Odin and His Role in the Lore
(Disclaimer: I was only a baby Heathen when I wrote this, and there are lots of bits in it that I have since come to disagree with, such as, to cite just one example, the association of the Jotnar with chaos; I now agree with Kveldulfr Gundarsson that chaos is quite simply not a Northern European concept at all, and is foreign to Heathen thought. Also, as Loki is the brother of my husband I have come to regard Him as my brother as well, and Gunnlod, my patroness, is a Jotun. However, I present it here for what it is--a decent introduction to the lore concerning Odin--because similar articles seem to be hard to come by on the web these days. Readers are warned to peruse it with salt shaker at hand, accordingly.)
By Laure Lynch
Odin is a compelling (some would say foreboding) figure, arguably the most fascinating in all the world’s mythologies. Lord of Asgard and patriarch of the Norse family of gods (which is almost a mixed extended family in the modern style, incorporating Aesir, Vanir, and even a few Jotnar within its ranks), He is a god of many faces and many things. As Alfadhir, He is the source of divine inheritance—of the roots of might and knowledge passed down to us from both our genetic and spiritual ancestors. As keeper of the sacred Mead of Poetry, He can grant inspiration and creative genius to whomever He wills. As Valfadhir, Lord of the Slain, He hand-picks His warriors, mages, and skalds, nurtures them personally by endowing them with His best gifts, and then cuts them down with His own hands, gathering them to Him at His hall, Valhalla, where they helpHhim prepare for the final battle of Ragnarok. And as lord of wisdom and magic, He gave an eye in order to become all-seeing, and sacrificed Himself on the World Tree, fatally stabbed by His own spear, to gain knowledge of the runes.
In the mythology of no other culture is the god of writing, wisdom and magic at the head of the pantheon, and I think the fact that Odin enjoys this pride of place tells us something about the Nordic people. The northern European tribes of the Migration and Viking eras led hard, often violent lives in a harsh environment, where if life was not always “nasty, brutish and short,” there was at least the potential for it to be so. “Cattle die, kindred die, every man is mortal,” Odin Himself tells us in the Havamal, “But the good name never dies of one who has done well.” Because the northern people were so intimately acquainted with death, the idea of dying a good death was of paramount importance to them. Even if the manner of death was gruesome or unpleasant, it was one’s response to it that determined whether or not it was a good death--whether it was a noble death or one marked by shame and cowardice. By living boldly and dying well, one could hope to achieve some measure of glory that might endure in the memory of the living, and thus win a kind of immortality. The Otherworld was very real to these people, and the dead were as much of an everyday presence as the living. As our spiritual ancestors clustered around their hearth fires for warmth against the cold, endless winter nights, they felt their departed kin huddled around them; they could almost hear the whispers of the dead on the chill night breeze. They felt the very real presence of their gods, too--in the land itself, in a sudden strong wind or a winter storm, and in the stirring words of the skalds, the poets and storytellers who preserved the memory of the glorious dead. Wisdom, poetry and magic, the Nordic people believed, were all gifts to the living from the land of the dead, from the past ages of accumulated knowledge, experience and lore that lay just beyond the shores of this life. Odin is the god who journeyed to those far shores, that unknown land, and brought these gifts back, to be shared among gods and humankind.
Odin’s earliest appearance among the Germanic tribes was as the storm giant Wodenaz, whose name means “fury” or “inspiration.” This raging, restless “stormy” energy has remained a hallmark of His nature and is very familiar to those who know Him; it is the unmistakable “rush” of ecstasy, of exhilaration and surging adrenaline that heralds His presence. Snorri’s Edda incorporates His giantish origins into the mythology by naming Bor, son of Buri, first of the Aesir, as Odin’s father, and Bestla, a frost giantess, as His mother. Just as the Norse creation begins with the conflict between the primal ice of Niflheim and the primal fire of Muspelheim, so the entire myth cycle is a story of the interplay of opposing forces—chief among them the forces of order represented by the Aesir and the forces of chaos embodied by the Jotnar, or giants. Odin incorporates characteristics of both into Himself. As chieftain of the Aesir, He uses His great will and might to ward off the final destruction of Ragnarok for as long as possible, and to hold the nine worlds together in the interim. But due to His giantish ancestry, He has a considerable streak of chaos running through His basic nature, and while His long-range plans serve the common good of men and gods, the methods He uses to achieve them are often criticized as being deceptive, ruthless, or even cruel.
The first demonstration of this occurred when Odin and his brothers Villi and Ve (Will and Holiness, sometimes interpreted as hypostases, or highly developed, independently-acting aspects, of Odin Himself) murdered the proto-etin Ymir, and used His dismembered corpse to construct the nine worlds. The brothers then created the first man and woman, Askr and Embla, from trees which They shaped into human form and endowed with breath, senses, and blood or life hue, respectively. At this point, Villi and Ve for the most part disappear from the literature. However, the Voluspa gives the names of Odin’s two brothers as Hoenir and Lodhur instead, and some sources postulate that Lodhur is one and the same as Loki, Odin’s infamous “blood brother.”
Loki begins His career among the gods as a Trickster similar to the Native American Coyote—continually getting the gods into and out of trouble, often with comic effect and embarrassment to Himself, and sometimes even improving Their situation dramatically in the process (as when He procures the hammer Mjollnir for Thor and the spear Gungnir for Odin). But as the myth cycle progresses, Loki’s “tricks” become progressively meaner; eventually--at least in Snorri's version of the myth cycle--they include orchestrating the death of Odin’s son Baldur and laying the groundwork for the cataclysm of Ragnarok. In Wotan: Road to Valhalla, Kvedulfr Gundarsson argues that Loki’s presence in the pantheon takes a bit of the edge off the dark shadow cast by Odin Himself, and in fact many people who work with these two gods today perceive Them as being strikingly similar in many ways. Neither of Them is above lying, cheating or stealing to obtain His objectives, and both of Them are capable of being extremely unpleasant and merciless when it suits Them. But Odin appears to us as the "better," more socially acceptable brother because He has the mantle of kingship about Him, and like all rulers He is sometimes driven to do unscrupulous things to serve the long-range needs of His people--in Odin's case, humanity and the gods. Often, it seems Loki is burdened with taking on the tasks Odin will not or cannot bring Himself to do--as in case of the sacrifice of Balder, whose death according to some interpretations of the myth was needed in order to stave off Ragnarok.
Following the creation story, Snorri tells us how the gods (presumably Odin, Villi and Ve) built all the divine dwellings in Asgard, and constructed the Bifrost Bridge to separate and ward the world of the gods from the realms of both men (Midgard) and giants (Jotunheim). At about this same time, Odin acquired at least two wives in succession: Jord or Erda (Earth), mother of Thor, and Frigg, mother of the doomed Baldur. According to the Voluspa, there was peace among the gods for a time until a witch named Gullveig ("Gold Draught") came among Them, practicing dark arts and spreading a lust for gold that incited dissension and materialistic greed among the Aesir. As a result, the Aesir decided Gullveig had to go, and tried to burn Her to death three times, yet each time Gullveig rose unharmed from the flames. Some sources have suggested that each successive burning resulted in the creation of one of the Norns, who afterwards assumed control of the Web of Wyrd (perhaps as a kind of punishment for Odin’s actions). Other versions of the story say that the attempts to destroy Gullveig were unsuccessful until Loki ate her heart, thus incorporating her “evil” into himself.
Whatever the case, the burning of Gullveig led to the first war. She was of the Vanir, a race of earth and water fertility gods (in contrast to the Aesir, gods of air and fire), and Her people demanded wergild (blood money) as compensation for Her shoddy treatment. Odin refused, and war ensued. The Vanir emerged as the victors and for a period of either seven or nine years they occupied Asgard as the ruling class, until both races of gods realized that They needed to pool Their resources against the common threat of the giants. A truce was made, in pledge of which both sides agreed to exchange hostages; Mimir and Hoenir went to dwell with the Vanir in Vanaheim, while Njord and His children Freyr and Freyja (and also, according to some sources, Heimdall) moved into Asgard with the Aesir. As a further pledge of peace, each god spat into a vessel and from the collective spittle a new god was created—Kvasir, whose unsurpassed gentleness, wisdom, wit, and eloquence quickly became famous throughout the nine worlds.
Kvasir, however, did not live long; He was slain by evil dwarves, who brewed from His heart’s blood a precious Mead, one draught of which can turn any man or god into a great poet. The treacherous dwarves managed to keep their deed and its bi-product secret for a while, but shortly afterwards they made the mistake of killing the parents of the giant Suttung, and the angry giant seized the Mead as wergild. Unlike the dwarves, Suttung was only too willing to brag about His new acquisition, which He clearly intended to keep all for Himself. Word reached Odin, who disguised Himself as Bolverk (“Bale Worker”) and journeyed into Jotunheim to retrieve the mead. By resorting to shape changing and trickery, Bolverk (Odin) managed to sneak into Suttung’s stronghold, where the giant’s daughter Gunnlod, who had been set to guard the Mead, instantly became so besotted with the god that She agreed to give Him three sips of it in return for three days and nights of pleasure in His arms. When the time came for Odin to take His three sips, He drained it all, then promptly transformed Himself into an eagle and flew home to Asgard, where He disgorged the precious liquor into various containers the Aesir had set out in readiness. And the Havamal tells us that the next day, when Suttung sent emissaries to Asgard to ask about Bolverk, Odin swore a (false) oath on an altar ring (a highly sacred oath among the northern people) that such a person was not among the Aesir, and never had been. (An alternate interpretation of this passage is that the oath Odin refers to is a marriage oath to Gunnlod, who He married in order to obtain the mead and then abandoned.)
As with many tales of Odin’s exploits, this was a case in which He was forced to use unsavory methods to accomplish a necessary goal. Odin Himself, in the Havamal, admits that he might not have escaped alive from Suttung’s stronghold without the help of Gunnlod, and berates Himself both for having broken His oath, and for having abandoned the etin maid, leaving Her to weep after His departure. But as a result of this adventure, He is now keeper of the Mead of Poetry, and He offers it to those of His followers He wishes to bless with poetic inspiration. Part of Odin’s omnipresence throughout the Eddas and sagas stems from the fact that He is the patron of poets, and His skalds have always repaid him for His gift of inspiration by featuring Him prominently in their works.
The story of the Mead of Poetry also introduces one of Odin’s recurring roles throughout the literature—that of the disguised Wayfarer, who frequently sets out from Asgard to wander throughout the nine worlds on some mission of His own making, whether to mingle with His followers, stir up trouble among men or giants, or seek out further wisdom and power. For although He is lord of wisdom, the Master of Fury is no stately, serene god who waits calmly for enlightenment to come to Him, as do the wisdom gods of many other cultures. No, Odin seeks out knowledge and understanding with aggressive hunger, deriving a fierce joy from the pure process of learning and discovery. Odin the wandering sage or magician, affectionately known as the Old Man, is one of the best-known guises of the god, and many echoes of this persona can be found in fiction even today (the most famous incarnation being that of Gandalf in Lord of the Rings). Many people are familiar with the image of Odin as the aging gray-beard clad in a blue-black cloak, His floppy, wide-brimmed hat pulled down to hide His missing eye. His two ravens Huginn and Muninn (Thought and Memory, who fly throughout the nine worlds every day, returning at breakfast time to tell Him what they have seen) are often perched on His shoulders, and His two wolves Geri and Freki (both of whose names mean Greedy, perhaps in reference to their master’s greed for knowledge and experience) are never far from His side.
As a result of this habit of wandering among mankind (and also perhaps because of a fear that naming the god directly would attract His attention), Odin acquired a long list of heiti, or names, about 150 of which have survived in the literature, and some of which are connected with specific myths. One of the most famous of these is Grimnir, (“Hooded One”) the name He assumed for his visit to King Geirrod, a former favorite of Odin’s who was tricked by Frigg into giving the god a hostile reception. (One reason for the strict northern code of hospitality towards strangers was that any random drifter could potentially be Odin Himself in disguise!) Having been warned by Frigg about the coming of an evil sorcerer cloaked in blue, the king seized Grimnir (Odin) and for eight nights tortured Him by slinging Him on a spit between two fires. Finally the king’s young son Agnar took pity on the hapless guest and offered Him a horn of ale, at which point Odin hailed him as the new king: “Greetings, Agnar! The Lord of Men greets you. You’ll never be better rewarded for the gift of a single drink.” After giving Agnar a wealth of detail about Asgard, Yggdrasil, and Valhalla, He recites a list of His own names, ending by revealing His identity to the foolish king. “Now you will see Odin!” He tells Geirrod, essentially meaning, “Now you will die!” The shocked king struggles to his feet, intending to free the god, but stumbles and falls on his own sword instead, impaling himself on the spot.
Odin’s love of wandering, and penchant for seducing mortal women along the way, also led to His traditional role as a divine ancestor, the actual father of noble and heroic lines such as the Volsungs, and the progenitor (through Hengest and Horsa, the first Saxon kings on British soil) of England’s current royal house. On the continent, the last sheaf of grain was traditionally left in the field for Him at harvest-time (or alternately, as a food offering for his horse, Sleipnir), and certain harvest and fertility rituals were performed for Him. Although in the literature He often boasts of his amorous exploits to Thor and others, once in a while His intended seductions did not go as planned, as in the case of Billing’s daughter, who (as He relates in the Havamal) tricked and rejected Him with utter contempt. In addition to His human mistresses and descendants, He is romantically associated with several goddesses and giantesses in addition to Frigg, and is father to a number of gods.
But it is Odin’s insatiable lust for wisdom that gave rise to His most famous myths. His hunger for additional lore drove Him to wager His own head in a contest of knowledge against the boastful and dangerous etin Vathruthnir. The unlucky giant held His ground against Odin--who was once again disguised, this time as a wanderer named Gagnrad--for a while, until the god, having won the lore He had come seeking, posed the Unanswerable Question: What did Odin Himself whisper in the ear of His son Baldur as Baldur lay on His funeral pyre? At this point, Vathruthnir recognized the true identity of His visitor, and lost both the contest and His life.
Although Odin could see anywhere in the nine worlds from His throne at Hlidskjalf, it was not enough to satisfy Him. His burning desire to see even further, to see everything, prompted Him to sacrifice an eye in return for a single drink from the Well of Memory guarded by that wisest of all giants, Mimir ( Odin’s maternal uncle). The sacrificed eye was not lost, however; it still rests at the bottom of the dark well. Through it Odin gains His knowledge of orlog, the cosmic fate of both men and gods. And He uses His vision into the unseen to guide Him in His great work of writing around Wyrd—shaping the dark future He has glimpsed, the shadow of Ragnarok, so that the best possible outcome for all can be snatched from the jaws of doom.
The central myth of Odin is, of course, His “sacrifice of self to self,” in which He hanged himself, wounded by His own spear, from the World Tree Yggdrasil (“Ygg’s Steed” or “Ygg’s Gallows”) for nine nights in order to gain the secrets of the runes. This single act of self-sacrifice--an offering of His own divine power and godly life force to Himself (just as if He were one of His own sacrificial victims) in return for even greater power and might--transformed Him from Ygg, the Terrible One, into Odin, patron of wisdom, inspiration, and magic, the mightiest of the gods. As a result, sacrifice and self-sacrifice are constantly recurring motifs in His worship, in ancient times as well as today. Because of the method He used to sacrifice himself, human sacrifices to Him during the migration and Viking eras were made by strangulation and/or hanging and/or stabbing the victim with a spear. Odin’s personal weapon is the sacred spear Gungnir, with which He slays His chosen warriors in the literature; and even today he claims many of His followers and marks them as His by impaling them with this spear in a dream or trace experience.
In the myths, He also uses His spear to designate the winning side in a combat by default. By casting the spear over the heads of the army fated to lose with the words, “Odin has you all!” He (or one of His heroes or agents, acting on His behalf) claims them as His sacrifices and hallows all their deaths to His cause. The Valknut, or Knot of the Slain, an emblem formed by three interwoven triangles, is archaeologically linked with sacrifices to Odin, and for this reason is worn as a symbol of dedication to Him by many of his followers today. The Valknut is a sign that its wearer has freely chosen to give themselves to Odin, and acknowledges that Odin has the right to claim this sacrifice at whatever time He decides. The three triangles also symbolize Odin’s triple nature as poetic frenzy, will and holiness. The nine angles of the Valknut depict the nine worlds, and the knot pattern shows Odin’s special might of binding and unbinding the knots of Wyrd.
Odin, the god who has Himself died (and who shares in this mystery with His son, Baldur), seems from very early in His history to have been closely connected with the dead as a psychopomp, a conductor of souls to the underworld. He is frequently seen in the Eddas and sagas as a ferryman who comes in person to collect His fallen heroes and ferry them across the waters to Valhalla. (The Harbarzljod describes how He runs into His son Thor, who is returning from a raid on Jotunheim, while disguised as a ferryman calling Himself Harbard, or “Grey Beard.” Thor fails to recognize Him, and a flyting, or contest of insults, ensues in which Odin goads Thor about His prowess in giant-killing while boasting about His own latest amorous conquests.) In addition to conducting the dead to the next world, Odin is also said to sometimes lead them back into the world of the living, often to seek retribution for past wrongs that could not be redressed during life. Germanic folklore records such tales of the Wild Hunt, in which Odin, riding on His eight-legged horse Sleipnir with a pack of red-eyed hounds baying at His heels, leads an army of the dead through the storm-torn night sky. This is said by some to be the most fearsome face of the masked god, Odin as Draugr Drighten, leader of the restless dead. In the Baldursdraumr, Odin Himself ventures into the land of dead—disguised as usual, this time as a Wanderer named Vegtam--in an attempt to discover the reason for His son Baldur’s disturbing dreams. Using His necromantic skills, He raises the spirit of a dead Volva or seeress and from Her learns that Baldur is doomed, and that His death will set in motion the events leading to Ragnarok.
From His origins as a conductor of the dead, Odin’s role during the Migration era grew into that of chooser of the battle slain, Sigfadher or Father of Victory, and Hejan, god of war. It may have been at this point that He replaced Tyr, the original northern Skyfather, as head of the pantheon. Odin’s handmaidens and adopted daughters, the Valkyrjur or “Choosers of the Slain,” are female embodiments of His will, death angels (either beautiful or gruesome, depending on the account) who select those fated to die on the battlefield, and conduct His chosen warriors to Valhalla. There, in the Hall of the Slain, His hallowed warriors, the Einherjar, spend every night feasting on pork and drinking mead served by the Valkyrjur, and every day training and fighting in preparation for Ragnarok, the final battle between the gods and the giants.
It is in preparation for this great battle, in which most of the gods and other creatures of the nine worlds are fated to perish, that Odin directs most of His might, gathering to Himself His chosen warriors who will stand with Him in His fight against the monstrous wolf Fenrir. The contract between Odin and His chosen ones bears a similarity to that between the typical northern drighten or chieftain and his thanes. The chieftain traditionally gave gold rings (a symbol of faith) to his thanes to secure their loyalty (a practice which led to the standard use of the kenning “ring-giver” to describe kings in Teutonic poetry), and in return it was understood that a thane would remain loyal to his lord unto death. It was a severe mark of cowardice and disgrace if a thane’s lord were to perish in the field while he himself was left standing. And to desert his lord in his time of need would have been unthinkable; such an unworthy thane would be shunned and cast out by all, forevermore. It is in a similar mode that Odin gives His chosen ones His best gifts during life to bind them to Him so that they will stand with Him at the last battle. In token of this, His own arm ring, Draupnir, sheds nine rings identical to itself every nine days, symbolizing the fact that there is no limit to the number of people who can lay claim to His patronage and protection. Odin’s gifts to His human followers are as great (and, some say, as terrifying) as the sacrifice He will inevitably demand in return, however. In accordance with the meaning of his name, “frenzy" or "fury,” he gives us three states of frenzy or madness: the creative frenzy of the poet or writer; the altered state of consciousness needed to work sorcery and perceive or alter wyrd; and the battle-frenzy of the warrior or beserker (which in modern times can be accessed to gain victory in any conflict or struggle, not just military ones).
The literature is filled with warnings that Odin can be a treacherous, untrustworthy god, citing His habit of bringing down His human heroes at the time of their greatest prowess in order to add their might to His forces at Valhalla. But it must be remembered that this is a god who understands human suffering and grief intimately, having suffered the loss of His own son Baldur, and that out of all the gods Odin was the most deeply affected by this blow because He alone understood it as the first sign that the events leading to Ragnarok had been set in motion. Odin acts as He does not out of callousness or cruelty, but out of Nauthiz--need or necessity. He can legitimately challenge His heroes to die because he Himself has died, and as He tells Brunahild in Diana Paxson’s novel The Wolf and The Raven, “They must pass through death, who live for me.” Everything He does is part of His great work of writing around Wyrd, so that the apocalypse of Ragnarok can be averted for as long as possible, and so that when it does come the final result will be for the best.
The High One has justifiably been accused of stirring up strife among mortals, but He does so because only through conflict can balance and growth be achieved. Nevertheless, these methods have never won Him much love from the common folk as a whole, who have preferred the patronage of the reliable, good-natured Thor or of the Vanic Freyr, god of fertility and frith. Odin’s worship was most popular among the Saxons, the Danes, and the Norwegian aristocracy, and in general tended to be confined to the upper classes—and to poets, magicians, and berserkers, all of whom seemed mad to most common folk. He is the supreme god of the mysteries and hidden wisdom, master of both galdr magic (magical incantation, usually involving the chanting of runes) and seidr magic (trance magic, a northern type of shamanic witchcraft he learned from the goddess Freyja). He is a shape-changer who masks His appearance at will, and can take on the forms of a serpent, an eagle, or even a woman should it suit His purpose. He can also possess humans in order to walk among them and interact with His followers.
Odin speaks of His own knowledge as coming from the land of the dead--from the “howes-of-the-home” or burial mounds, as He says in the Harbarzljod. The animals who accompany Him, His ravens and wolves, are carrion-eaters who are often found enjoying the fallen fruits of battle. His grey eight-legged horse Sleipnir has been said to symbolize a coffin being carried by four pall-bearers. Even His cloak was the color, blue-black, the Norse associated with the dead—and in particular with the evil dead, those who had returned for the purpose of slaying the living. The northern people had profound respect for their ancestors, and held this greatest of all ancestors, the Lord of Fury who brings wisdom and inspiration to the living from the land of the dead, in the deepest awe—but He also frankly gave them the creeps, and accordingly most people (then and now) have given Odin a very wide berth. His followers seem to have always been the ones He chooses Himself personally, sometimes marking them at birth or even earlier, like the great warrior-poets Egil Skallagrimson and Starkadr. And, to the amazement of more “normal” folk, Odin claims the fierce loyalty and devotion of His chosen ones not out of the fear He inspires in most others, but out of love. Others may call us crazy, but we love the Old Man—for all the dark, dangerous aspects of His nature as much as for His charm, His wisdom, and His generosity. And why shouldn’t we? After all, aren’t we, like our patron, the furious, the mad, and the possessed?
Copyright © 2002 by Laure Lynch
wodandis@gmail.com