Odin

by Diana L. Paxson

  Kings and Skalds

  Names like Fimbultyr (Mighty or Awesome God), Godjadharr (God Protector), Ítrekr (Splendid Ruler), Jörmunr (Mighty One), Fjölsvidhr (Much Wise), Forn-Ölvir” (Ancient Holy One), and Haptagudh (God of the Gods) convey an image of might and majesty.

  As Snorri says, “When he sat with his friends he was so fair and noble in looks that all were joyful” (Ynglingasaga 6). When to this you add the descriptive names that refer to his long, grey beard and bushy eyebrows, you get a figure reminiscent of the Emperor from a Tarot deck, the archetype of the Wise Old Man. Tyr may have been the original monarch, but over the centuries, Odin has grown into the role.

  Pictures from the 19th century, especially, show him presiding over the feast in Valhalla from his richly carved throne, often wearing the inaccurate but picturesque winged helmet, with his spear leaning against the chair. An eye patch may cover one eye, but the glance of the other is eagle keen. He is cloaked in the deep luminous blue of the evening sky just after sunset. As the torches flicker, light flares from his armor. His ravens perch on the high back of the great chair, and at his feet two great gray wolves gnaw on the bones of the offerings.

  In the opening to the Younger Edda, Snorri portrays Odin as a monarch of supreme wealth and power who rules the world because of his might and because of the part he played in creating it. The Younger Edda was written as a handbook for poets, who were supported by the great lords and the kings. It was a mutually advantageous arrangement. Until conversion to Christianity had provided men who could chronicle the deeds of the kings in Latin, the only way for a ruler to win undying fame was to have his deeds recorded for posterity in elegant poetry.

  One particular service which Icelanders performed was that of court poet (skjald) whose task was to compose poems in praise of his lord. . . . This poetry was therefore a very important element in Icelandic culture and greatly influenced the Icelanders' ideas about their past, powerfully reinforcing their interest in kings, especially the kings of Norway. (Sawyer 1982, 14)

  Snorri himself had traveled to Norway in the hope of serving the young King Hákon in this way. The Hattatal, later incorporated into the Younger Edda, consists of 102 stanzas analyzing different poetic meters. The examples are taken from praise poems written by Snorri for King Hákon and his regent, Earl Skuli. Many of the stanzas celebrate the military prowess of the king and his army, but a number paint a picture of the king in peace and prosperity.

  The leader is eager to distribute fen's fire [gold]—

  the hand tends to act in accordance with custom.

  The punisher of plundering gives Rhine's amber [gold]—

  princes become famous among men.

  The ruler greatly trusts his men's experience—

  a gift looks to its recompense.

  The king has power over men for the future—

  each man gains from companionship.

  —Hattatal 26

  The words in brackets give the meanings of the “kennings,” which are phrases that describe what something is like or does, rather than giving the actual name. For instance, a king is a “hater of gold” because he gives away the gold he wins to reward his followers. In Beowulf, written five centuries earlier, the people praise the valor with which the king protected them, and cry “that he was ever of the kings of earth of men most generous and to men most gracious, to his people most tender and for praise most eager” (Tolkien 2014, 2663–5).

  In addition to the Younger Edda, Snorri compiled the Heimskringla, The Lives of the Norse Kings. This begins with the legendary history of how Odin led his people from old Troy to establish his kingdom in the north, and recounts the biographies of those who ruled Scandinavia all the way to the reign of Magnus Erlingson, who died in 1184, shortly after Snorri was born. The focus is on battles and victories, but even for a Christian king, the greatest praise is that “the land was prosperous during his rule, for there were both good seasons and peace” (Sturlason 1932, “History of Sigurd the Crusader,” 41).

  However, a reading of Heimskringla shows that there were limitations on the power of Norse kings. Even after conversion to Christianity had given the Scandinavian kings a claim to Divine Right and a literate civil service in the form of monastery-trained clerks, their subjects clung to a sturdy independence. The people who settled Iceland were fleeing royal power and resisted Norwegian attempts to reclaim them until social and environmental pressures overwhelmed them in the 13th century.

  The fundamental Germanic political structure, as seen not only in Scandinavia but also on the Continent and in Anglo-Saxon England, seems to have been to have a king chosen from among the men within the eight degrees of royal kinship, who was supported by his sworn warriors and advised by a council of the leading men of the community.

  Was Odin actually the kind of king that Snorri praised? In the Eddas, he does not seem to exercise even that much authority. During the war between the Æsir and Vanir, the most holy gods meet to discuss their response at their rökstóla (seats of destiny), the judgment seats that are by the Well of Wyrd (Völuspá 6, 23, and 25). This is a phrase we find in several places in the Eddas when a decision has to be made. Odin casts his spear above the foe to begin the battle, but going to war is a joint decision.

  I see his role more as that of a CEO with a board of directors than as that of the president of a company. This makes sense, since if his job were to run the world, he would hardly have time to wander through it. As we see in chapter 7, in the literature of the saga period, the area in which Odin does exercise sole leadership is in preparing for Ragnarök; and when the last battle takes place, he is the one who will lead the gods and heroes to the field.

  By the time Richard Wagner was writing the Ring operas, Europe had had an additional seven centuries to develop the concept of absolute monarchy, and scholars reinterpreted Odin's role as leader of the Germanic gods. In Das Rheingold, Wagner portrays the god as one of the young hero kings beloved of the skalds, hungry for wisdom but even more eager for glory. The “Entry of the Gods into Valhalla,” with which that opera ends, is a musical portrait of the fortress that will be the physical manifestation of his power. In Die Walküre, we see Wotan as a reigning king, his power constricted by the laws he himself has made. In Siegfried, he abandons his role as king to become the Wanderer, manipulating events but not controlling them, and in Götterdammerung, he has given up even trying and retreats to his fortress to wait for his mortal children to bring the old world to an end.

  In the 20th century, Odin's character continued to evolve. As we saw in chapter 2, Tolkien's Gandalf bears a striking resemblance to Odin as the Wanderer. As the writing of The Lord of the Rings progressed, the figure of Gandalf, like many other elements in Tolkien's story, evolved. Eventually, the wandering wizard is revealed as one of the Maiar, a lesser god who is a servant of Manwë, in whom we find a figure evocative of Odin as Sovereign of Asgard.

  In Tolkien's Silmarillion, Manwë is chief of the Ainur, the godly beings who have created Middle Earth. He reigns from the top of a heavenly mountain. Robed in blue, he is the Elder King and Lord of the Winds, and the great eagles are his servants.

  The most recent version of Odin as king of the gods comes from Marvel Comics. In 1962, Odin appeared in Journey into Mystery # 86 and became a regular character in the comics as the ruler of Asgard and father of Thor. After evolving through a convoluted series of story lines in comic book form, in the current Marvel film series, he has had a new incarnation, played by Anthony Hopkins. Of course the Marvel version of Norse mythology only follows the actual lore when convenient, but Odin, in his aspect as All-father and sovereign of Asgard, is a commanding figure there.

  Maker of Midgard

  Odin's role in Asgard is not his only claim to the title of All-father. Whatever stories might have been told about the creation of the world in earlier times, by the time the Eddas were being written, the role of primary mover and shaker had been given to Odin.

  He is not, how
ever, the ultimate source. In Völuspá 3–4 and Gylfaginning 4–8, we are told that the universe was born from the collision of the elements of ice and fire, a Norse equivalent of the “Big Bang” theory. They met in Ginnungagap, the Abyss, and from the resulting yeasty ferment came a primal being, Ymir, whose limbs, rubbing together, generated the frost giants. Ymir was nourished by the supernatural cow, Audhumla, who licked away the salty rime to reveal a being called Buri, the first of the gods. Buri's son was Bor, who married Bestla, daughter of the frost giant Bolthorn. Their sons were Odin, Vili, and Vé.

  How are we to interpret this story? My feeling is that this triad, born of the union of the god essence with one of the beings generated by the manifestation of matter, represents the beginnings of consciousness. The Proto-Indo-European forms of these names would have been *Wodhanaz, *Weljon, and *Weixan (Orel 2003, 453). As I interpret them, Wod (the root of “Odin”) is the ecstatic passion of creation. Vili is “will,” or focused intention. Vé is the name for a holy place or sanctuary and thus can stand for holiness manifest in the material world. If the earlier phases of the creation story record the interactions of barely personified forces, with the appearance of Odin and his brothers, Mind begins to act on Matter.

  Its first act is to dismember the primal being, and from Ymir's parts to construct the world. “They took Ymir and transported him to the middle of Ginnungagap, and out of him made the earth, out of his blood the sea and the lakes. The earth was made of the flesh and the rocks of the bones, stone and scree they made out of the teeth and molars and of the bones that had been broken” (Gylfaginning 8).

  Ymir's other bits and pieces were used for the rest of the world, including a palisade to protect Midgard that was made from his eyelashes. Similar stories are found in a number of mythologies. The fact that the Hindu version, in which the primordial being Purusha is sacrificed to create life, comes from the oldest Vedic scriptures suggests that the motif was already present in Proto-Indo-European religion.

  When I contemplate this process, I see the Power that we now know as Odin focusing what had been a diffused cosmic consciousness in separate modes more powerfully and precisely, because “he” is aware of them. One of the primary ways of differentiating elements so that one can work with them is to give them names. Thus, I propose that Odin's association with communication developed during the process of creation. The visual image that comes to me is of the god ranging through this evolving environment, fixing and shaping the emerging entities through words.

  But he does not do this alone. He works with his brothers to build the world and cooperates with the Ginn-heilög Godh, the highest, most holy gods, to organize the workings of the heavens and the wheel of the year. We do not know the names of these other gods. Perhaps they are other children of Bor and Bestla, an earlier generation of deities, or the evolving forms of the gods whom we find in the mythology. What they do, however, is establish a template for civilization with temples, technology, and entertainment.

  This poem by Fjolnirsvin expresses one perspective on Odin's role as creator.

  I. Odinn

  Before I made the world from Ymir's body

  with my brothers, Villi and Ve,

  who may or may not be me

  (that's the trouble with hypostases),

  the first giants said:

  “There is only ice and fire and the place they meet.

  That's all there is,

  the only conceivable order.”

  Now the earth flowers in all its complexity.

  So, know. When dead Yggdrasil grows new shoots

  and Baldur returns,

  in whose ear I whispered

  (no, I won't tell you what),

  and from the riven trunk,

  the parents of future descendants emerge,

  blinking at the new sun,

  there will be not just reiteration

  but transformation

  and an unfolding order, unimagined.

  The Tree People

  After the story of creation, the next section of Völuspá (9–16) lists the names of the dwarves. Creating them seems to have been a group effort. In stanzas 17–18, we come to the story of the creation of humankind. Here we find another opportunity for Odin to be considered as All-father.

  One day, as they are walking along the shore, three gods find two logs of wood. In the Younger Edda (Gyrlfaginning 9), Snorri simply calls them the sons of Bor, but in Völuspá, we are told that the three who found the logs were Odin, Hoenir, and Lódhur.

  One log is of ask, ash wood. The other, embla, is interpreted as elm, or sometimes as a vine (Lindow 2001, 63). Other spiritual traditions say that humans were created from mud, but I have always enjoyed the idea that we are actually related to the trees. This does, however, give us a special responsibility to take care of our relatives.

  The first thing we know about Ask and Embla is that they were örløg-lausa, “without örløg” or “unfated.” Not only were they not yet human, but they were also not even living. They were pure potential, ready to be shaped. To understand what the gods did to them, we need to look at who they were and what each of them gave.

  We know Odin (or think we do). Hoenir turns up several times in the mythology. In addition to his role in the creation of humans, at the beginning of Skaldskaparmál, he appears as the companion of Odin and Loki in the journey that leads to the kidnapping of Idunna.

  There may have been other stories in which these three traveled together; as in the poem Haustlong, Loki is referred to as Hoenir's friend. In Ynglingasaga 4, Hoenir is one of the hostages sent by the Æsir to Vanaheim after the war between the Æsir and Vanir. He looks good but refers all opinions to his fellow hostage, Mimir. The disappointed Vanir behead Mimir (about whom we hear more when we discuss the Well of Mimir in chapter 10) and kick Hoenir out of Vanaheim. Hoenir is also one of the few first-generation gods who is destined to survive Ragnarök (Völuspá 63), after which he will perform divination with the “wooden lots.”

  The third deity, Lódhur, is even more enigmatic. One kenning for Odin is “Lódhur's friend.” John Lindow (2001, 212) points out that another Odin kenning is “Lopt's friend.” Lopt is a name for Loki, and some have identified Lódhur with him.

  Perhaps we can get a better sense of what is going on by comparing the versions in the Elder and Younger Eddas.

  In both versions, Odin provides önd, the breath of life, the spirit that is taken in with the first breath and released with the last. It is a term that has much the same weight as the Hebrew ruach and the Greek pneuma. Breath brings us the oxygen that catalyzes all other bodily processes. Without it, the other gifts would be useless. Breathing is a process, just as the combustion of breath in our blood is a process. Odin is a process, which is why he is so hard to pin down.

  Meditating on this brings an understanding of Odin as a dynamic force, source of the breath that carries communication and the wind that is the breath of the world. This poem by Paul Edwin Zimmer (1979) expresses some of its meanings.

  With breastbone and brain, breathe the sky!

  Allow your lungs long to fill:

  Weighted with wisdom, wind in the lungs

  Reddens blood with rust, that rushes through the body

  And the brain, bearing breath everywhere;

  Blowing in the blood, blithely stirring life,

  Let wind awake wisdom in your mind!

  Ódh is the gift of Hoenir, which seems odd, given that it is the root of Odin's name. It is also one of the most difficult Norse words to translate. In their monumental dictionary, Cleasby and Vigfusson (1874) offer a translation for it as an adjective meaning “mad,” “violent,” “frantic,” which fits with Adam of Bremen's 11th century definition of “Wodan id est furor.” However, Cleasby and Vigfusson follow this with an entry for ódh as a noun, in which its meaning is given as “wit” or “mind” with a secondary meaning of “song” or “poetry.” Most translators of this passage prefer to interpret it as the noun. For
a deeper exploration of the meanings, see chapter 10.

  In the Younger Edda, however, the gift is listed as “wit and motion,” which could be said to incorporate both senses of ódh. Today we tend to think of mental activity as detached and controlled, but my own understanding of ódh is something like “creative fervor,” the act of thinking agitated into passion. This does not fit particularly well with what we know of Hoenir, but it might work for Vili if we view it as “fervor focused by the will.”

  The third gift is a collection of qualities that enable the human being, already possessed of the ability to move and think and feel, to live in the world. The senses enable us to give and receive information. I take the gift of a face as the equivalent of “good looks,” the final sculpting that gave Ask and Embla the forms that humans wear today.

  The identity of the Power who gives this third gift is even more puzzling than that of the second. In a fourteenth century poem, the Thrymlur (a retelling in Icelandic rimur form of the Eddic Thrymskvidha), Lódhur appears as another name for Loki. This, when combined with the inclusion of Loki as a traveling companion for Hoenir and Odin in the Younger Edda story in which the trio encounter the giant Thiazi, inclines me to favor Loki/Lódhur as the third deity involved in the activation of Ask and Embla.

  The gift of the third god, whoever he may be, is external—the shape of the body and the senses. As such, it fits well as a gift of Vé, transforming a thing of the physical world into something holy. Speculating further, I could make a case for Loki, source of so many tools and devices, as the giver of the means by which our bodies interact with the world.