a friendly power, Rán embodies the sinister side of the sea, at least in the eyes of the late Viking Age Icelandic seafarers.”

Rán appears to many as a delicate-looking woman with blue-green skin. Her long black hair drags on the ground behind her when she walks through Ægir’s hall; its ends trail off into nothingness, and this is because her hair is magically linked to all the seaweed that grows in all the northern oceans. Like her daughters, she can appear in mermaid form or with legs, although she is more likely than they are to take the latter shape, perhaps because her job as hostess of Ægirheim requires her to spend more time walking on mother-of-pearl floors than swimming. Her weapon is the net, with which she drags people down to their deaths; her name is translated by scholars as meaning “robber” or “ravager” or “plunderer” (though Alby Stone has proposed that ‘Ran’ is derived from the old Indo-European word rani meaning ‘lady’). Rán is very much the flirtatious siren—of all the etins, female sea-giants are most likely to make eyes at humans, although to take them up on it can be disastrous. She is the maker of all sea-storms in the northern oceans.

A folk-belief quoted in one of the Icelandic sagas is that if drowned people appeared at their own funeral feasts, it was a sign that Rán had given them a good welcome into her hall. In Fridhjof’s Saga, it is said to have been a lucky thing to have gold on one’s person if lost at sea, and the hero went so far to distribute small pieces of gold among his men when they were caught in a storm, so that they should not go empty-handed into Rán’s Hall if they were drowned. Rán’s hospitality might extend for centuries, with the drowned souls feasting and partying and singing in her hall, but sooner or later the capricious Queen of the Sea tires of them, and sends them away to Hel’s realm, Helheim the land of the Dead.

On the other hand, dropping gold over the side of a ship and saying a prayer might well mollify her into granting you safe passage and good journeying. Those who were lucky at sea were said to be much loved by Rán, although this was granted to be an ambivalent blessing, as if she liked you enough, then it was only a matter of time before she brought you to be with her.

An altar to Rán can feature any color of the sea, but it is commonly believed that she is partial to the greener shades. As well as the various shells and sea life, she likes gold jewelry and symbolic “pirate treasure”, dried seaweed, and small toy ships to symbolize the ones that she takes.

Invocation

Ritual: Weregild

The term “weregild” means the giving of gold for the wrongful death of a man. In Rán’s case, we give gold (and she does love gold!) for the wrongful death of so many of her creatures. To do this rite, go to a beach with lots of seaweed, or if you are trapped on land, fill a bowl with water and sea salt, and sprinkle dried seaweed into it. (You can usually find it at health food stores, if nowhere else locally.) Buy something of real gold – an earring, a necklace, something made of the real stuff – and a small ship made out of untreated paper (which is biodegradable). Attach the gold firmly to the boat, and take it out to the ocean, or to your bowl. If you are at the beach, bind a long piece of seaweed around your head and speak Rán’s invocation. (I’ve also found that she very much loves Rudyard Kipling’s poem Harp Song of the Dane Women, done to Leslie Fish’s tune, sung to her.) Tell her how much you value the ocean and that you will do what you can to help it, and ask her to aid you in finding the best way to do that. Throw the ship with the gold into the ocean, or drown it in your bowl and leave it to dissolve, and then sell the gold and give the money to a sea-protection organization.