Sæhrimnir – the Boar of Valhalla

In Valhalla an eternal feast holds sway – provided by a single animal that never runs out: the boar Sæhrimnir.

The Cook and the Cauldron

Each day the cook Andhrimnir slaughters and boils the boar Sæhrimnir in the great cauldron Eldhrimnir. His flesh feeds the countless host of the Einherjar, the fallen warriors Odin gathers for the last battle. And the marvel: each evening the boar is whole and alive again. So the meal never ends – night after night, until Ragnarök.

Meat and Mead Without End

With the meat flows the mead that the goat Heidrun gives on Valhalla’s roof from the branches of the world-tree. Meat from Sæhrimnir, mead from Heidrun: the hall of the fallen knows no want. The image of the never-ending feast is the Norse dream of a warrior’s paradise.

“Andhrimnir has, in Eldhrimnir, / Sæhrimnir boiled, the best of pork.”— after Grímnismál 18, Karl Simrock (public domain)

The boar of Valhalla

Sæhrimnir is the wondrous boar that feeds the fallen warriors in Valhalla. He is the inexhaustible food source of the warrior paradise – an image of the eternal feast of the brave.

Slaughtered daily, whole again by evening

The wondrous thing: every day Sæhrimnir is slaughtered and cooked, and every evening he is whole again. Thus the Einherjar have meat in abundance night after night – the food never runs out.

The cook Andhrímnir

The boar is prepared by the cook Andhrímnir in the cauldron Eldhrímnir. The three names – Sæhrimnir, Andhrímnir, Eldhrímnir – form an artful assonance in Old Norse, typical of Eddic poetry.

An image of abundance

Sæhrimnir embodies the ideal of the hall: war by day, feast by evening, never-ending abundance. The boar as a sacred animal of fertility fits perfectly into this image of the paradise of the fallen.

The Warriors’ Paradise

Sæhrimnir is the heart of a vast system. Valhalla has, says the Grímnismál, 540 doors, and through each, at the last battle, 800 warriors pass at once. This host, the Einherjar, spends its days fighting: every morning they ride out and slay one another, every evening they rise whole again and feast together.

And at the feast nothing is lacking: meat from the ever-renewed boar Sæhrimnir, with the mead that the goat Heidrun gives on the roof from the leaves of the world-tree, and that the stag Eikthyrnir passes on as spring-water. This image of the never-ending battle and the never-ending meal was no child’s tale but a promise: whoever fell with honour awaited not nothing, but the best of all halls.

Read more with us

Valhalla · The Einherjar · Odin · Thor’s Goats.

Sources & literature

Grímnismál 18 (Poetic Edda); Snorri, Gylfaginning 38. Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology.

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