Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology, is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The ...

, Endill is a

jötunn A (also jotun; plural ; in the normalised scholarly spelling of Old Norse, ; or, in Old English, , plural ) is a type of being in Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, are often contrasted with gods (the Æsir and Vanir) and with other no ...

, god or

sea-king A sea-king (''sækonungr'') in the Norse sagas is generally a title given to a powerful Viking chieftain, even though the term sea-king may sometimes predate the Viking age. The Orkneyinga saga contains the earliest reference to sea-kings. There t ...

. He is attested in the ''

Prose Edda The ''Prose Edda'', also known as the ''Younger Edda'', ''Snorri's Edda'' () or, historically, simply as ''Edda'', is an Old Norse textbook written in Iceland during the early 13th century. The work is often considered to have been to some exten ...

'' list ''

Nafnaþulur ''Nafnaþulur'' (Old Norse: ) is a subsection of the ''Prose Edda'', the last part of the ''Skáldskaparmál''. It is a listing in verse of names that may be used in poetry for various items, such as gods A deity or god is a supernatural bei ...

'', and in various

kenning A kenning ( Icelandic: ) is a figure of speech, a figuratively-phrased compound term that is used in place of a simple single-word noun. For instance, the Old English kenning () means , as does (). A kenning has two parts: a base-word (a ...

s. In ''Nafnaþulur'', he is mentioned as only a name in a list of 75 sea kings. In ''

Þórsdrápa ''Þórsdrápa'' (also ''Thorsdrapa''; Old Norse: 'The Lay of Thor') is a skaldic poetry, skaldic poem by Eilífr Goðrúnarson, a poet in the service of Jarl Hákon Sigurðarson. The poem is noted for its creative use of kennings and other meta ...

'' his name appears in the kenning ''á Endils mó'' which means "onto Endil's moor" and refers to the sea. Likewise, on the

Karlevi Runestone The Karlevi Runestone, designated as Öl 1 by Rundata, is commonly dated to the late 10th century and located near the Kalmarsund straight in Karlevi on the island of Öland, Sweden. It is one of the most notable and prominent runestones and cons ...

his name appears in '' �dils iarmungrundaR'' which is a

for the sea. The Scandinavian

Rundata The Scandinavian Runic-text Database () is a project involving the creation and maintenance of a database of transliterated runic inscriptions. The project's goal is to comprehensively catalog runestones in a machine-readable way for future resea ...

project translates it as "Endill's expanses" or "Endill's mighty dominion", and suggests that Endill may have been a god of the vessels of the sea. Other kennings where he appears are ''Endils öndur'' meaning "Endil's ski" and ''Endils eykur'' meaning "Endil's horse" both referring to ships. Another kenning ''Endils fold'' which means "Endil's earth" is a kenning for the sea.

References

Jötnar Sea and river gods {{Norse-myth-stub