Mímisbrunnr

In Norse mythology, Mímisbrunnr (Old Norse "Mímir's wellspring") is a spring or well associated with the being Mímir, located beneath the world tree Yggdrasil. Mímisbrunnr is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. The wellspring is located beneath one of three roots of the world tree Yggdrasil, a root that passes into the Jötunheimr where the primordial plane of Ginnungagap once existed. In addition, the Prose Edda relates that the water of the wellspring contains much wisdom, and that Odin sacrificed one of his eyes to the wellspring in exchange for a drink. In the Prose Edda, Mímisbrunnr is mentioned as one of three wellsprings existing beneath three roots of Yggdrasil, the other two being Hvergelmir, located beneath a root in Niflheim, and Urðarbrunnr.

Attestations

Poetic Edda

In the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, a völva recounts to Odin that she knows that Odin once placed one of his eyes in Mímisbrunnr as a pledge, and that Mímir drinks from the wellspring every morning:

The above stanza is absent from the Hauksbók manuscript version of the poem. Elsewhere in the poem, the völva mentions a scenario involving the hearing or horn (depending on translation of the Old Norse noun hljóð—bolded for the purpose of illustration) of the god Heimdallr:

Scholar Paul Schach comments that the stanzas in this section of Voluspa are "all very mysterious and obscure, as it was perhaps meant to be". Schach details that "Heimdallar hljóð has aroused much speculation. Snorri seems to have confused this word with gjallarhorn, but there is otherwise no attestation of the use of hljóð in the sense of 'horn' in Icelandic. Various scholars have read this as "hearing" rather than "horn".