Aegir and Ran

Snorri opens Skáldskaparmál with 'a man named Ægir or Hlér'. He lived on the island now called Hlésey and was very skilled in magic. When he visited Ásgarðr, the gods welcomed him, though much of what he saw was illusion, and in the evening Odin had swords brought into the hall so bright that no other light was needed. Bragi sat next to him and told him the gods' stories, and their talk frames the first part of Snorri's book on poetry. Elsewhere Snorri says that 'Ægir and Hlér and Gymir are all one', and ægir, gymir and hlér all appear in his list of words for the sea. The Eddic poem Hymiskviða calls Ægir a jötunn, and a verse list of giant names copied with Snorri's Edda includes him.
He is the gods' host. Snorri tells how Ægir invited the Æsir to his own hall in three months' time and had glowing gold carried onto his hall floor to light the feast, as the swords had lit Valhalla. That is why poets call gold 'Ægir's fire' and 'fire of the sea'. Food, ale and every vessel served themselves. Snorri places Loki's quarrel with the gods at this feast, and Lokasenna tells it: the prose calls the hall a great sanctuary, Loki kills Ægir's servant Fimafengr, and in the last stanza (65) he curses his host never to hold a feast again. Hymiskviða explains how the brewing started. Thor glared at Ægir and told him he would often give feasts for the Æsir. The giant, irritated and thinking of revenge, asked for a cauldron big enough to brew for them all, and Thor fetched one a league deep from the giant Hymir. In Grímnismál 45 Odin says that all the Æsir will come in to Ægir's benches, to Ægir's drinking.
Rán is his wife. Snorri says the Æsir learned at the feast that she owned a net in which she caught everyone who went out on the sea. In the prose of Reginsmál and in Völsunga saga, Loki goes to Rán for that net to catch the dwarf Andvari, who swims in a waterfall as a pike; in Snorri's own telling Loki simply grabs him. The couple have nine daughters, listed by Snorri as Himinglæva, Dúfa, Blóðughadda, Hefring, Uðr, Hrönn, Bylgja, Bára and Kólga, with Dröfn in place of Bára in a second list. Most of the names are ordinary words for waves. In Helgakviða Hundingsbana I (st. 29–30) 'Ægir's daughter' tries to sink Helgi's fleet, and Sigrún saves the ships from 'Rán's hand'.
At sea, Rán stood for drowning. Egill Skallagrímsson's son Böðvarr drowned in a storm with everyone on board (Egils saga, ch. 78), and in Sonatorrek 7 Egill says 'Rán has shaken me hard' and that the sea tore the bonds of his kin. The next stanza is usually read as a wish to fight Ægir, 'the ale-smith', and his wife, if a sword could settle it. In Friðþjófs saga, after a great sea strikes the ship and four men are lost, Friðþjófr says they will surely go to Rán and tells every man to carry gold, so they arrive as fitting guests in her hall. Eyrbyggja saga says that when drowned men came dripping into their own funeral feast, people took it as a good sign: they would be well received at Rán's.