Amsvartnir

In Norse mythology, Amsvartnir (Old Norse "pitch black")[1] is a lake. Amsvartnir contains the island Lyngvi, where the gods bound the wolf Fenrir. The lake is solely attested in the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson. In the book, the enthroned figure of High tells Gangleri (king Gylfi in disguise) that the gods and Fenrir fared across Amsvartnir to get to Lyngvi, and there bound Fenrir.[2]

Since Amsvartnir is only mentioned in Gylfaginning, Rudolf Simek theorizes that Snorri invented the lake.[3]

Notes
  1. Orchard (1997:6).
  2. Faulkes (1995:28).
  3. Simek (2007:14).
gollark: It's also possible that more complex systems may have been impractical before computers came along, although that doesn't apply to, say, approval voting.
gollark: First-past-the-post is the simplest and most obvious thing you're likely to imagine if you want people to "vote for things", and it's entirely possible people didn't look too hard.
gollark: I don't know if the people designing electoral systems actually did think of voting systems which are popular now and discard them, but it's not *that* much of a reason to not adopt new ones.
gollark: There are plenty of things in, say, maths, which could have been thought up ages ago, and seem stupidly obvious now, but weren't. Such as modern place value notation.
gollark: Obvious things now may just not have been then.

References
  • Faulkes, Anthony (Trans.) (1995). Edda. Everyman. ISBN 0-460-87616-3
  • Orchard, Andy (1997). Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend. Cassell. ISBN 0-304-34520-2
  • Simek, Rudolf (2007) translated by Angela Hall. Dictionary of Northern Mythology. D.S. Brewer. ISBN 0-85991-513-1
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.