Gullveig and Heiðr

25. She that war remembers, the first on earth, when Gullveig they with lances pierced, and in the high one’s hall her burnt, thrice burnt, thrice brought her forth, oft not seldom; yet she still lives.

26. Heidi they called her, whithersoe’r she came, the well-foreseeing Vala: wolves she tamed, magic arts she knew, magic arts practised; ever was she the joy of evil people.

Völuspá tells of Gullveig being pierced with spears and burned three times in the High One’s hall, each time brought back to life. The next stanza says that she was called Heiðr wherever she came: a seeress who knew magic, tamed wolves, practised spells, and was always welcome to wicked people.

The poem does not say who the attackers were or why they burned her. The following stanzas turn to the council of the gods and the war with the Vanir, but the poem does not state that the burning caused the war. Snorri’s accounts of the war do not mention Gullveig or Heiðr.

The 1906 edition’s note takes Gullveig as a personification of gold, and the burning as the end of a golden age. That is one reading, and the poem itself does not say so. The same note reads the High One as Odin.

The poem gives Heiðr as the name she bore on her travels, which reads as the same figure, but that is an inference from the wording. A further view that she is the goddess Freyja is a scholarly inference too, and no source states it. The stanzas that follow are discussed in The Æsir–Vanir War.