Norse Pantheonweapon
Gungnir
- Perfect Accuracy
- Oath Binding
- Certain Death
Odin's mighty spear that never misses its mark and always kills its target. Oaths sworn upon Gungnir are unbreakable, and it was used to begin the first war in creation.
About Gungnir
Spear that never misses
Snorri: the Sons of Ivaldi make Gungnir for Odin; it never misses its mark. Völuspá has Odin hurl a spear over the host to begin the first war, the Aesir-Vanir conflict. Skalds swear and ken by the spear. At Ragnarok he rides with it and falls to Fenrir. The name is "the swaying one." No church or mound in Scandinavia holds a labeled Gungnir; the object lives in the Prose Edda treasure-list and in poetic diction. Oath-binding on the spear is a legal-poetic motif, not a surviving temple rite we can watch.
Origin
Forged by the Sons of Ivaldi, the same dwarven craftsmen who made Sif's golden hair and Freyr's ship Skidbladnir.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Prose Edda, Skáldskaparmál / Gylfaginning
- Poetic Edda, Völuspá
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
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