Jörmungandr: The Complete Story of the Serpent That Encircled the World | Norse Mythology for Sleep
A slow, quiet retelling of Jörmungandr, made for falling asleep to.
He was thrown into the sea as a child. One of three siblings the gods took away from their father because of what they’d been told those children would grow into, and this one was dropped into the ocean that surrounds the world — presumably to drown, or to be forgotten. He didn’t drown. He grew until he had gone all the way around the earth and could bite his own tail, and that is the position he has held ever since, holding the world in a ring.
The stories about him are really stories about one god who can’t leave him alone. There’s the fishing trip, which is the best of them: an afternoon in a rowing boat that went too far out, an ox’s head on a hook, and a line that came up with something no fisherman wanted to see over the side. The giant who had come along panicked and cut the line, which is the only reason the world is still here. And there’s the evening at a stranger’s hall where the challenge was to lift a cat off the floor — just a cat — and the strongest of the gods managed to raise one paw, and was told afterwards what he had actually been holding.
They meet once more, later, at the end, and neither of them walks away from it. Both of them have always known that.
The recording itself is the usual thing. A low, even voice, no music, no sound effects, nothing that rises or drops or suddenly arrives. Nothing in it is built to frighten you. Slow enough that following along stops feeling necessary somewhere in the first twenty minutes. If you drift off before the boat leaves shore and surface long after, that’s the intended use. Most people don’t make it past the first half hour, and the rest will still be here tomorrow night.
Put it on, turn the volume down, and let it go on without you.
Mythology & Folklore for Sleep — long, calm retellings of Greek myths, Norse legends, Egyptian tales, Hindu epics, Chinese classics and old folklore from around the world, made for insomnia and the hours when you can’t sleep. Bedtime stories for adults, told in a slow, quiet voice. New episodes every day.
