| “ | All-Father, your presence honors me, but now is not the best time. | ” |
–Gróa's last words | ||
Gróa was a powerful Jötunn seeress in Norse Mythology, and the wife of Aurvandil.
Quick Answers
What role did Gróa play in Norse mythology?
How did Gróa assist Thor after his battle with Hrungnir?
Who was Gróa's husband in Norse mythology?
What is the significance of Gróa's secret in the God of War Ragnarok game?
What magical practices was Gróa known for in Norse mythology?
Norse Mythology[]
Gróa is a völva and practitioner of seiðr, the wife of Aurvandil the Bold.
After Thor killed the stone giant Hrungnir, Gróa was requested to remove shards of Hrungnir's whet-stone from Thor's head, since they are completely lodged in there. While Gróa was doing about her work, Thor proceeded to distract her by telling of how he had earlier helped her husband cross the river Élivágar, and had saved his life by snapping off his frost-bitten toe. When she learned that Aurvandil is on his way home, she was overjoyed and this cause her spell to be miscarried, causing the whet-stone pieces to forever remain in Thor's head.
In the God of War Series[]
The Lost Pages of Norse Myth[]
Gróa was a gifted sorceress who at some point married the warrior Aurvandil. At some point, Thor asked for Aurvandil's help for a quest in Vanaheim. During the quest, Aurvandil apparently suffered from a bout of frostbite and had to be carried by Thor, who eventually lost Aurvandil in the tundra.
After his disappearance, Gróa traversed the Realms looking for ancient tomes that would augment her prophetic powers in order to discover Aurvandil's whereabouts. In the process, Gróa became one of the most powerful practitioners of seiðr in the Realms, so powerful in fact that even Odin often asked for her knowledge.
However, she still could not find out anything about her husband's whereabouts. After reading the runic incantations in an ancient tome, her powers became so great that she saw a vision about Ragnarök: a three-year winter where the Realms quaked and the skies split, a horrible terror emerging with a flaming sword, an enormous wolf, Gods fighting against each other, and a white ghost from another land with his son at the centre of the events leading up to it all.
Odin felt her vision, and paid a visit to Gróa's library, demanding to know what she had seen in her vision. Gróa hesitated, and Odin threatened to kill her, while confessing that Thor had killed Aurvandil. After hearing this, Gróa refused to tell Odin anything, and was strangled to death by a smiling Odin, who took all her knowledge in the process.
God of War Ragnarök[]
When a secret was discovered in Gróa's shrine, it revealed the true cause of her death as well as the true prophecy of Ragnarök; when Odin had learned of her discovery of the prophecy, he demanded a private retelling. When the Jötunn seeress revealed on what she had seen, this caused the All-Father to murder Gróa by stabbing her with his spear. However, unbeknownst to Odin, what she had told him was nothing but lies so that the true prophecy would stay in secrecy.
Shrine Story[]
Atreus: “Mimir – there was a shrine about a Giant lady, with lots of books, and visions...“
Mimir: “Ah, that would be Gróa, the Knowledge Keeper. She was a gifted sorceress who gathered every tome of arcane wisdom she could find in the realms, all in the hopes of augmenting her powers of prophecy that she might find her lost husband, Aurvandil. But it was not her husband she would glimpse in her visions – for it was Gróa, seeing longer and farther than any before her or since, who witnessed Ragnarök – the end and the beginning. When Odin caught word of her ultimate prophecy, he maneuvered to obtain her knowledge and hoard it for himself. Gróa knew Odin as a longtime patron of her services, and so she welcomed him into her library as a friend. What she did not know is that Odin himself was behind her husband’s disappearance, having used his enchantments to conceal his death at Thor’s hands from her sight. Smiling, jealous Odin took her by the throat, and with his very hands he stole her library and her life for his own.”
Atreus: “I always knew Odin was bad. But that’s just...”
Mimir: “Ruthless? Barbaric? Heartless? That’s Odin. In fact, we would do well to sit here in silence for the next few moments and reflect on Odin’s capacity for cruelty.
*after a short pause*
Mimir: "And so–“
Kratos: “Reflect longer.“
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Gróa was the first person to ever foresee the coming of Ragnarök.