Sæhrímnir

In Norse mythology, Sæhrímnir is the creature killed and eaten every night by the Æsir and einherjar. The cook of the gods, Andhrímnir, is responsible for the slaughter of Sæhrímnir and its preparation in the cauldron Eldhrímnir. After Sæhrímnir is eaten, the beast is brought back to life again to provide sustenance for the following day. Sæhrímnir is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional material, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson.

The enthroned figure of High quotes this stanza in the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning and specifically states that Sæhrímnir is a boar. However, some scholars have translated the Poetic Edda attestation, which the Prose Edda attestation quotes, as not referring to the creature as any specific type. Those scholars who recognize a difference in the taxonomy of the creature between the two sources have commented on the matter, further issues have been raised about the apparently contradictory etymology of the name of the creature in relation to its apparent status as a boar, and some scholars have theorized that the ritual killing of the animal may ultimately stem from religious practices in Germanic paganism.

The etymology of the Old Norse name Sæhrímnir is problematic; in contradiction to the Gylfaginning (and, depending upon translator, Grímnismál) description of the animal as a boar, Sæhrímnir is, in modern scholarship, commonly proposed to mean "sooty sea-beast" or "sooty sea-animal" (which may be connected to Old Norse seyðir, meaning 'cooking ditch'). Attempts at explaining the apparent contradiction have been made by scholars (see theories section below).

Sæhrímnir is mentioned once in the Poetic Edda and twice in the Prose Edda. In the Poetic Edda poem Grímnismál, Grímnir (the god Odin in disguise) comments on the creature. Translations of the stanza vary:

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