Seiðr Loom

Ásynjur

Sága

A goddess who drinks with Odin every day from golden cups at Sökkvabekkr, a hall among cool waves; Snorri ranks her second among the Ásynjur.

Odin and Sága by Frølich
Odin and Sága by Frølich, Lorenz Frølich (1895). Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Sága appears in a single stanza of verse. In Grímnismál, Odin (disguised as Grímnir) lists the halls of the gods, and the fourth is Sökkvabekkr, which stands amid the murmur of cool waves: "There daily do Othin and Saga drink / In gladness from cups of gold" Grímnismál 7. The poem does not say who she is or how she is related to Odin.

Snorri's Gylfaginning adds only her rank: she is the second of the Ásynjur, after Frigg, and lives at Sökkvabekkr, "a great abode" Gylfaginning 35. Everything else about her is guesswork.

The guesswork has a common direction. Frigg's own hall, Fensalir, is also named after water ("fen-halls"), and a goddess who drinks with Odin every day sounds like a wife. Many scholars have therefore suggested that Sága is Frigg under another name, or a figure split off from her. The sources never say so. The name is sometimes linked to sjá, "to see", but this too is uncertain; it is not the word saga, "story", whatever modern readers may hope.

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.

Sökkvabekk is the fourth, where cool waves flow, And amid their murmur it stands; There daily do Othin and Saga drink In gladness from cups of gold.
Grímnismál 7 The only poetic evidence: Sága's hall among the waters, where she and Odin drink together every day.
The second is Sága: she dwells at Søkkvabekkr, and that is a great abode.
Gylfaginning 35 Snorri places her second in his list of goddesses and adds nothing but the size of her hall.

Related

Sökkvabekkr The hall of the goddess Sága, set among cool, murmuring waves, where she and Odin drink together every day from golden cups. 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. Frigg Odin's wife and the foremost of the goddesses: she knows the fates of all but never speaks them, and her failed attempt to protect her son Baldr is the hinge of Norse myth. Fensalir Frigg's hall, 'most glorious' in Snorri's words; there she wept for Baldr, and there Loki tricked her into naming the mistletoe. Eir A goddess whom Snorri ranks third among the Ásynjur and calls 'the best physician'; a maiden of the same name sits at Menglöð's knees in Svipdagsmál. Fulla Frigg's maidservant and confidante, who carries her mistress's coffer, minds her shoes and knows her secrets; poets called gold 'Fulla's snood'.