ᛅᚢᚱᚢᛅᚾᛏᛁᛚᛋᛏᛅ auruantilsta

Aurvandil's toe: the star Þórr made from a frozen toe

Þórr carried Aurvandill home from giant-land in a basket; one toe froze, so he broke it off and threw it into the sky as a star. Nobody knows which star.

Þórr made a star from Aurvandill's toe: Medieval source It is the morning star (Venus): Modern guess It is Rigel: Modern guess It is Alcor: Modern guess

What the sources say

He added for a token, that one of Aurvandill's toes had stuck out of the basket, and became frozen; wherefore Thor broke it off and cast it up into the heavens, and made thereof the star called Aurvandill's Toe.
Skáldskaparmál, ch. 17, tr. Brodeur (1916)

The names

ᛅᚢᚱᚢᛅᚾᛏᛁᛚAurvandill: a hero, husband of the wise woman Gróa
ᚴᚱᚢᛅGróa: a sorceress who tried to sing the whetstone out of Þórr's head
ᚼᚱᚢᚾᚴᚾᛁᚱHrungnir: the giant whose whetstone stuck in Þórr's head
ᛁᛚᛁᚢᛅᚴᛅᚱÉlivágar: the icy rivers that Þórr waded

Runes: our letter-by-letter spelling in the Viking-age Younger Futhark; these names come down to us in manuscripts written in the Latin alphabet. How we write runes.

The story and what it means

Þórr fought the giant Hrungnir and won, but a piece of the giant's whetstone stuck in his head. The wise woman Gróa sang spells over him, and the stone began to loosen. To reward her, Þórr told her good news: he had waded from the north across the icy rivers Élivágar, carrying her husband Aurvandill in a basket, and Aurvandill would soon be home. As proof, one of his toes had stuck out of the basket and frozen, so Þórr broke it off and threw it into the sky as the star called Aurvandill's toe. Gróa was so happy that she forgot her spells, and the whetstone is still in Þórr's head.

Snorri gives the star's name and nothing else. It is the only star besides Þjazi's eyes that the Eddas say was made by a god, and it has attracted more guesses than any other. The name has relatives in other Germanic languages: Old English earendel, which a poem in the Exeter Book calls brightest of angels sent over the earth, and the German hero Orendel. Because the Old English word seems to mean a dawn light, Jacob Grimm (1835) thought Aurvandil's toe might be the morning star, the planet Venus, and many later scholars have agreed. Cleasby and Vigfusson's dictionary (1874) suggested instead probably the star Rigel in Orion, at Orion's foot; R. H. Allen's popular Star-Names and Their Meanings (1899) put it at Alcor, the small star beside Mizar in the Big Dipper. None of these rests on a Norse source.

How sure are we?

Claim	Grade	Basis
Þórr made a star from Aurvandill's toe	Medieval source	Skáldskaparmál ch. 17 (Snorri, c. 1220).
It is the morning star (Venus)	Modern guess	Jacob Grimm (1835), from Old English earendel; followed by many modern scholars.
It is Rigel	Modern guess	Cleasby-Vigfusson (1874), s.v. aurvandils-tá: 'probably'.
It is Alcor	Modern guess	R. H. Allen, Star-Names and Their Meanings (1899); no earlier source given.

See it tonight

Rigel is best placed in the evening sky around January; the candidate shown here is one guess among several.

City	Tonight, Mon 26 Oct (local time)
Reykjavík	From 01:30 to 07:15, highest around 04:15 (18° S)
Oslo	Clear of the southeast horizon from about 23:45, highest around 03:15 (22° S)
Stockholm	Clear of the southeast horizon from about 23:15, highest around 02:45 (22° S)
London	Clear of the east-southeast horizon from about 22:45, highest around 03:00 (30° S)
New York	Clear of the east-southeast horizon from about 23:15, highest around 03:45 (41° S)
Sydney	Clear of the east horizon from about 22:30, highest around 03:45 (64° N)

Rigel, the bright blue-white star at Orion's foot, is shown here only so you can find one of the candidates; on the city pages it is marked as a guess.

Sources

Texts: Skáldskaparmál ch. 17; Christ I (Exeter Book), line 104, for Old English earendel. Quotations from the public-domain translations of the Poetic Edda by Henry Adams Bellows (1923) and the Prose Edda by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1916); Brodeur's chapter numbers. Identifications: J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (1835); Cleasby-Vigfusson (1874) s.v. aurvandils-tá; R. H. Allen, Star-Names and Their Meanings (1899).