Vingólf

They also erected another hall for the sanctuary of the goddesses. It is a very fair structure, and called by men Vingolf.

And all that are righteous shall dwell with him in the place called Gimli, or Vingolf; but the wicked shall go to Hel, and thence to Niflhel, which is below, in the ninth world.

In Gylfaginning the high god sets up rulers who meet on the plain Iðavöllr. There they build two halls: a great one with twelve seats for the gods, and a second one set apart as a sanctuary for the goddesses, called Vingólf. Snorri calls it a very fair building and says little more.

Later in the same book Vingólf turns up a second time. In Blackwell’s version the righteous are said to live after death in a place called Gimli, or Vingólf, while the wicked go to Hel and on to Niflhel. So the name is given to two things that may or may not be the same: the goddesses’ hall and a dwelling of the righteous.

The name is usually read as a compound meaning something like “friends’ hall” or “friends’ floor”. A glossary in the edition used here gives “the Abode of Friends”, with the second part meaning floor. Whether the first part means “friend” or something nearer “joy” is a question of reading, and not all readers agree.

Vingólf is tied to the gods’ gathering plain Iðavöllr and to Glaðsheimr, the great hall of the gods, which Snorri builds beside it. The poems in this collection do not name Vingólf as the goddesses’ hall, so what is said about it comes from Snorri.