Gillingr
"Screamer." A jötunn, the father of Suttungr. The story of his death in found in Skáldskaparmál as part of the origin of the mead of poetry. The dwarfs Fjalarr and Galarr, who had previously killed Kvasir in order to make the mead of poetry from his blood, invited Gillingr and his wife for a visit:
Next the dwarves invited Gillingr to row upon the sea with them; but when they had gone out from the land, the dwarves rowed into the breakers and capsized the boat. Gillingr was unable to swim, and he perished; but the dwarves righted their boat and rowed to land. They reported this accident to his wife, but she took it grievously and wept aloud. Then Fjalar asked her whether it would ease her heart if she should look out upon the sea at the spot where he had perished; and she desired it. Then he spoke softly to Galarr his brother, bidding him go up over the doorway, when she should go out, and let a mill-stone fall on her head, saying that her weeping grew wearisome to him; and even so he did.
Now when the giant Suttungr, Gillingr's son, learned of this, he went over and took the dwarves and carried them out to sea, and set them on a reef which was covered at high tide. They besought Suttungr to grant them respite of their lives, and as the price of reconciliation offered him the precious mead in satisfaction of his father's death. And that became a means of reconciliation between them.
In a verse by the tenth-century Norwegian skald Eyvindr Finnsson skáldaspillir, the mead of poetry is called "Gillingr's Atonement."
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References
Source
- Skáldskaparmál, 1.