Ægir
sea giant, god of the ocean and king of the sea in Norse mythology
In Norse mythology, Ægir (anglicised as Aegir, Old Norse: 'sea'), Hlér (Old Norse: 'sea'), or Gymir (Old Norse less clearly: 'sea' or 'engulfer'), is a jötunn and personification of the sea. In the Old Norse record, Ægir hosts the gods in his halls and is associated with brewing ale. Ægir and his wife Rán, a goddess who also personifies the sea, and together the two produced nine daughters who personify the sea waves, and Ægir's son is Snær, who personifies the snow. Ægir may also be the father of the beautiful jötunn Gerðr, wife of the god Freyr, or these may be two separate figures who share the same name (see below and Gymir).
One of Ægir's names, Hlér, is the namesake of the island Læsø (Old Norse Hlésey 'Hlér's island') and perhaps also Lejre in Denmark. Scholars have long analyzed Ægir's role in the Old Norse corpus, and the concept of the figure has had some influence in modern popular culture.
Names
The Old Norse name Ægir may stem from a Proto-Germanic form reconstructed as *āgwi-jaz, and interpreted as meaning 'the one of the water', or 'water-man'. The name is usually analysed as a derivative of the stem *ahwō- ('river'; cf. Gothic aƕa 'body of water, river', Old English ēa 'stream', Old High German aha 'river').
The theonym is identical to a noun for 'sea' (ægir) in skaldic poetry, itself a base word in many kennings.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ægir” is sea giant, god of the ocean and king of the sea in Norse mythology. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ægir, giant and ocean, not as a finished interpretation.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q204927. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ægir” 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.