Rán: The Net in the Sea

“The name of Æger’s wife is Ran, and they have nine daughters, as has before been written. At this feast all things passed around spontaneously, both food and ale and all the utensils needed for the feasting. Then the asas became aware that Ran had a net in which she caught all men who perish at sea.”

In Skáldskaparmál, Snorri explains why gold is called “Ægir’s fire”. The sea-god Ægir invited the gods to a feast, and the hall was lit by bright gold. During it the gods learned that his wife Rán owned a net in which she caught every man who perishes at sea. Snorri gives this as the reason poets call gold the fire of the sea, of Rán or of Ægir’s daughters. The passage says Ægir and Rán have nine daughters, and refers back to an earlier mention; Anderson’s text gives no names there.

In the poems, Rán is named in a Helgi poem, where the king’s ship is said to be wrested from her hand, and in the prose before the Andvari story, where Loki goes to Rán and obtains her net to catch the pike. Thorpe’s note on one of the daughters, Kolga, says that the daughters were the waves. The sources say nothing of a hall under the sea.

Thorpe’s glossary connects the name Rán with a word meaning to plunder, her spoil being those drowned at sea. This is a gloss, not a settled reading.

Ægir is the sea-god who hosts the gods’ feast, and the prose introduction to Lokasenna sets the quarrel with Loki in his hall. That introduction names two servants, Fimafeng and Eldir, but does not mention Rán. Snorri counts nine daughters; Thorpe’s note treats them as waves. No text says these nine are the same beings as the nine mothers of Heimdall, and this entry does not claim they are.

Snorri uses Rán and her daughters as sea-names in poetry, alongside Ægir himself.