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The Sleeping Almanac

Thor and the World Serpent · Norse Mythology Sleep Story

3 hours · The Sleeping Almanac · June 21, 2026

Thor and the World Serpent · Norse Mythology Sleep Story
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The voice you hear is the creator's own. He cloned it from recordings of his own voice, so every story is told in his voice. If you enjoy falling asleep to it, follow the show so each new story arrives on its own, and leave a rating on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it.

Tonight, the strongest of the gods goes fishing for the end of the world. Þórr travels east to a giant's hall for a cauldron large enough to brew the sea, and before dawn he rows a small boat out past every fishing bank a man has ever known, into the deep water where the Serpent waits. He baits a line with the head of an ox and lets it down, and far below, the thing that circles the world takes the hook. A slow, strange story of a god and a monster meeting eye to eye, and the small old hand that cut the line and gave the world a little more time. Let it carry you down into sleep.

Sources: the Poetic Edda (Hymiskviða) and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda (Gylfaginning), with the fishing scene preserved on the Altuna and Gosforth picture stones, retold in an original written narrative.

Chapters

  1. 0:00Welcome
  2. 3:09Chapter 1. The Cauldron That Was Not There
  3. 8:18Chapter 2. The Journey East
  4. 12:26Chapter 3. The Grandmother and the Mother
  5. 16:28Chapter 4. The Return of Hymir
  6. 20:41Chapter 5. The Three Oxen
  7. 27:48Chapter 6. The Bait
  8. 34:41Chapter 7. The Rowing Out
  9. 40:54Chapter 8. The Whales
  10. 45:04Chapter 9. The Pull
  11. 52:57Chapter 10. The Eye
  12. 1:05:02Chapter 11. The Cut
  13. 1:17:26Chapter 12. Goodnight. And the Wolf at the Edge of Time.
  14. 1:27:54Music to sleep by

This show uses AI tools (research, narration, visuals) under human editorial direction. Every episode is reviewed before release.

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