How Heimdall Created Humans: The Three Social Classes of Viking Society

The Old Norse poem Rígsþula (the “List of Rig”) tells how a wandering god calling himself Rig visited three households, and by doing so founded the three social classes of Viking society: slaves, free farmers, and nobles. The poem’s prose introduction identifies Rig as Heimdall, the watchman of the gods. The poem survives, incomplete, in the Codex Wormianus, a 14th-century manuscript of the Prose Edda. Because Rig fathers all three lines, Heimdall is the ancestor of every class. For that reason the poem Völuspá calls humankind “Heimdall’s sons.”

The Slave Class

Rig’s first stop was a poor hut belonging to an old couple, Ái and Edda (‘great-grandfather’ and ‘great-grandmother’). They shared coarse bread and broth, and Rig stayed three nights, sleeping between husband and wife. Nine months later Edda bore a son, dark and rough-skinned, and they called him Thrall, “slave.” He married Thír (‘bondwoman’), and their twelve sons and nine daughters, all given unflattering names, became the class of thralls.

The Freeman Class

Next Rig visited a tidy farmhouse where Afi and Amma (‘grandfather’ and ‘grandmother’) were at work: he carving wood, she spinning. Nine months after Rig’s stay, Amma bore a ruddy boy named Karl, “free man,” who grew up taming oxen and plowing fields. His bride Snör (‘daughter-in-law’) arrived in a goatskin gown, and their twelve sons and ten daughters became the free farmers, smiths, and householders of the North, the people who lived in the longhouses of the farms.

The Ruling Class

The third house was a fine hall, home to Faðir and Móðir (‘father’ and ‘mother’), who served Rig silver dishes of meat and wine. Their son, Jarl (‘earl’), was fair-haired and fierce-eyed. He learned the bow, the spear, horses, and hounds. When he was grown, Rig returned, claimed him as his son, taught him the runes, and gave him his own name.

Jarl won lands by war and married Erna, who bore him twelve sons. The youngest, Konr ungr, surpassed them all. He mastered the runes, outmatched his father in rune-lore, and won the right to the name Rig himself. His name is a pun: konr ungr, “young descendant,” sounds like konungr, “king.”

Royal Consequences of Heimdall as Rig

In the poem, then, the social order is divinely made: slave, free farmer, and noble each descend from the god, and kingship grows out of the noble line. Some scholars note that the throne passes to the youngest son, which may hint at a less rigid idea of succession than primogeniture. Others read the whole poem as a flattering origin myth composed for a royal patron. (The poem breaks off before it tells us.)

Keep reading: meet the gods in Aesir and Vanir: The Norse Gods and the Jötnar and Ragnarök: the End of the World as the Vikings Knew It. Or see every post tagged Heimdall.

Myths like Rígsþula show how the Norse explained their own world. The same gods had already made the first man and woman from two trees on the shore, as told in our post on the creation of man and woman.

At Asgard Alaska we want to bring that world to life. You can help with a gift to our Land Fund or by joining Axe and Anchor, Asgard Alaska’s Newsletter. The museum is not open yet; we are raising the Land Fund to buy the site, Phase 1 of our Roadmap.