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Rígsþula or Rígsmál (Old Norse: 'The Lay of Ríg') is an Eddic poem, preserved in the Codex Wormianus (AM 242 fol), in which a Norse god named Ríg or Rígr, described as "old, wise, mighty and strong", fathers the social classes of mankind. The prose introduction states that Rígr is another name for Heimdall, who is also called the father of mankind in Völuspá. However, there seems to be some confusion of Heimdall and Odinn, see below.
In Rígsþula, Rig wanders through the world and fathers the progenitors of the three classes of human beings as conceived by the poet. The youngest of these sons, Jarl ('earl, nobleman'), inherits the name or title "Ríg" and so in turn does his youngest son, Kon the Young or Kon ungr (Old Norse: konungr, king). This third Ríg was the first true king and the ultimate founder of the state of royalty as appears in the Rígsþula and in two other associated works. In all three sources he is connected with two primordial Danish rulers named Dan and Danþír.
The poem Rígsþula is preserved incomplete on the last surviving sheet in the 14th-century Codex Wormianus, following Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda. A short prose introduction explains that the god in question was Heimdall, who wandered along the seashore until he came to a farm where he called himself Ríg. The name Rígr appears to be the oblique case of Old Irish rí, ríg "king", cognate to Latin rex, Sanskrit rajan. and Gothic reiks.
The identification of Rígr with Heimdall is supported by his characterization as an ancestor, or kinsman, of humankind in the first two lines of the Eddic poem Völuspá:'
I ask for a hearing
of all the holy races
Greater and lesser
kinsmen of Heimdall
However, some scholars, including Finnur Jónsson and Rudolf Simek, have suggested this is a role more appropriate to Óðinn and that the Eddic tradition has thus transferred the name Rígr from him to Heimdall. Since Rígsþula is only preserved in a 14th-century manuscript, it is also plausible that the prose introduction was added by the compiler to conform it to the opening of Völuspá.
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