Yggdrasil · Described Without a Place on the Map

Naglfar: The Ship Released at Ragnarök

The ship that breaks loose in the flood of Ragnarök; the poem and Snorri name different helmsmen.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Blackwell’s translation

On the waters floats the ship Naglfar, which is constructed of the nails of dead men. For which reason great care should be taken to die with pared nails, for he who dies with his nails unpared, supplies materials for the building of this vessel, which both gods and men wish may be finished as late as possible. But in this flood shall Naglfar float, and the giant Hrym be its steersman.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Thorpe’s translation

49. Hrym steers from the east, the waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in jötun-rage. The worm beats the water, and the eagle screams: the pale of beak tears carcases; Naglfar is loosed.

50. That ship fares from the east: come will Muspell’s people o’er the sea, and Loki steers.

Myth and literature

What the sources say

In Gylfaginning, Naglfar is one of the signs of the end. When the sea floods the land because the Midgard serpent heaves toward it, the ship comes free. Snorri says it is built from the nails of dead men, that gods and men both hope it will be finished as late as possible, and that the giant Hrymr is its steersman.

Völuspá, in Thorpe’s translation, gives a different picture. Stanza 49 has Hrym steering from the east as Naglfar is loosed, and stanza 50 describes a ship from the east carrying Muspell’s people, with Loki at the helm. The two accounts name different steersmen, and this entry does not settle which is right. The warning about unpared nails is Snorri’s own, and nothing in the sources shows that it records a real custom. Naglfar is not Skíðblaðnir, Freyr’s ship; Gylfaginning treats them as two ships and calls Naglfar the larger. The sources place no shipyard anywhere.

Myth and literature · Context

Names and background

The name Naglfar is generally taken to contain nagl, a nail of the finger or toe, and the Norroena edition’s glossary says so, citing the Prose Edda. The rest of the name is not explained in the sources quoted here. Anderson’s translation also names a different Naglfare, a husband of Night and father of Aud. The sources do not connect the two, so this entry does not join them.

Ragnarök brings other figures to the field at the same moment: the wolf Fenrir, the Midgard serpent, Garm before Gnipahellir, and the sons of Muspel. Hrymr is a giant in Snorri, while the poem gives Loki the helm of the ship from the east, so the two lists of helmsmen cannot be merged without choosing one.

Historical evidence

Where the sources attest it

Naglfar is named in Völuspá, stanza 49 of Thorpe’s numbering, and in Gylfaginning, where Snorri’s account of Ragnarök follows the poem and adds the nails. Snorri is partly retelling the poem, so his version is not a second independent witness. The warning about nails appears only in his prose. No archaeological or pictorial evidence for the ship is cited in this entry, and no source here ties the warning to a practice of paring the nails of the dead.