Nanna

Nanna

Pronunciation

NAH-nah

Tribe

Æsir

Domains

devotion, grief

Sacred Animals

No sacred animals are associated with this deity.


Sacred Symbols & Objects

No sacred symbols are recorded for this deity.


Parentage

Parentage is unknown or unattested.


Consorts

No consorts are recorded.


Offspring

No offspring are recorded.

Source Quality: Directly Attested

Nanna (Old Norse: Nanna) is the wife of Baldr and mother of Forseti, attested in the Prose Edda and referenced in skaldic verse. She is described in Gylfaginning as dying of grief at Baldr’s funeral and being placed on the funeral pyre alongside him — one of the most emotionally significant moments in the Gylfaginning narrative. At the funeral, she sends gifts from Hel back with Hermóðr: a linen robe for Frigg and various other gifts for Fulla and Odin.

Beyond her role as Baldr’s devoted wife, Nanna has almost no independent mythological narrative in the surviving Old Norse sources. She is listed among the Ásynjur in Gylfaginning. In Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum (Book III), Nanna is a human woman who is the object of romantic rivalry between Balderus and Høtherus — a substantially different characterization.

Traditional Offerings

  • No offerings to Nanna are described in any primary source

Modern Offerings

  • White flowers or funerary flowers
  • Offerings in memory of the deceased
  • Linen or cloth offerings

Source Quality

Directly Attested

Additional Notes

Notes

RECONSTRUCTED DOMAINS: Nanna's domains of 'devotion' and 'grief' are inferred from her narrative role — dying of grief for Baldr — rather than from any explicitly stated cultic function. She has no attested independent cult. Saxo's characterization of Nanna as a mortal woman is so different from the Eddic tradition that the two should be treated as independent traditions. Nanna's parentage is given in the Prose Edda as the son of Nefr — note that this may be a scribal or transmission error; the text's sense suggests she is the daughter of Nefr.

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