He sleeps less than a bird, sees a hundred miles and hears the grass grow. Heimdall is the eternal watchman of the world of the gods.
At the edge of Asgard, where the rainbow bridge Bifröst connects the world of the gods with Midgard, stands a lone watchman: Heimdall.
Heimdall is endowed with superhuman watchfulness. He needs less sleep than a bird, sees a hundred miles by day and night, and hears the grass growing on the earth and the wool growing on the sheep. No enemy can approach him unnoticed.
His most important task is to warn of danger. For this he bears the Gjallarhorn, whose sound carries through all the worlds. When the enemies advance at Ragnarök, Heimdall will sound it and call the gods to the final battle – in which he and Loki kill each other.
A song of its own, the Rígsþula, tells how Heimdall wanders the earth under the name Ríg and becomes the forefather of the human social orders. So the watchman is at the same time a founder of order among humans.
The bridge Bifröst that he guards also appears again and again in our reels and stories – the gateway between the worlds.