Section 25 of Skáldskaparmál ('How shall sea be referred to?') collects manners in which poets may refer to the sea, including 'husband of Ran' and 'land of Ran and of Ægir's daughters', but also 'father of Ægir's daughters'. The daughters are mentioned several times in the Prose Edda. Helgi had the high sails heightened, the unfailing crew rallying through the rollers, Ægir's dreaded daughters trying to overthrow their stay-bridled sea-steeds. a sound as if swells and bluffs were bursting. Once the longships regrouped, only Kolga's sisters could be heard crashing. For example, two sequential stanzas reference the wave daughters: The poem Helgakviða Hundingsbana I describes how the hero Helgi's boat crashes through intense seas, in doing so referencing Rán, Ægir, and their daughters as personifications of the sea.

References to the waves as 'Ægir's daughters' appear in the Poetic Edda. The neck appears with Ægir's wave daughters in a piece by Swedish painter Nils Blommér, 1850, based on a poem by Arvid August Afzelius. Įmployed as a common noun, also appears as a name for Odin and as the name of a river īára replaces Dröfn in a list of the daughter in Skáldskaparmál. Scholar Rudolf Simek says that 'the name does not appear to be too appropriate for a wave, but perhaps it was supposed to convey the wispy, thread-like appearance of the water streaming from the crest of the wave.' Īccording to Anthony Faulkes, Dröfn means ' comber', whereas Bára translates to 'wave' According to Andy Orchard, ' Dröfn means 'foaming sea'. Lists of their names appear twice in Skáldskaparmál, a section of the Prose Edda (for detail, see Prose Edda section below).Īccording to scholar John Lindow says, this name ' to reddish foam atop a wave'. The names of Ægir and Rán's daughters occur commonly in Old Norse sources. Scholars have theorized that these daughters may be the same figures as the nine mothers of the god Heimdallr. The sisters are attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources the Prose Edda, composed in the 13th century and in the poetry of skalds.

Each daughter's name reflects poetic terms for waves. In Norse mythology, the goddess Rán and the jötunn Ægir both personify the sea, and together they have nine daughters who personify waves. The Daughters of Ægir and Rán as depicted in a grayscale version of a painting by Hans Dahl (1849-1937)

Faulkes edda