A Compendium of the Ancient Gods
Ran, plate

Ran was the wife of Aegir, mother of his nine daughters the waves. She was the goddess of those who drowned; she had a great net (its name was, naturally, Ránet, "Ran's net") with which she caught seafarers and drew them down to her hall beneath the waves, where she received them as her guests. To die at sea was to go to Ran rather than to Hel, and the Norse held it lucky for a drowning man to have a piece of gold to offer her at his arrival, that he might not come empty-handed; gold was sometimes called "Ran's fire" for its association with her hall.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

Skáldskaparmál 25, 33; Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar 18 (the gold-and-Ran association). The custom of carrying gold against drowning is mentioned by Snorri and is plausibly historical.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for The Norse and Germanic Gods. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

2nd–1st millennia BCE
Indo-European language dispersals and regional Bronze Age cultures provide a remote comparative background, not a recoverable common canon.
c. 500 BCE–1 CE
Iron Age material culture, names, sanctuaries, and classical ethnography offer early but external evidence for Celtic and Germanic religions.
1st–4th centuries CE
Roman inscriptions and provincial cults preserve many Celtic, Germanic, and local divine names.
4th–8th centuries CE
Migration-period and early medieval conversion transform ritual institutions while heroic traditions continue.
8th–11th centuries CE
Viking Age poetry, runic evidence, archaeology, and Scandinavian conversion form the core context of Norse myth.
9th–12th centuries CE
Slavic, Baltic, and Finnic traditions enter chronicles and missionary accounts, often through hostile observers.
11th–14th centuries CE
Irish, Welsh, and Icelandic manuscripts preserve major narrative corpora in Christian literary environments.
12th–16th centuries CE
Saxo, saga compilers, Baltic chroniclers, and later antiquarians systematize or reinterpret older material.

Floor plan

The rooms follow one another in the order their peoples first appear in the written record.

  1. The Cradle of Citiesc. 3400 BCE to 395 CE. 115 works
  2. The Gift of the Nilec. 4000 BCE to 395 CE. 73 works
  3. The Olympian Orderc. 1600 BCE to 750 CE. 152 works
  4. The Persian Worldc. 2000 BCE to 1010 CE. 30 works
  5. The Levantine Borderlandsc. 1200 BCE to 500 CE. 20 works
  6. The Edges of Empirec. 2000 BCE to 1500 CE. 33 works
  7. The Etruscan Worldc. 900 BCE to 750 CE. 22 works
  8. The Roman Inheritancec. 1200 BCE to 500 CE. 58 works
  9. The Northern Inheritancec. 2000 BCE to 1600 CE. 131 works