Yggdrasil · Gods and Their Allies

Dáinn, Among the Elves and on the Tree

A name given to a rune-graver among the elves and, separately, to a hart of Yggdrasill.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Thorpe’s translation

145. Odin among the Æsir, but among the Alfar, Dain, and Dvalin for the dwarfs, Asvid for the Jotuns: some I myself graved.

33. Harts there are also four, which from its summits, arch-necked, gnaw. Dâin and Dvalin, Duneyr and Durathrôr.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Blackwell’s translation

“Four harts run across the branches of the tree, and bite the buds. They are called Dainn, Divalinn, Duneyr, and Durathror.”

Myth and literature

What the sources say

The name Dáinn turns up in several places, and the sources never join them. In Hávamál, Odin lists those who gave the runes shape: he himself among the Æsir, Dáinn among the Alfar, Dvalinn for the dwarfs and Ásviðr for the giants. The stanza says nothing more about Dáinn or about where the Alfar live.

In Grímnismál and in Snorri’s Gylfaginning, Dáinn is one of four harts that move among the branches of Yggdrasill and gnaw its buds, with Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór. Neither text says the hart is the Alfar’s rune-graver, and Hávamál does not say Dáinn is a hart. The name also appears among the dwarfs in the list in Völuspá, stanza 11 in Thorpe.

Myth and literature · Context

Names and background

Thorpe’s glossary guesses that Dáinn means something like “the soporiferous”, from a word for a swoon or deep rest. Other editions and scholars may read the name differently, and the meaning is not settled.

Dvalinn is the companion name in both lists, among the dwarfs in Hávamál and among the harts in Grímnismál, which is why the pairing is noticed. The sources do not say what links the two uses of Dáinn: one being, or one name given to different beings. Nothing in the texts describes a school, house or order of elf rune-graving.

  • Benjamin Thorpe (translator), The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson (the Poetic Edda) (opens in a new tab) (19th c.; Norroena ed. 1906), Thorpe’s glossary, entry Dainn; Hávamál, stanza 145; Grímnismál, stanza 33 (Thorpe’s numbering; other editions differ) Rights: Public domain. Nineteenth-century translation, in the public domain. Text as published online by Project Gutenberg (ebook #14726).
Historical evidence

Where the sources attest it

Hávamál stanza 145 in Thorpe’s numbering is stanza 144 in Bellows’s and 142 in Bray’s. Grímnismál stanza 33 (Thorpe) names the harts, and Snorri repeats the four names in Gylfaginning. The dwarf Dáinn is in Völuspá, stanza 11 in Thorpe.

No archaeological or pictorial evidence for any of these figures is known.