Rán is the Norse goddess who collects drowned sailors in her net.
Rán is a personification of the sea, especially its dangerous and life-taking side. Norse poetic tradition describes her as using a net to catch seafarers who drown, drawing them into her watery realm. Her name is therefore closely associated with shipwreck, drowning, and the sea’s power to claim human lives.
Rán is the wife of Ægir, another sea-associated figure, and the two are connected with the ocean in skaldic poetry. The Poetic Edda also preserves the story of Loki borrowing Rán’s net to capture the dwarf Andvari, who had taken the form of a pike. That episode helps explain why the net is one of her defining attributes.
Rán is not the same as Hel, who rules a realm of the dead. Rán specifically represents death at sea and the drowned. A related tradition says sailors carried gold because those taken by Rán would be better received in her hall, though scholars treat that detail as a later literary motif rather than certain evidence of widespread historical belief.