The Eagle and Veðrfölnir

…there is an eagle perched upon its branches who knows many things: between his eyes sits the hawk called Vedurfolnir.

“Ratatösk is the squirrel named, which, has to run in Yggdrasil’s ash; he from above the eagle’s words must carry, and beneath to Nidhögg repeat.”

In Gylfaginning an eagle sits in the branches of the tree, and a hawk named Veðrfölnir sits between its eyes. Grímnismál mentions the eagle above when it tells of Ratatoskr.

Gylfaginning says the eagle “knows many things” and gives it a hawk, Veðrfölnir, between its eyes, but does not say what either does. The eagle is tied to the rest of the tree’s life through the squirrel Ratatoskr, who in Grímnismál carries the eagle’s words down to Níðhöggr at the roots. Gylfaginning has the squirrel stirring up strife between the two.

Neither passage names the eagle or says who it is. A different eagle-shaped being appears elsewhere. In Vafþrúðnismál and in Gylfaginning, the giant Hræsvelgr sits at the northern end of heaven in an eagle’s plumage, and the wind comes from his wings. The tree’s eagle is not called Hræsvelgr in these accounts, and nothing in the passages joins the two. For that giant, see the entry on Hræsvelgr.

The name is usually glossed as storm-pale, wind-bleached or wind-witherer. The sources differ on who is in the branches. Grímnismál mentions the eagle, and the squirrel carrying messages between it and Níðhöggr, but names no hawk. Only the Prose Edda (Gylfaginning, chapter 16) names Veðrfölnir, placing the hawk between the eagle's eyes. Snorri never explains why it sits there or what it does. John Lindow suggests it may stand for the eagle's wisdom and might, like Odin's ravens, fly off to gather knowledge; Hilda Ellis Davidson sets the image in the wider Germanic setting of a sky god linked with the oak.