Hlín

Hlín is the Norse goddess of protection, one of the ásynjur named by Snorri Sturluson in his Gylfaginning. Her role is narrow but clear: she is the guardian Frigg appoints to shield those mortals the queen of Asgard wishes to save from danger.

Who is Hlín?

Snorri's account is brief. Hlín, he says, is set over the people Frigg wants to protect from some peril, and her name is connected to a word meaning to give shelter or refuge. This makes her a functional goddess — an extension of Frigg's own protective care, dispatched to keep the endangered safe. It is telling that she appears in the same breath as Frigg's other attendants, a circle of divine women who carry out the will of Asgard's foremost goddess.

Her one appearance in older verse is famous and much-debated. In Völuspá, the poem's vision of Ragnarök speaks of "Hlín's second sorrow" coming to pass when Odin goes to fight the wolf and falls. Since Odin is Frigg's husband, the line seems to mourn through Frigg — which is why many scholars suspect Hlín is not a separate goddess at all but another name for Frigg herself. The sources leave the question open.

Symbols and legacy

Whether an independent goddess or a face of Frigg, Hlín embodies divine protection — the shielding hand held over those marked for saving. She sits naturally beside the rune Algiz, the sign of warding, refuge, and the guardian's open stance. In a mythology crowded with doom, Hlín is a rare figure defined wholly by the wish to keep others from harm, and she endures as a quiet emblem of shelter against the dangers of the world.