When our first ancestors established on the Faroe Islands, they choose to place their common parliament at a small, bipartite bay, at the centre of the islands.  And to emphasize the conditions of life here in the North Atlantic Ocean, they called the bay Tórshavn, after Thor, one of the most powerful deities of the Viking Age.

Thor and the Midgard-serpent

There are many tales of Thor and his mighty deeds, among them, the story about his fishing trip with a giant called Hymir.
Before they went out on the sea, Thor killed Hymir’s best ox, and brought its head with him as bait.

They rowed far out on the sea, to the fishing-banks where Hymir used to fish, but Thor wanted to go further out.  Not until they had reached the furthest point at the ocean, Thor pulled the oars in, placed the ox-head on the hook and threw it overboard.
Deep down in the deep and dark sea lay the enormous Midgard-serpent.  It was so large, that it completely surrounded the entire world, and could catch its own tail.  The serpent scented the ox-head and took the bait.  When Thor noticed that the serpent had swallowed the bait, he started to pull it in.

The struggle was awesome.  Thor pulled the line so vigorously, that his feet went through the boat, and stood on the bottom of the sea.  The serpent fought and wriggled, but Thor managed to pull its head up to the gunwale.  It was, by all accounts, a frightening moment, when the serpent and the god glared into each others eyes.  The venom spouted from the serpent, and Thor prepared to kill it with his hammer.  But then the terrified Hymir had enough.  He took the knife, and cut the line.  The serpent sank down into the abyss, and Thor threw his hammer in rage.  Some people say that he crushed the serpent’s head, but the truth is more likely, that it still lies down in the deep and awaits the arrival of ragnarök.  Then it shall return to Midgard, and in a furious fight, Thor and the Midgard-serpent shall cause each others death.

The Horizon
The Midgard-serpent, which surrounds the entire world, is a symbol of the horizon – the spiritual as well as the real one.  It is the final frontier, and on the other side is the Great Unknown.  When Thor and other mythological figures fight against the serpent, it means, that they are willing to tackle the Unknown.  They cross the limits so to speak, like the ancestors of the Faroese, and later the Icelanders, who left the old and familiar world, in order to create a life for themselves in new and unknown lands.

Ran
But the costs of the new life was often high.  In order to subsist out here on the North Atlantic islands, the people had to supplement the agriculture by fishery and hunting for sea-mammals and birds.  On top of that, the contact to the old world required that they had to cross the ocean in boats and ships. – And out there on the open sea, the sea-goddess Ran and her furious daughters were waiting.

Ran was the wife of the sea-deity Aegir, whose name is still used as a poetical paraphrase for the sea.  Together they had nine daughters, wild and intractable like their mother, and each one of them symbolized different aspects of the waves.  They were called:  Himinglæva (wave that reflects the light of the sky), Dúfa (the pitching one), Blóðughædda (bloddy hair – the sea after a naval battle), Hefring (the raising one), Uðr (wave), Hrönn (sinking wave), Bylgja (big wave), Drøfn (wave) and Kolga (the cool one).

People imagined that Ran was hunting on the ocean with a net, in which she caught the shipwrecked men.  It was custom among the sailors, that they should either sacrifice a piece of gold to Ran at the beginning of their journey, or carry gold on themselves, so that they were able to pay for the entrance in Aegir’s and Ran’s hall, if they were shipwrecked.

In Skaldskaparmál, the rough sea is described like this:

The glow of the sea sparkled the sky,

The ocean showed its force.
The wind tore the scattered clouds,
Ran’s path ran as high as the moon.