The Lay of Hyndla (In Story Form)
In the cold stillness of night, beneath a sky alive with stars, the goddess Freyja rides her golden-bristled boar, Hildisvíni, to the mountain cave of Hyndla, an ancient giantess who guards the secrets of blood and fate.
Freyja’s mortal follower, Óttar the Young, has staked his honour and inheritance on his forgotten lineage. To help him, Freyja seeks Hyndla’s wisdom — but the old seeress demands truth for truth and speaks the names of gods, kings, and heroes with a voice that shakes the stones.
As the cave fills with the echoes of ancient bloodlines — from Sigurðr the Dragon-Slayer to Haraldr Battle-Tooth — the goddess reveals that memory itself is magic, and that to know one’s ancestors is to awaken their power.
A story of ancestry, divine guidance, and the sacred weight of remembrance, The Lay of Hyndla bridges the mortal and the mythic — where every name spoken is a spark of the old world reborn.
Hyndluljóð - The Lay of Hyndla
Hidden among the verses of the Poetic Edda lies one of Norse mythology’s quietest treasures — Hyndluljóð, The Lay of Hyndla. It is not a tale of war or prophecy, but of memory, ancestry, and divine revelation. Here, the goddess Freyja rides beneath the northern stars with her mortal companion Óttar, seeking the wisdom of the giantess Hyndla, keeper of forgotten bloodlines and sacred truths.
Through their dialogue, we glimpse a world where to name one’s ancestors was to awaken their power, where genealogy was magic, and remembrance a sacred act. Hyndluljóð bridges gods and mortals, history and myth, teaching that the past is never gone — only waiting to be spoken back into life.
Forgotten by many, this poem remains one of the Edda’s most profound meditations on identity, belonging, and the divine roots of memory.