Yggdrasil · Cold and the Dead

Slíðr

A river in the Seeress’s prophecy, falling from the east through venom-filled dales.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Thorpe’s translation

40. From the east a river falls, through venom dales, with mire and clods, Slîd is its name.

Myth and literature

What the sources say

In Völuspá the seeress sees a river fall from the east through valleys of venom, carrying mire and clods. The stanza gives its name, Slíðr, and these few details, and it does not say who or what the river carries or where it ends. It stands among scenes of the gods’ fall and the halls of the wicked.

The name also appears in a list of rivers. Grímnismál counts Slíðr among the streams that wind round the gods’ dwelling, and Snorri repeats the list in Gylfaginning, where the streams flow from the well Hvergelmir in Niflheim. A note in Anderson’s Prose Edda says the river of the Seeress’s prophecy is full of mud and swords, which is not in Thorpe’s stanza as printed.

Myth and literature · Context

Names and background

The translations used here do not explain the name. The river of the same name in the Grímnismál and Gylfaginning list and the eastern river of Völuspá may be one and the same, or two rivers sharing a name; the sources do not settle it, and Anderson’s note simply treats them as the same Slíðr.

Hvergelmir and Niflheim have their own entries on this site.

Historical evidence

Where the sources attest it

Slíðr is named in Völuspá (stanza 40 in Thorpe’s numbering), in Grímnismál’s list of rivers (stanza 28 in the same edition) and in Snorri’s Gylfaginning. Stanza numbers differ between editions. No archaeological or pictorial evidence for the river is known; it is attested in texts alone.