Naglfar

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Naglfar introduces Ragnarök. The Midgard Serpent rages in the background. Postverk Føroya stamp , 2003 by Anker Eli Petersen .

Naglfar ( Old Norse for "ship of the dead", "ship of nails") is the ship of the dead in Norse mythology . It is described as the largest ship of all time and belongs to the Muspell .

Naglfar is mentioned above all in connection with the end of the world Ragnarök . Afloat by the floods of the Midgard Serpent , it then brings the enemies of the gods to the last great battle. Depending on the source, either the giant Hrymir (after the Gylfaginning ) or the outcast Ase Loki (after the Völuspá ) is at the wheel.

Naglfar is made from the uncircumcised fingernails and toenails of the dead. Already Snorri Sturluson mentions in the Gylfaginning the custom of cutting the nails of the dead in order to delay the completion of the ship and thus indirectly Ragnarök himself. The Brothers Grimm take up this idea in their German mythology , but interpret it more strongly in terms of the far distance of the end of the world:

This is supposed to express the immense distance and the slow coming into being of the end of the world: It takes a long time until such a ship is assembled from narrow nail carvings from the corpses, and it still suffers from the warning postponement, all dead the nails before burial or cremation to cut.

The name Naglfar was probably derived from the old Norse nagli for 'nail' and far for 'vehicle', 'ship' and interpreted as 'nail ship' as early as Snorri's time . More likely, however, is a derivation in the meaning of “ship of the dead”, whereby the first member of the composition would be etymologically Gothic naus “dead” and ancient Greek nékus “corpse”.

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