by Neil Gaiman
One day they woke as usual, but they did not wake in their fortress.
They woke on the floor of their boat, and a giant whom they did not recognize was rowing it into the waves. The sky was dark with storm clouds and the sea was black. The waves were high and rough, and the salt water splashed over the side of the dwarfs’ boat, soaking them.
“Who are you?” asked the dwarfs.
“I am Suttung,” said the giant. “I heard you were bragging to the wind and the waves and the world about having killed my father and mother.”
“Ah,” said Galar. “Does that explain why you have tied us up?”
“It does,” said Suttung.
“Perhaps you are taking us to a glorious place,” said Fjalar hopefully, “where you will untie us, and there we will feast and drink and laugh and become the best of friends.”
“I do not believe so,” said Suttung.
It was low tide. There were rocks jutting out above the water. They were the same rocks upon which at high tide the dwarfs’ boat had overturned, on which Gilling had drowned. Suttung picked up each of the dwarfs, took him from the bottom of the boat, and placed him on the rocks.
“These rocks will be covered by the sea at high tide,” said Fjalar. “Our hands are tied behind our backs. We cannot swim. If you leave us here, we will undoubtedly drown.”
“That is certainly the intention,” said Suttung. He smiled then, for the first time. “And as you drown I shall sit in this, your boat, and I shall watch the sea take you both. Then I shall return home to Jotunheim, and I will tell my brother, Baugi, and my daughter, Gunnlod, how you died, and we will be satisfied that my mother and my father were appropriately avenged.”
The sea began to rise. It covered the dwarfs’ feet, and then it came up to their navels. Soon enough the dwarfs’ beards were floating in the foam and there was panic in their eyes.
“Mercy!” they called.
“Like the mercy you gave my mother and my father?”
“We will compensate you for their deaths! We will make it up to you! We will pay you.”
“I do not believe that you dwarfs possess anything that could compensate me for my parents’ deaths. I am a wealthy giant. I have many servants in my mountain fastness, and all the riches I could dream of. Gold I have, and precious stones, and iron enough to make a thousand swords. I am the master of mighty magics. What could you give me that I do not already have?” asked Suttung.
The dwarfs said nothing at all.
The waves continued to rise.
“We have mead, the mead of poetry,” sputtered Galar as the water brushed his lips.
“Made of Kvasir’s blood, wisest of all the gods!” shouted Fjalar. “Two vats and a kettle, all filled with it! No one has it but us, no one in the whole world!”
Suttung scratched his head. “I must think about this. I must ponder. I must reflect.”
“Do not stop and think! If you think, we will drown!” shouted Fjalar over the roar of the waves.
The tide rose. Waves were splashing over the dwarfs’ heads, and they were gulping air, and their eyes were round with fear when Suttung the giant reached out and plucked first Fjalar and then Galar from the waves.
“The mead of poetry will be adequate compensation. It is a fair price, if you throw in a few other things, and I am sure you dwarfs have a few other things. I shall spare your lives.”
He tossed them, still bound and soaking, into the bottom of the boat, where they wriggled uncomfortably, like a couple of bearded lobsters, and he rowed back to shore.
Suttung took the mead the dwarfs had made from Kvasir’s blood. He took other things from them as well, and he left that place and he left those dwarfs, who were, all things considered, happy enough to have gotten away with their lives.
Fjalar and Galar told people who passed their fortress the story of how ill-used they had been by Suttung. They told it in the market when next they went to trade. They told it when ravens were near.
In Asgard, at his high seat, Odin sat, and his ravens, Huginn and Muninn, whispered to him of the things they had seen and heard as they had wandered the world. Odin’s one eye flashed when he heard the tale of Suttung’s mead.
The people who heard the story called the mead of poetry “the ship of the dwarfs” since it had floated Fjalar and Galar off the rocks and taken them safely home; they called it Suttung’s mead; they called it the liquid of Odrerir or Bodn or Son.
Odin listened to his ravens’ words. He called for his cloak and his hat. He sent for the gods and told them to prepare three enormous wooden vats, the largest vats that they could build, and to have them waiting by the gates of Asgard. He told the gods he would be leaving them to walk the world, and might be some time.
“I will take two things with me,” said Odin. “I need a whetstone, to sharpen a blade with. The finest we have here. And I wish to have the auger, the drill, called Rati.” Rati means “drill,” and Rati was the finest drill the gods possessed. It could drill deeply, and drill through the hardest rock.
Odin tossed the whetstone into the air and caught it again and put it into his pouch beside the auger. Then he walked away.
“I wonder what he’s going to do,” said Thor.
“Kvasir would have known,” said Frigg. “He knew everything.”
“Kvasir is dead,” said Loki. “As for me, I do not care where the all-father is going, or why.”
“I am off to help build the wooden vats that the all-father requested,” said Thor.
Suttung had given the precious mead to his daughter, Gunnlod, to watch over inside the mountain called Hnitbjorg, in the heart of giant country. Odin did not go to the mountain. Instead he went directly to the farmland owned by Suttung’s brother, Baugi.
It was spring, and the fields were high with grasses to be cut for hay. Baugi had nine slaves, giants like himself, and they were cutting the grass for hay with huge scythes, each scythe the size of a small tree.
Odin watched them. When they stopped work, when the sun was at its highest, to eat their provisions, Odin sauntered over to them and said, “I have been watching you all work. Tell me, why does your master let you cut grass with such blunt scythes?”
“Our blades are not blunt,” said one of the workers.
“Why would you say that?” asked another. “Our blades are the sharpest.”
“Let me show you what a well-sharpened blade can do,” said Odin. He took the whetstone from his pouch and drew it along first one scythe blade, then another, until each blade glimmered in the sun. The giants stood around him awkwardly, watching him as he worked. “Now,” said Odin, “try them out.”
The giant slaves swept their scythes through the meadow grass and gasped and exclaimed with pleasure. The blades were so sharp they made cutting the grass effortless. The blades swept through the thickest stalks and met with no resistance.
“This is wonderful!” they told Odin. “Can we buy your whetstone?”
“Buy it?” said the all-father. “Absolutely not. Let us do something more fair and more fun. All of you, come here. Stand in a group, each man holding his scythe tightly. Stand closer.”
“We can stand no closer,” said one of the giant slaves. “For the scythes are very sharp.”
“You are wise,” said Odin. He held up the whetstone. “I tell you this. The one of you who catches it, he alone shall have it!” and so saying, he tossed the whetstone into the air.
Nine giants jumped at the whetstone as it descended, each reaching with his free hand, paying no attention to the scythe he held (each scythe with a blade sharpened by the all-father at his whetstone, whetted to a perfect sharpness).
They jumped and they reached and the blades glinted in the sun.
There was a spray and a spurt of crimson in the sunlight, and the bodies of the slaves crumpled and twitched and one by one f
ell to the freshly cut grass. Odin stepped over the bodies of the giants, retrieved the whetstone of the gods, and placed it back in his pouch.
Each of the nine slaves had died with his throat cut by his fellow’s blade.
Odin walked to the hall of Baugi, Suttung’s brother, and asked for lodging for the night. “I am called Bolverkr,” said Odin.
“Bolverkr,” said Baugi. “A dismal name. It means ‘worker of terrible things.’”
“Only to my enemies,” said the person who called himself Bolverkr. “My friends appreciate the things I do. I can do the work of nine men, and I will work tirelessly and without complaint.”
“Lodging for the night is yours,” said Baugi, sighing. “But you have come to me on a dark day. Yesterday I was a rich man, with many fields and with nine slaves to plant and to harvest, to labor and to build. Tonight I still own my fields and my animals, but all my servants are dead. They slew each other. I do not know why.”
“A dark day indeed,” said Bolverkr, who was Odin. “Can you not get other workmen?”
“Not this year,” sighed Baugi. “It is already spring. The good workers are already working for my brother Suttung, and few enough people come here in the way of things. You are the first traveler who has asked me for lodging and hospitality in many a year.”
“And lucky you are that I did. For I can do the work of nine men.”
“You are not a giant,” said Baugi. “You are a little shrimp of a thing. How could you do the work of one of my servants, let alone nine of them?”
“If I cannot do the work of your nine men,” said Bolverkr, “then you need not pay me. But if I do . . .”
“Yes?”
“Even in distant parts we have heard tales about your brother Suttung’s extraordinary mead. They say it bestows the gift of poetry on anyone who drinks it.”
“This is true. Suttung was never a poet when we were young. I was the poet in the family. But since he has returned with the dwarfs’ mead, he has become a poet and a dreamer.”
“If I work for you, and plant and build and harvest for you, and do the work of your dead servants, I would like to taste your brother Suttung’s mead.”
“But . . .” Baugi’s forehead creased. “But that is not mine to give. It is Suttung’s.”
“A pity,” said Bolverkr. “Then I wish you luck in getting the harvest in this year.”
“Wait! It is not mine, true. But if you can do what you say, I will go with you to see my brother Suttung. And I will do all I can to help you taste his mead.”
“Then,” said Bolverkr, “we have a deal.”
Never was there a harder worker than Bolverkr. He worked the land harder than twenty men, let alone nine. Single-handed he looked after the animals. Single-handed he harvested the crops. He worked the land, and the land repaid him a thousandfold.
“Bolverkr,” said Baugi as the first mists of winter rolled down the mountain, “you are misnamed. For you have worked nothing but good.”
“Have I done the work of nine men?”
“You have, and nine again.”
“Then will you help me to get a taste of Suttung’s mead?”
“I shall!”
The next morning they rose early and walked and walked and walked, and by evening they had left Baugi’s land and reached Suttung’s, on the edge of the mountains. By nightfall they reached Suttung’s huge hall.
“Greetings, brother Suttung,” said Baugi. “This is Bolverkr, my servant for the summer and my friend.” And he told Suttung of his agreement with Bolverkr. “So you see,” he concluded, “I must ask you to give him a taste of the mead of poetry.”
Suttung’s eyes were like chips of ice. “No,” he said flatly.
“No?” said Baugi.
“No, I will not give away a single drop of that mead. Not one drop. I have it safe in its vats, in Bodn and Son and the kettle Odrerir. Those vats are deep inside the mountain of Hnitbjorg, which opens only to my command. My daughter, Gunnlod, guards it. This servant of yours cannot taste it. You cannot taste it.”
“But,” said Baugi, “it was blood compensation for our parents’ deaths. Don’t I deserve the smallest measure of it, to show Bolverkr here that I am an honorable giant?”
“No,” said Suttung. “You don’t.”
They left his hall.
Baugi was disconsolate. He walked with his shoulders hunched high and his mouth drooping down. Every few paces, Baugi would apologize to Bolverkr. “I did not think my brother would be so unreasonable,” he would say.
“He is indeed unreasonable,” said Bolverkr, who was Odin in disguise. “But you and I could play a little trick or two on him, so that he would not be so high and mighty in future. So that next time he will listen to his brother.”
“We could do that,” said the giant Baugi, and he stood straighter, and the corners of his mouth tightened into something that almost resembled a smile. “What are we going to do?”
“First,” said Bolverkr, “we will climb Hnitbjorg, the beating mountain.”
They climbed Hnitbjorg together, the giant going first, and Bolverkr, doll-sized in comparison, never falling behind. They clambered up the paths that the mountain sheep and goats made, and then they scrambled up rocks until they were high in the mountain. The first snows of winter had fallen on the ice that had not melted from the winter before. They heard the wind as it whistled about the mountain. They heard the cries of birds far below them. And there was something else they could hear.
It was a noise like a human voice. It seemed to be coming from the rocks of the mountain, but it was always distant, as if it were coming from inside the mountain itself.
“What noise is that?” asked Bolverkr.
Baugi frowned. “It sounds like my niece Gunnlod, singing.”
“Then we will stop here.”
From his leather pouch Bolverkr produced the auger called Rati. “Here,” he said. “You are a giant, and big and strong. Why don’t you use this auger to drill into the side of the mountain?”
Baugi took the auger. He pushed it against the mountainside and began to twist. The tip of the auger drilled into the mountainside like a screw into soft cork. Baugi turned it and turned it, again and again.
“Done it,” said Baugi. He pulled out the auger.
Bolverkr leaned over the hole made by the drill and blew into it. Chips and the dust of rocks blew back at him. “I have just learned two things,” said Bolverkr.
“What two things are these?” asked Baugi.
“That we are not yet through the mountain,” said Bolverkr. “You must keep drilling.”
“That is only one thing,” said Baugi. But Bolverkr said nothing more on that high mountainside, where the icy winds clawed and clutched at them. Baugi pushed the drill Rati back into its hole and began to turn it once more.
It was getting dark when Baugi pulled the auger from the hole again. “It broke through into the inside of the mountain,” he said.
Bolverkr said nothing, but he blew gently into the hole, and this time he saw the chips of rock blow inward.
As he blew, he was aware that something was coming toward him from behind. Bolverkr transformed himself then: he turned himself into a snake, and the sharp auger plunged into the place where his head had been.
“The second thing I learned when you lied to me,” hissed the snake to Baugi, who stood, astonished, holding the auger like a weapon, “was that you would betray me.” And with a flick of its tail, the snake vanished into the hole in the mountainside.
Baugi struck again with the auger, but the snake was gone, and he flung the drill from him angrily and heard it clatter on the rocks below. He thought about going back to Suttung’s hall and once he was there telling his brother that he had helped bring a powerful magician up Hnitbjorg, had even helped him to get inside the mountain. He imagine
d Suttung’s reaction to this news.
And then, his shoulders slumping and his mouth drooping, Baugi climbed down the mountain and trudged off home, to his own hearth and his own hall. Whatever happened in the future to his brother or to his brother’s precious mead, why, it was nothing to do with him.
Bolverkr slid in snake shape through the hole in the mountain until the hole ended and he found himself in a huge cavern.
The cavern was lit by crystals, with a cold light. Odin transformed himself from snake shape into man shape once more, and not just a man but a huge man, giant-sized, and well formed. Then he walked forward, following the sound of song.
Gunnlod, the daughter of Suttung, stood in the cavern in front of a locked door, behind which were the vats called Son and Bodn and the kettle Odrerir. She held a sharp sword in her hands, and she sang to herself as she stood.
“Well met, brave maiden!” said Odin.
Gunnlod stared at him. “I do not know who you are,” she said. “Name yourself, stranger, and tell me why I should let you live. I am Gunnlod, guardian of this place.”
“I am Bolverkr,” said Odin, “and I deserve death, I know, for daring to come to this place. But stay your hand, and let me look upon you.”
Gunnlod said, “My father, Suttung, set me on guard here, to protect the mead of poetry.”
Bolverkr shrugged. “Why would I care for the mead of poetry? I came here only because I had heard of the beauty and the courage and the virtue of Gunnlod, Suttung’s daughter. I told myself, ‘If she just lets you look at her, it will be worth it. If, of course, she is as beautiful as they say in the tales.’ That was what I thought.”
Gunnlod stared at the handsome giant in front of her. “And was it worth it, Bolverkr-who-is-about-to-die?”
“More than worth it,” he told her. “For you are more beautiful than any tale I have ever heard or any song that any bard could compose. More beautiful than a mountain peak, more beautiful than a glacier, more beautiful than a field of fresh-fallen snow at dawn.”