Gylfi (Gangleri)

Gylfi is the Swedish king whose curiosity frames the whole of Snorri's Prose Edda — the listener through whom the entire mythology is told. Wanting to understand the power of the Æsir, he travels to their hall in disguise under the assumed name Gangleri, the 'way-weary' wanderer, and there puts his questions to three mysterious figures enthroned one above the other — High, Just-as-High, and Third. Their answers, drawn out by his questioning, unfold the entire Norse cosmos: the creation from the body of the giant Ymir, the world-tree, the gods and their adventures, Ragnarök and the rebirth. At the end the hall and its tellers vanish like a mirage, leaving Gylfi (and the reader) holding the whole of the mythology. He is less a character than a doorway — the curious king whose questions are the device by which Snorri preserved, for all time, what the North believed about its gods.