Seiðr Loom

creature

Sæhrímnir

The beast whose meat feeds the warriors of Valhalla; Snorri says it is a boar, cooked every day and whole again by evening.

Sæhrímnir is the meat of Valhalla. In Grímnismál, Odin says that "In Eldhrimnir Andhrimnir cooks / Sæhrimnir's seething flesh,— / The best of food, but few men know / On what fare the warriors feast" Grímnismál 18. Andhrímnir is the cook and Eldhrímnir the cauldron; neither is mentioned anywhere else.

Snorri explains the stanza. Gangleri asks how so vast a host of the dead can be fed, and is told that the flesh of "that boar ... which is called Sæhrímnir" never runs out: "he is boiled every day and is whole at evening" Gylfaginning 38. Brodeur's version of the stanza that Snorri quotes calls the meat the "Best of hams".

Two of the details most often repeated about Sæhrímnir come only from Snorri: that it is a boar, and that it comes back to life each day. The poem says neither. The boar may be a reasonable reading, but the self-renewing beast is Snorri's own addition or comes from a source we do not have. Snorri tells a similar tale elsewhere, of Thor's goats, which are eaten and then raised again with the hammer Gylfaginning 44.

Odin himself does not eat it. He gives his food to his wolves Geri and Freki and lives on wine alone Grímnismál 19. The drink of the einherjar comes from the goat Heiðrún.

In the sources

Quoted from the hosted translations; each line is checked against the text when the site is built. Select a reference to read it in context.

In Eldhrimnir Andhrimnir cooks Sæhrimnir's seething flesh,— The best of food, but few men know On what fare the warriors feast.
Grímnismál 18 The poem names the meat, the cook and the kettle, but not the kind of animal.
But never is so vast a multitude in Valhall that the flesh of that boar shall fail, which is called Sæhrímnir; he is boiled every day and is whole at evening.
Gylfaginning 38 Snorri makes Sæhrímnir a boar that is restored each day.

Related

Valhalla Valhöll Odin's vast hall of the battle-dead, roofed with shields and raftered with spears, where the einherjar feast and fight each day until they march out to meet the wolf at Ragnarök. Einherjar einherjar The dead warriors of Valhalla, who fight and fall every day, rise to feast on boar-meat and mead, and wait to march out with Odin against the wolf at Ragnarök. Odin Óðinn Chief of the Æsir: a one-eyed god of wisdom, poetry, magic, war and the dead, who gave an eye and hanged himself on a tree for knowledge, and who dies at Ragnarök. Heiðrún The goat that stands by Valhalla and browses the tree Læraðr; from her udders flows mead enough to make all the einherjar drunk every day. Geri and Freki Geri ok Freki Odin's two wolves, to whom he gives all the food from his table, since he himself lives on wine alone.