Odin

by Diana L. Paxson

  More often, it is the valkyries who deliver the invitations. If there is one image familiar from opera, it is that of the Valkyrie, usually portrayed as a busty soprano in a breastplate and winged helmet, shrieking syllables that, as Anna Russell points out in her discussion of the Ring cycle, are untranslatable because they don't mean anything. When you look at the lore, the valkyries become both scarier and more interesting.

  Odin names thirteen valkyries in Grimnismál. Snorri adds a few more. As translated by Orchard (2011), they have meanings like “Wielder,” “Brandisher,” “War,” “Strength,” “War Bindings,” “Spear Waver,” and “Shield Truce.” Fulfilling Odin's will, they are the Choosers of the Slain. They may also have a role in battle. In the Germania of Tacitus, we hear of a tribal woman who watched the battles, shrieking to terrify the foe. In the Helgi poems, human women with the title of valkyrie send their fetches soaring above the battle, working spells. Given that at least one valkyrie name refers to binding, as workers of war magic they may be extensions of Odin's powers.

  In Anglo-Saxon spells, we find the waelcyrge, sometimes used as a gloss for the Classical Furies. In the spell against rheumatism, some see them in the screaming “mighty women,” who send invisible spears to cause pain (Storms 1949, “With Faerstice”). The other job of the valkyries is to serve mead and ale to the heroes. The figures of women carrying drinking horns that appear on memorial runestones may represent valkyries, although this task was part of the role of a woman of high status, who performed it to honor heroes and promote peace within the hall. These stones are also the source of the valknut, the symbol of three interlaced triangles that has been adopted as a tattoo by some who dedicate themselves to Odin.

  So who gets on Odin's A-list, and why? In the euhemerized history of the gods in Ynglingasaga 9, we learn that

  Odin died in his bed in Sweden, and when he was near death he had himself marked with a spear point and dedicated to himself all men who died through weapons; he said that he should now fare to the Godheims and there welcome his friends. . . . The Swedes often seemed to see him clearly before great battles began; to some he gave victory, but others he bid come to him; both fates seemed good to them.

  One mortal king who is believed to have ended up in Valhalla is Hákon the Good, last son of King Harald Hairfair. Fostered in England, he was raised a Christian, but alone among converted Norse kings, he did not try to impose the new religion on his subjects. For this, the poet who eulogized him praised him as a guardian of the Heathen temples. When Hákon had reigned for twenty-six years, the sons of his oldest brother attacked him. The king's side won the battle, but Hákon died of his wounds.

  No doubt the king expected to go to heaven, but the skjald Eyvind Scaldaspiller (1932) says otherwise. His poem, the Hákonarmál, tells how Odin sent the Valkyries Gondul and Skogul “to choose amongst the kings which of Yngvi's race should go to Odin and be in Valhall.” When the king asks why they didn't help him, the Valkryies point out that though he is dying, his side has had the victory. As Hákon and his men approach Valhalla, Odin sends the hero Hermod and the god of poetry, Bragi, out to welcome him, and Bragi points out that eight of Hákon's brothers are waiting to greet him. The fact that the sons of Harald Hairfair had been vicious rivals when they were alive is irrelevant.

  The gusto with which some warriors looked forward to this fate is expressed in the twenty-nine stanzas of the Krákumál, the death song sung by Ragnar Lothbrok. This is a sample. For the whole, see the Sagas of Ragnar Lothbrok and his Sons, translated by Ben Waggoner (2009, 76).

  We struck with our swords!

  My soul is glad, for I know

  that Balder's father's benches

  for a banquet are made ready.

  We'll toss back toasts of ale

  from bent trees of the skulls;

  no warrior bewails his death

  in the wondrous house of Fjolnir.

  Not one word of weakness

  will I speak in Vidrir's hall.

  In Gylfaginning 40, Snorri tells us, “Each day after they have got dressed they put on war-gear and go out into the courtyard and fight each other and they fall each upon the other. This is their sport. And when dinner-time approaches they ride back to Val-hall and sit down to drink.” In the lore, fighting and drinking seem to be viewed as sufficient occupations for a hero. Today, many Heathens feel that the poets who chronicle the deeds of those heroes are also represented here, and given the advances in military technology, there is probably a computer room there as well.

  Valhalla, the hall of the slain, has 540 doors, through each of which eight hundred warriors can pass. The einherior dine on the flesh of the boar Saehrimnir, which is cooked, eaten, and reconstitutes itself each day. For drink, the valkyries serve the mead that flows from the udder of the goat Heidhrun, who grazes on the leaves at the top of the Worldtree. It all sounds rather like the Viking sports channel, but the purpose of this establishment is not entertainment. In S. M. Stirling's The High King of Montival, young Mike Havel comments, “Well, they'll know they've been in a fight, but then it's pork chops at Odin's All Night Diner for us until Ragnarok” (Stirling 2014, ch. 2).

  This poem, written to honor Paul Edwin Zimmer, who died in 1997, expresses my understanding of Valhalla. Paul, a swordsman, poet, and writer of heroic fiction, knew Odin long before I did and helped me understand him from a male perspective as well as from my own.

  All-father Odin, Ale-Giving God!

  Rage-giver, Runewinner, Rider of Yggdrasil!

  Guard now and guide to glee in Valhalla

  The rider who fares on Rainbow Bridge.

  For nine nights' knowledge, on Yggdrasil,

  You, Odin, the doom of death endured:

  Worldtree Warrior, wisdom-winner,

  Through spell and shadow lead the lost one—

  Lead home to the feast, fastest far-farer,

  The swordsman who strides over Rainbow Bridge!

  This Bragi-blessed warrior whose name we call!

  Edwin! Prepared is your place at the feast!

  Unveiled valkyries the veteran greet;

  Let beer now flow freely from barrels,

  As the Hero's Portion you divide!

  From wandering to wonder, from woe to bliss,

  From Midgard's madness, hard on heroes,

  Enter another on the Einherior's roll!

  Welcome the wanderer to Warrior's Hall!

  Wode and the Wild Hunt

  After the conversion to Christianity, the belief that dead warriors went to Valhalla may have faded, but in the Wild Hunt, the Einherior lived on. For a vivid evocation of their appearance, I offer the following passage from The Broken Sword, by Poul Anderson, which was my introduction to Odin in 1954 and the first book to convey to me what it would be like to live in a culture with a completely different worldview.

  The brief glimpse he had, seated on his plunging horse, of the mighty cloaked form that outran the wind, the huge eight-legged horse and its rider with the long gray beard and the shadowing hat. The moonbeam gleamed on the head of his spear and on his single eye.

  Hoo, halloo, there he went through the sky with his troop of dead warriors and the fire-eyed hounds barking like thunderclaps. His horn screamed in the storm, the hoofbeats were like a rush of hail drumming on the roof, and then the whole pack was gone and the rain came raving over the world.

  Imric snarled, for the Wild Hunt boded no good to those who saw it and the laughter of the one-eyed huntsman had been mockery. (Anderson 1954, 14)

  Imric is right to worry, because when Odin sends an ancient sword forged by Bolverk as a naming gift for the human changeling the elf lord has stolen, it is clear that the god has his own plans.

  The Wild Hunt, also known as the Furious Host, appears in medieval folklore from all over Europe, led by figures ranging from the devil, King Arthur, and Hellequin to the goddesses Diana or Herodias, and followed by ghostly riders. A similar tradition survives in the Pennsylvania Dutch coun
try today. The leader of the Hunt in the Germanic countries is Odin or Wotan, followed by the Oskerei or the Wilde Jagd. Some of the riders appear as warriors from ancient times, while some are the recently dead or living men who participate in dream or trance. The Hunt rides the winter storms, especially around the time of Yule. In Norway, children were told not to whistle at night lest they attract the Hunt's attention.

  John T. Mainer sees the wild ride as an expression of primal energy.

  One of the earliest understandings of Odin was Wode, the transforming passion, the wild rage. To be caught by the wild hunt meant one of two things: if you were prey, you had to keep before the wild hunt all night or the pack would rend you asunder for its wild lord's pleasure.

  The hunt took others than prey. The horn of the huntsman calls to the blood, the song of the wolf calls to the hunter, the killer, in all of us. If the Wild Hunt took you and you ran with it, civilization was thrown aside, humanity cast off like a tattered cloak, and you ran naked with fangs bare and no more between your hunger and the night than a wolf has.

  The fire in the blood, the transforming passion, the madness and ecstasy of throwing off your cares, your inner conflicts, and following the wild hunt with only the joy of the hunt, the sweet taste of fear in the night, and the song of the pack; these are dark and splendid gifts.

  To wake in the morning, drenched in sweat, eyes still burning, smiling softly with a body shaking in exhaustion, and a soul burned clean of conflict and care, a mind as still and peaceful as the morning after a thunderstorm; these are bright and healing gifts.

  Our modern lives chain us with responsibility and care. Duty and struggle, stress and endless imperfect compromises fill us with internal stress and conflict we can never set down, never escape.

  Wode, the Wild Huntsman. Primitive, some say the darkest face of Odin, Wode and his hunt are that throwing off of civilization for a howling embrace of life. What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. We jump out of perfectly good airplanes. We pay money to put a fragile kayak into the part of the river called Hell's Gate, where the railroad was measured in dead men per mile. We hang from cliffs while hammering a ring backed nail into rock while tourists pass overhead in heated gondolas above the abyss you dangle over. How many times and how many ways do we find that taste of madness, that wild embrace of passion that is our last best preserver of sanity?

  Somewhere inside, part of us listens for the sound of the horn above the TV, listens for the call of the pack above the AC. Some part of us chafes at our centuries of progress and burns for just one last chance to howl. (Mainer 2011, 21)

  But the Hunt is more than a release for those who join the Furious Host. The explosion of energy renews the land. In meditation on one such stormy night, this is what my friend Vefara heard:

  Those whose lives were great shouts through the worlds cannot have their death wasted in one place. On the nights that return life to the land, whether that is through the scouring of snow or the torrents of rain, the gale-winds bring the Host, the heroic dead, those who strove to bring themselves brim-full to the end of their days: whether in bed or on field. Not to repay the land's luck which was their charge in one place, as Frey's men might, but to scatter it over all the lands in their passing, that some small spark might land, stirred by the gale of their screams as they pass, in fertile soil, on fertile souls, and stir more greatness, as has been ever done.

  And on nights like these . . . No longer only horses, no longer only wolves with snake-reins, but all manner of vehicle, carriage, and creature that could ever love a human hand and share the fierce joy of the battle-song: there are not a few on motorcycles now, and somehow the airplanes, biplanes through to fighters, fit well among the elder steeds without crowding them out.

  The stories of the dead are the inspiration of the living, and the lights of the living are the inspiration of the dead. The heroes watch, and if they are of a mind to be among the Host, they ride. Disir and alfar worthy of the name spread their luck back into Midgard, taking in trade the praise of those who remember, and tell, the stories of the departed. The song of our passing stirs all who hear it, slowing, a little, the sick, pointless death that would come if, in its time, Ragnarök did not.

  Hléfodh: God of the Grave-Mound

  Although we are told in Ynglingasaga that it was Odin who introduced the practice of cremating the dead, he also has a connection with the grave-mound. Although he does not mention the spell in the list in Hávamál, it is clear that Odin can not only speak to the hanged, he can also talk to the dead in the mound.

  In the Eddic poem Baldrsdraumar, Odin rides to the eastern door of Hel where he knows that a völva is buried and uses his necromancy to chant valgaldr, “death-galdor,” until the corpse is forced to rise and answer him.

  Howes, or grave-mounds, are holy. Few know the spells to compel the dead, but once summoned, the howe-dwellers are often willing to offer wisdom to their descendants. Svipdag gets counsel from his dead mother by sitting on her grave, and Hervor persuades her berserker father to rise and give her his magic sword. However, the most significant relationship between Odin and the mound probably lies in the traditions of sacred kingship.

  The fact that so many Germanic royal houses traced their lineage to Odin supports the idea that the places where those god-descended ancestors were buried would remain places of power. As Grundy puts it:

  In general, it seems clear that Scandinavian rulers were expected to have a particular relationship with the dead, from whom at least a portion of their authority was derived. . . . If the Scandinavian rulers were thought to get anything more out of their ancestral mounds than a link with tradition and a prominent place from which to address a crowd, then the seat on the howe would fall more within Ódhinn's domain than that of any other deity. As cultic leader/sacrificer, the ruler also had a particular relationship with the realms of the dead: in his person, he linked the gods, the dead, and the living, and was responsible for maintaining communication and good relationships between them. (Grundy 2014, 115–116)

  Draugadrottinn: Ruler of the Draugar

  Unfortunately, kings are not the only powerful beings that may dwell in a mound. In the sagas, we find stories about a particularly nasty type of Undead called the draug. The term is often translated as “ghost,” but the draugar, although they can pass through the earth that covers their graves, are both solid and dangerous. To quote Lorrie Wood:

  Perhaps it ought to be said that undeath, as such, was not necessarily considered to be outside the natural order of things. A dead man within his barrow could defend his home or odal ground without causing much comment, right up until a passing hero became interested in the buried grave-goods. (Wood 2006, 22)

  In the sagas, particularly Grettis Saga and Eyrbyggfa Saga, stories of draugar abound. In general, they make trouble either because someone got greedy and broke open their mound or because they were nasty and difficult people while they were alive and in death see no reason to change their ways, driving animals mad, damaging property, and terrifying the neighborhood. Most of the stories about draugar take place after the conversion to Christianity, when the only recourse was to have the creature dismembered or burned by a hero. However, if Draugadrottinn is one of Odin's names, I suspect that in earlier times the god might have been invoked to defeat them.

  Ragnarök

  Odin is not only a god of death, he is also a god who is going to die.

  Alone among European Paganisms, Heathenry includes a myth about the end of the age. Some see in this description of the End-Times a reflection of the Christian eschatology to which Norsemen of the time were being exposed, and a textual comparison with the biblical material taught to newcomers to Christianity does show a number of parallels (McKinnell 2008). However, I find myself compelled to look at another interpretation.

  There will come a time, says the seeress in Völuspá, when the sky will darken during the summer, the weather grow “shifty.” Then the soot-red cock will crow in Hel, and in
Asgard, Golden-comb will take up the cry. The einherior will awaken and Heimdall will blow his horn. In Midgard, “Civilization as we know it” will come to an end.

  Brothers will battle and fight to the death,

  Sisters' sons their kin will ruin.

  Hard is the world with much whoredom,

  An axe age, a sword age, shields are split.

  A wind age, a warg age, before the world crumbles,

  No one will spare another.

  —Völuspá 45

  All Powers that were bound now run free. The giant Hrym brings frost, and the sons of Surt set everything from Hel to the Bifrost Bridge aflame. The Midgard serpent churns the waves, the earth quakes as Midgard is destroyed. And the 540 doors of Valhalla open, and from each one, eight hundred warriors stride as Odin and the Æsir march out to meet the foe.

  When I first read Völuspá, I interpreted these verses as a prediction of World War III and nuclear winter. But as I was flying back to California from the east coast during the drought, I saw a brown pall covering the land on the other side of the Sierras. The smoke from numerous forest fires had darkened the sky. These days, the end of Völuspá makes me think of global climate change. I see Ragnarök as what will happen when the balance of nature has been so badly upset that the destructive elemental forces are the only “giants” that remain.