r,
Upreared the sea-god's home.
More dazzling than foam of the waves
E'er glimmered and gleamed thro' deep caves
The glistening sands of its floor,
Like some placid lake rippled o'er."

Valhalla (J. C. Jones).

AEgir (the sea), like his brothers Kari (the air) and Loki (fire),
is supposed to have belonged to an older dynasty of the gods, for he
ranked neither with the AEsir, the Vanas, the giants, dwarfs, or elves,
but was considered omnipotent within his realm.

He was supposed to occasion and quiet the great tempests which swept
over the deep, and was generally represented as a gaunt old man,
with long white beard and hair, and clawlike fingers ever clutching
convulsively, as though he longed to have all things within his
grasp. Whenever he appeared above the waves, it was only to pursue and
overturn vessels, and to greedily drag them to the bottom of the sea,
a vocation in which he was thought to take fiendish delight.

The Goddess Ran

AEgir was mated with his sister, the goddess Ran, whose name means
"robber," and who was as cruel, greedy, and insatiable as her
husband. Her favourite pastime was to lurk near dangerous rocks,
whither she enticed mariners, and there spread her net, her most
prized possession, when, having entangled the men in its meshes and
broken their vessels on the jagged cliffs, she would calmly draw them
down into her cheerless realm.

"In the deep sea caves
By the sounding shore,
In the dashing waves
When the wild storms roar,
In her cold green bowers
In the Northern fiords,
She lurks and she glowers,
She grasps and she hoards,
And she spreads her strong net for her prey."

Story of Siegfried (Baldwin).

Ran was considered the goddess of death for all who perished at sea,
and the Northern nations fancied that she entertained the drowned
in her coral caves, where her couches were spread to receive them,
and where the mead flowed freely as in Valhalla. The goddess was
further supposed to have a great affection for gold, which was called
the "flame of the sea," and was used to illuminate her halls. This
belief originated with the sailors, and sprang from the striking
phosphorescent gleam of the waves. To win Ran's good graces, the
Northmen were careful to hide some gold about them whenever any
special danger threatened them on the sea.

"Gold, on sweetheart ramblings,
Pow'