Ókólnir (Brimir’s Beer-Hall)

41. On the north there stood, on Nida-fells, a hall of gold, for Sindri’s race; and another stood in Okôlnir, the Jötuns beer-hall which Brîmir hight.

“The best place of all to be in will be Gimli, in heaven, and all who delight in quaffing good drink will find a great store in the hall called Brimir, which is also in heaven in the region Okolni.”

In Völuspá, as Thorpe renders it, a second hall stands in Ókólnir after the hall of gold: the beer-hall of a Jötun, a giant, who is called Brimir. Here Brimir is a person and the hall is his.

In Gylfaginning the arrangement changes. Snorri’s speaker says that all who delight in good drink will find plenty in the hall called Brimir, which stands in heaven in the region called Okolni, and that the righteous will dwell there. So the poem names a giant who owns a hall at Ókólnir, while Snorri names the hall Brimir and puts it in a heavenly region. Neither passage says that Ókólnir is the same place as Niðavellir, the dwarfs’ land named in the stanza before it.

The glossary of the translation used here takes Brimir from a word for flame, a guess it marks as probable.

The stanza places Ókólnir next to the hall for Sindri’s race, which has led some to read the two as neighbours; the text itself says only that another hall stood there. For the hall of gold see Sindri’s hall. Because the poem and Snorri disagree on whether Brimir is a giant or a hall, the entry here keeps the two accounts apart.