Harðgreipr

Harðgreipr (Old Norse; Latinized Harthgrepa in Saxo) appears in the Deeds of the Danes (Gesta Danorum) in the narrative of the Danish hero Hadingus/Hadding. In that saga-material she is introduced as a jötunn who functions as Hadingus’s wet-nurse and later as his sexual companion and travel companion. Within the episodic tale she initiates a necromantic rite intended to 'probe the will of the gods,' an act which culminates in a corpse prophesying her own violent death; she is ultimately lacerated and killed by companions of her own race (jötnar).

Surviving accounts give only sparse physical description: Saxo’s narration emphasizes that she is of giant bodily size – so large that Hadingus remarks her body is "unwieldy for human embrace." No detailed facial, clothing, or color descriptions are supplied in the cited material; her large stature and jötnar identity are the principal physical markers recorded.

In the narrative Harðgreipr occupies both social and supernatural roles: she acts as wet-nurse and protector of Hadingus, and she accompanies him in travel by disguising herself as a man for the journey. She is described as a practitioner of a kind of necromantic or corpse-speaking magic: she instructs Hadingus to place a carved stick bearing "most gruesome spells" under the tongue of a dead man so that the corpse speaks, curses the summoner and prophesies Harðgreipr’s death. She also physically fends off a gigantic hand attempting to enter their shelter, indicating notable physical prowess. Scholarly commentary (Lindow, Dumézil) reads the corpse-speaking episode as comparable to Odinic/necromantic or seið-like practices and frames her actions as transgressive and ritually ambiguous.