Ægir

Ægir is the sea become a host. A giant of the old order yet a friend to the gods, he is the lord of the ocean and the great brewer and feast-giver of the myths, in whose hall the Æsir gather to drink ale brewed in the mile-deep cauldron Thor wins from Hymir. To sit in Ægir's hall is to feast on the floor of the sea, lit by gleaming gold instead of fire. But his hall is also the setting of the corpus's most savage scene: it is here that Loki, uninvited and venomous, bursts in to fling every god's secret shame in their faces, the flyting that marks the gods' fellowship cracking toward its end. Ægir is hospitality and the deep at once — the sea that gives the great feast and the sea that swallows ships — and his ale-hall is where the Norse imagined both the gods' highest cheer and the bitter night their unity broke.