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Sif – the Golden-Haired Goddess

Gods & Goddesses Sif, the golden-haired wife of Thor

Her hair was of pure gold – and this hair set off one of the most consequential stories in all of mythology. Sif, wife of the thunder god Thor, seems at first glance a quiet goddess. Yet her golden hair binds together the sky, the dwarves’ forge and the cornfields of the earth.

Sif (Old Norse Sif, ‘kinship, clan, bond’) is one of the Æsir and Thor’s wife. Snorri stresses one thing above all: her beautiful, long hair of gold. It is precisely this hair that makes her a key figure – not through deeds of her own, but through what a wicked prank sets in motion.

Loki’s Prank – and the Birth of the Gods’ Treasures

Out of sheer malice, Loki cuts off the golden hair of the sleeping Sif. When Thor discovers this, his fury is so great that Loki fears for his life and must find a replacement. He goes to the dwarves, the sons of Ívaldi, and has new, real gold hair forged that grows like natural hair the moment it touches Sif’s head.

But it does not stop there: in the same course further wonders are made, and from Loki’s reckless wager with the dwarves Brokkr and Sindri are finally born the greatest treasures of the gods – among them Odin’s spear Gungnir, the ring Draupnir and Thor’s hammer Mjöllnir itself. Thus Sif’s shorn hair stands at the beginning of the entire treasure-lore of the North.

Sources. The story of Sif’s hair and the treasures born from it is told by Snorri in Skáldskaparmál (Prose Edda, c. 1220). Sif also appears in Lokasenna and Hárbarðsljóð of the Poetic Edda. Standard reference: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology.

Golden Hair and Golden Fields

Why golden hair of all things? Many scholars read Sif as an earth and fertility goddess: her flowing gold hair is an old image for the ripe, golden-yellow cornfields of late summer. That it is Loki of all figures – often a shape of chaos and fire – who ‘mows off’ her hair, and that it grows back, fits the cycle of harvest and return. At Sif’s side stands Thor, the god whose thunder-rain makes the fields grow in the first place. A fitting pair: thunder and harvest.

“Her hair was of gold,
finely spun and grown alive.”
— image after Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál (sense following Simrock, public domain)
Myth & interpretation. Sif stays pale in the texts – little action of her own, much symbol. From her earlier marriage comes the god Ullr, the archer and skier; Thor’s stepson. Some suspect that Sif was once a more important fertility goddess whose role only shines through as a hint in the surviving Edda. That is not certain – but the golden hair speaks for a very old harvest emblem.

Laser-engraved slate plaque with a Thor motif by Glanz & Gravur
Thor and his own – as a laser-engraved slate plaque from our workshop. Thor motifs in the shop →
From Aachen, for the North. Harvest, gold, the bond of kinship – the old emblems we engrave onto slate, wood and glass. Motif plaques among the slate plaques, gold-jewellery alternatives in the natural-jewellery world. To the shop.

Read more with us

Thor (Donar) · The Treasures of the Gods · Mjöllnir · Loki · Frigg.

Sources & literature

Poetic Edda: Lokasenna, Hárbarðsljóð. Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda (Skáldskaparmál: Sif’s hair and the treasures; Gylfaginning), c. 1220. German public-domain translation: Karl Simrock, Die Edda (1851). Scholarship: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; John Lindow, Norse Mythology (2001).

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