Source Mimirs

Odin drinks from Mimir's spring while Mimir watches him. Painting by Robert Engels (1903).

In Norse mythology, Mimir's fountain is a source at the foot of the Yggdrasil World Ash . It is guarded by the giant Mimir , because knowledge and wisdom are hidden in it. In order to be able to drink from it, the god father Odin had to deposit one of his two eyes in the water as a pledge. For this, he presumably acquired the gift of clairvoyance . According to the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson , Mimir's fountain is one of three springs that lie under the roots of the Nordic world tree. The others are the Urdbrunnen and Hvergelmir .

literature

• Henry Adams Bellows: The Poetic Edda . Princeton University Press , New York, 1936: The American-Scandinavian Foundation.
• Anthony Faulkes: Edda . Everyman , 1995. ISBN 0-460-87616-3
• Carolyne Larrington: The Poetic Edda . Oxford World's Classics , 1999. ISBN 0192839462
• Rudolf Simek: Dictionary of Northern Mythology . DS Brewer , 2007. ISBN 0859915131
• Benjamin Thorpe: Edda Sæmundar Hinns Frôða: The Edda of Sæmund the Learned Part I. London: Trübner & Co., 1866