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giant

Hræsvelgr

A giant in eagle's shape who sits at the end of heaven; the wind comes from the beating of his wings.

Hræsvelgr is the answer to a riddle about the wind. In Vafþrúðnismál, Odin asks where the wind comes from, which "fares o'er the waves / Yet never itself is seen" Vafþrúðnismál 36. The giant replies:

In an eagle's guise at the end of heavenHræsvelg sits, they say;And from his wings does the wind come forthTo move o'er the world of men.Vafþrúðnismál 37

Snorri retells this with the stanza quoted and adds one detail: Hræsvelgr sits at the northward end of heaven Gylfaginning 18. The poem says only "the end of heaven". Snorri also has Gangleri praise the wind as strong but invisible, "wonderfully shapen".

The name means "corpse-swallower", which suits a carrion eagle better than a wind-maker. Neither source explains it, and no other story about him survives. Scholars have sometimes compared him with the eagle at the top of Yggdrasil, or with the eagle that "gnaws corpses screaming" at Ragnarök Völuspá 50, but these are suggestions; the texts never connect them.

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 an eagle's guise at the end of heaven Hræsvelg sits, they say; And from his wings does the wind come forth To move o'er the world of men.
Vafþrúðnismál 37 The giant Vafþrúðnir's explanation of the wind.
At the northward end of heaven sits the giant called Hræsvelgr: he has the plumes of an eagle, and when he stretches his wings for flight, then the wind rises from under his wings
Gylfaginning 18 Snorri's prose, which places him in the north.

Myths with Hræsvelgr

Odin's contest of wisdom with Vafþrúðnir Against Frigg's advice, Odin goes in disguise to the wisest of the giants and stakes his head on a contest of questions about the creation, the gods and the end of the world. He wins with a question only he can answer.

Related

Vafþrúðnir The all-knowing giant whom Odin, disguised as Gagnráðr, challenges to a contest of wisdom with their heads at stake. He loses to a question only Odin could answer. 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. Veðrfölnir and the eagle Veðrfölnir An unnamed eagle sits at the top of Yggdrasil, and between its eyes sits a hawk called Veðrfölnir; the hawk is named only by Snorri. Ymir The first being, a giant who woke in the melting rime of the primeval void. Odin and his brothers killed him and built the world from his body.