Veðrfölnir and eagle
hawk in Norse mythology
In Norse mythology, Veðrfölnir (Old Norse "storm pale", "wind bleached", or "wind-witherer") is a hawk sitting between the eyes of an unnamed eagle that is perched on top of the world tree Yggdrasil. Veðrfölnir is sometimes modernly anglicized as Vedrfolnir, Vedurfolnir or Vetrfolnir.
The unnamed eagle is attested in both the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, while Veðrfölnir is solely attested in the Prose Edda. In both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, the squirrel Ratatoskr carries messages between the unnamed eagle and Nidhöggr, the worm that resides below the world tree. Scholars have proposed theories about the implications of the birds.
Attestations
In the Poetic Edda poem Grímnismál, the god Odin (disguised as Grimnir) says that:
The eagle is again attested in chapter 16 of the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, yet here with the company of Veðrfölnir. In the chapter, Gangleri (described as king Gylfi in disguise) asks the enthroned figure of High what other notable facts there are to know about Yggdrasil. High responds (Veðrfölnir is here anglicized as Vedrfolnir):
There is much to be told. An eagle sits at the top of the ash, and it has knowledge of many things. Between its eyes sits the hawk called Vedrfolnir [...].
“Veðrfölnir and eagle” enters the record as hawk in Norse mythology. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Veðrfölnir, eagle and hawk can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Veðrfölnir and eagle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.