"In what follows, rather than further pursuing the ‘data-mining’ approach, I will present a thick description of the Mímir/s who appear in the textual environments of skaldic verse, eddic poetry and prose. Not only the underappreciated complexities of the Ynglinga saga narrative, but also the other contexts where Mímir appears, suggest that to understand the functions of this figure in Old Norse textual culture, we need to go beyond a static structuralist conception of Mímir as embodiment of a certain position in a system and think about the processes of mediation in which he participates. Mímir’s medial role comes into sharp relief in Ynglinga saga, where he is ‘in the middle’ as hostage, as clandestine counsellor of Hoenir, and communicator of secret knowledge from the world of the dead to Óðinn. My focus will therefore not be on Mímir as embodiment of memory – an idea I will return to at the end of this essay – but rather on how Mímir/Mímr acts as a medium, and is important not for what he is but rather for what he does. While in skaldic verse Mímir is little more than a euphonious token in the kenning’s system of differences, the narratives about Mímir as severed head in the eddic and prose corpora mark the ‘crisis’ of these discourses, in Regina Janes’ words, as crises of mediation."
-Kate Heslop, from "Talking heads: The mediality of Mímir"
