Norse Mythology

Loki married Sigyn, and the two have two sons, Narfi and Vali. Loki is frequently away. Odin tells Loki that he dreamed Loki has three other children, born to Angrboda, the frost giantess. These children will be the greatest foes to the gods. The gods recover Loki’s children from Angrboda’s keep.

The giants let the gods take the children. The first child is a serpent, Jormungundr; it can spit burning venom. The gods tie it to a pine tree, before releasing it into the sea. Odin does not know if he has done the right thing. Jormungundr grows until it encircles the earth; it will be known as the Midgard serpent.

Loki’s daughter, Hel, is beautiful on one side of her body, but looks like a rotten corpse on the other. She tells Odin that she likes the dead more than the living. Odin decides to make her the ruler of the dead who do not fall in battle. This pleases Hel.

Loki’s third child, Fenrir, is a wolf that grows to an immense size. Odin is wary of Fenrir; in his dreams, the wolf “had been there at the end of everything” (98) and its eyes and fangs were the last thing he had seen. The gods chain up Fenrir, under the pretense of a game, testing his strength. No bonds can hold him.

Odin commissions the dwarves to make unbreakable chains. They create Glepnir, a light, silk-like band. Fenrir proudly declares that he can break through Glepnir. However, he becomes reluctant, sensing trickery. Fenrir consents to being bound, but only if a god will place their arm in his mouth. Reluctantly, Tyr, who played with Fenrir as a puppy, volunteers. Fenrir will release him if there is no trickery.

Fenrir is unable to escape. The gods laugh, but do not release him. Fenrir bites off Tyr’s hand. The gods tie Fenrir to a rock. Fenrir curses them; if they had not betrayed him, he would have been a friend. Now, he swears vengeance. One god jams Fenrir’s mouth open with a sword.

When Thor’s hammer goes missing, Thor turns to Loki for advice. Loki goes to Freya to borrow her cloak of flight. He visits the world of the giants, where he runs into the ogre king, Thrym. Thrym stole the hammer but agrees to give it back if he can have Freya’s hand in marriage.

Freya is furious when Thor and Loki break the news. The walls of her court tremble as she berates the two gods for thinking she can simply be exchanged in this way. Thor and Loki retreat. They call a meeting of the gods, except Freya, who will not leave her house.

The gods debate. It is imperative that they reclaim Mjolnir, the hammer of the gods. Heimdall, “the far-seeing, who watches over the world” (115) is the last to speak. He suggests Thor dress as a woman with a wedding veil, impersonating Freya. All except Thor agree that this will work; Thor is indignant.

The goddesses dress Thor in their finest clothing and jewelry. Loki shapeshifts into a woman to act as Thor’s maidservant. On the way to the land of the giants, Loki instructs Thor to remain silent and let him do the talking.

Thrym’s sister is skeptical of the new bride. Thor is worried that Thrym might touch his leg, so Loki sits between them. Thor feasts in an unladylike way, consuming an ox, several salmon, and casks of mead. Loki watches “Thor inhale another whole salmon and pull a salmon skeleton from under his veil” (120). Despite Loki’s reassurances, Thrym becomes more and more suspicious.

When it is time for the wedding, Thrym has Mjolnir taken out; it takes four giants to carry it. The moment it is in his grasp, Thor kills all of the ogres and giants in the room. He is cheerful; he got Mjolnir back, and had a good meal.

The origin of poetry lies in the war between the Aesir and the Vanir, “softer, brother and sister gods and goddesses who made the soils fertile and the plants grow, but non the less powerful for that” (127). Realizing that the conquering Aesir and the sustaining Vanir needed each other, they reach a truce; they mark a truce by having all gods and goddesses spit in a vat. Frey and Freya, brother and sister Vanir, make a man, Kvasir, from the spit. Because he “contained head and heart,” Kvasir is “the wisest of the gods” (129). Kvasir travels through the nine worlds answering questions and improving the world through his presence.

Two dark elf (a type of dwarf) brothers named Fjalar and Galar, who are obsessed with creating things they have not yet made, visit Kvasir. They lure Kvasir back to their workshop, where he asks about their equipment, vats, and jars of honey. Kvasir suspects that if they were evil, they would cut his throat, collect his blood, and let it ferment with honey into mead. They do just that. Drinking the mead, “each of the brothers found the verse and the poetry inside himself that he had never let out” (131).

Fjalar and Galar hoard the mead of wisdom and poetry for themselves. However, they have obligations to the giant, Gilling, and his wife. They take Gilling out on a boat and wreck it on purpose; Gilling drowns and his wife is distraught. Galar crushes her skull with a large stone. They get drunk on the mead of poetry and pass out night after night.

One day, Fjalar and Galar wake up on the deck of their boat being rowed by the giant Suttung. He heard the two dwarves singing about their killing of his father and mother. He leaves them stranded, hands tied, on some rocks that in the sea that will be swallowed by the rising tide. The dwarves beg for their lives, offering the mead of poetry as compensation. Suttung considers this offer; he accepts and plucks them from the water before the waves cover their heads. Suttung takes the mead and other things from the dwarves’ lab.

Odin's ravens deliver to him word of Suttung’s mead. Odin takes a whetstone and a strong auger and drill and sets off, asking the other gods to prepare wooden vats. The gods wonder what he plans.

Odin visits the wheat fields of Suttung’s brother, Baugi. He sharpens Baugi’s giant servants’ scythes and lets them fight to death over the whetstone. Odin goes in disguise under the name Bolverkr, to Baugi’s house, asking to lodge there for the night. Baugi is in low spirits over the loss of his slaves. Odin offers to do their work, in exchange for Suttung’s mead. Suttung agrees to do all he can to allow Odin to sample the mead.

Odin fulfils his promise, and Baugi is impressed. They set out for Suttung’s house. Suttung refuses their request. Odin tells Baugi that they will play a trick on Suttung to get him to treat his brother better. They climb a mountain and pause when they hear Suttung’s daughter singing. Odin gives Baugi the auger and drill and asks him to dig into the mountain.

Baugi attempts to stab Odin, but the god avoids the attack by turning into a snake. Baugi considers telling Suttung that he accidentally helped a magical being break into his mountain, but leaves instead. Odin slithers into the hole and finds himself in a crystal cavern. He transforms into a giant man. He finds Suttung’s daughter, Gunnlod, guarding the mead of poetry.

Odin flatters Gunnlod and eventually seduces her. He asks her for a sip from the mead of poetry, wishing to have the poetic skill to sing of her beauty. Finally, she allows him to have a tiny sip from one of the vats. Instead, Odin drains all three, and flees before she can attack him.

Odin turns into an eagle and Suttung tries to pursue. Back in Asgard, Odin spits the mead into the vats Thor prepared. To escape Suttung, he “blew some of the mead out of his behind, a splattery wet fart of foul-smelling mead right into Suttung’s face” (151). The mead Odin defecated is the origin of bad poetry.