The Prose Edda (3 page)
Authors: Snorri Sturluson
Norse mythology hints at Odinic cults, with Odin being worshipped through a combination of ecstatic and seemingly shamanistic rituals. From the eddic poem
The Sayings of the High One
(
Hávamál
), he is said to have hanged himself in a sacrificial ritual on a tree. Barely surviving this ordeal, Odin gains arcane knowledge, including the use of runes, the ancient Scandinavian alphabet sometimes used for magical purposes. In the poem, Odin chants:
I know that I hung
on the wind-swept tree
all nine nights
with spear was I wounded
and given to Odin,
myself to me,
on that tree which no one knows
from which roots it grows.
Bread I was not given,
no drink from the horn,
downwards I glared;
up I pulled the runes,
screaming I took them,
from there I fell back again.
The second major god is Thor, Odin's eldest son by Earth, whom the
Edda
says is Odin's daughter and wife. Thor is a god of the sky, and in the Germanic regions south of Scandinavia he was called Donar, meaning âThunder'. From the sky, this good-natured god controls the storms and brings life-giving rain, the source of the earth's abundance. Thor was widely worshipped by farmers and seamen, and his name was a prominent element in names for men, women and places, such as Thorsteinn, Thorgerd and Thorsness, names that continued to be popular even after the introduction of Christianity.
Thor is especially known for killing giants and driving a chariot pulled by two goats across the heavens. A great fighter, he undertakes most of the actual combat against the gods' enemies, and his children are also powerful warriors. Thor's most cherished possessions are his hammer, iron gloves and belt or girdle of power. The contrast between him and his father is great. Whereas Odin is cunning and thoughtful, Thor is generally forthright and quick to act, relying on brute strength, but at times he is depicted as foolish and gullible. In one story, a giant tricks Thor into thinking that he is in a house, when he is actually in the thumb of the giant's glove. Even though Thor is sometimes naive, he is a shrewd fighter, and his enemies, such
as the Midgard Serpent and the giant Utgarda-Loki, fear him when he raises his hammer.
Optical illusions, such as the one that fooled Thor when he thought he was in a house, occur frequently in the
Edda
, and are called
sjónhverfing
(sight altering), a visual deception that usually is the result of spells or chants. The
Edda
uses different terminology when describing incidents in which the actual physical appearance of things or people changes. In such instances the text often employs the word
hamr
, meaning âshape' in the supernatural sense, and variants of the phrase
at skipta hömum
, âto shift in shape' (
hömum
from
hamr
). The concepts involved reveal the belief that certain people and objects have special powers to bring about a metamorphosis. Loki, the third major figure in the
Edda
, is one of these shape-changers, as when he puts on Freyja's falcon shape (
valshamr
). Loki's ability to don a
hamr
and change his appearance fits well with his other trickster-like characteristics. Tricksters, found in stories from cultures as disparate as ancient Mesopotamia and the Americas, are at times cultural heroes while at other times they are antisocial individuals. Often tricksters live at the margins of society and are neither completely good nor thoroughly bad. Always on the move, they delight audiences with their adventures, mishaps and humour. As shape-changers, tricksters sometimes switch genders according to the needs of the moment.
Loki acts as an inexhaustible mischief-maker, and he often provides both the cause of the gods' dilemmas as well as the solutions. The
Edda
's description of him reveals his many sides.
Loki is pleasing, even beautiful to look at, but his nature is evil and he is undependable. More than others, he has the kind of wisdom known as cunning, and is treacherous in all matters. He constantly places the gods in difficulties and often solves their problems with guile.
(p. 39)
The stories about Loki and his offspring are often conflicting. When first mentioned in the
Edda
, Loki is referred to as one of the Ãsir, but other stories in the
Edda
make it clear that he
is not a god. Rather, he is the son of the giant Farbauti and a woman named Laufey, characters about whom we know almost nothing. Also there is no convincing evidence of a Loki cult, and few if any place names can be connected with him, suggesting that if he was a god he was not publicly worshipped.
Loki's position is ambiguous. He is frequently an antagonist of the gods, but he is also one of the gods' main helpers and strangely connected to Odin. The eddic poem
Loki's Flyting
(
Lokasenna
) says that Loki is Odin's blood brother. At times Loki appears almost as the All-Father's darker side, and both Odin and Loki are complex and dangerous characters. Both engage in trickery, womanizing, shape-changing and betrayal, but Loki also changes his sex, as when he becomes a mare, giving birth to Odin's horse Sleipnir. Repeatedly, Loki wins wagers by deceiving creatures such as the dark elves, who wield creative forces and forge treasures. In this way he obtains for the gods their greatest prizes, including the ship Skidbladnir, Thor's hammer Mjollnir, Odin's spear Gungnir and the All-Father's magical ring Draupnir. This last treasure drips eight gold rings of equal weight every ninth night. Loki also changes his shape to evade the gods' anger, as when he changes into a salmon.
Like many tricksters, Loki's appetites are prodigious. On one journey, he consumes vast quantities of food in an eating contest. In
Loki's Flyting,
he boasts about bedding many of the goddesses, and his unions are especially varied, indicating the multifaceted aspects of his character. His wife Sigyn is counted among the Ãsir, and he has two sons with her, but he also sires three monstrous children with the ogress Angrboda: Hel, the Midgard Serpent and the wolf Fenrir.
Loki is also creative, and in some ways he fulfils the role of a cultural hero, bringing useful tools to the world. Along with acquiring the special weapons that the gods use to defend the world, Loki is responsible for the creation of the fishing net. Humour is central to his character. At times his actions are plainly funny, and he frequently displays a wit marked by a legalistic mastery of language. In one instance, after losing a life-and-death wager with a dwarf, Loki saves himself by
arguing that his opponent has a right to his head but not to his neck.
The three gods of the Vanir family, Njord, Frey and Frey's twin sister Freyja, also figure prominently in the
Edda
as fertility gods. Njord is an ancient god of abundance and well being. He appears to be related to an older deity named Nerthus, a fertility or earth goddess, who, according to the first-century Roman historian Tacitus, was worshipped on an island in the Baltic. By the Viking Age, Njord is a male god whose realm is the sea. In the
Edda
, Njord marries Skadi, the daughter of a giant. Rather than live with her husband, Skadi chooses to return to her father's home in the mountains, and this story of marital incompatibility has overtones of an ancient tale illuminating the difference between life on land and in the sea.
Njord's son Frey is said to control the bounty of the earth and is devoted to pleasure. It is instructive that this god of fertility at times cannot control his desires. In one central story, he endangers the gods by trading his sword for the hand in marriage of the lovely giantess Gerd, and at Ragnarok the gods will greatly miss this weapon. From many sources we know Frey was worshipped throughout much of the northern world. In the Baltic region, he was called Yngvi Frey. Although we have no sure explanation for the meaning of Yngvi, it was a name that was widely known, and Yngvi Frey appears to be the mythical ancestor of the tribe of Ingvaeones mentioned by Tacitus in his
Germania
, while in Old English writings Frey is called Ing (Yngvi). Yngvi Frey was especially important in Sweden at Old Uppsala, where he was revered as the divine ancestor of the royal dynasty called the Ynglings, after him. A branch of this Swedish royal family moved to Norway and was also called the Ynglings. In Norway, they founded a Viking Age dynasty in the Vik region near modern-day Oslo. Through the conquests of the long-lived King Harald Fairhair (
c
. 860 â930), the Ynglings became Norway's medieval royal house, with Ynglings remaining on the throne until the fourteenth century.
The
Edda
tells us that, compared to the gods, âThe goddesses are no less sacred, nor are they less powerful'
(p. 30)
. They are called
gydjur
, a general term meaning female gods, and
asynjur
,
meaning, more specifically, female Ãsir. In Asgard, the goddesses own a beautiful sanctuary named Vingolf, and the most prominent among them have their own halls. Frigg, Odin's wife and the chief goddess, owns the magnificent dwelling Fensalir. Little is known about Frigg's parentage, but she is more clearly defined as the mother of Baldr, the most beautiful of the gods, whose tragic death she tries to prevent. Like her husband Odin, Frigg has considerable powers and can see into the future, but, unlike Odin, she rarely uses her talents.
Although Frigg holds the highest rank, it is Freyja who plays a larger role in the
Edda
. Freyja has her own hall, named Folkvangar, where she alone decides the seating. Throughout Scandinavia, women worshipped Freyja as the female deity of love and fertility and as the goddess of pleasure and household prosperity. The
Edda
tells that Frejya delights in love and songs and that her great sorrow is the disappearance of her husband Od. Like many gods of fertility, Freyja and her Vanir family show a tendency towards incest, and the eddic poem
Loki's Flyting
hints that Freyja and Frey were the children of Njord and his sister. In the same poem Loki accuses Freyja of having incestuous relations with her brother. Contention swirls around Freyja: giants lust after her, and at times the gods and Loki covet her possessions. One of her treasures is the famous Brisingamen, the âNecklace of the Brisings', made by four dwarves, and, according to the Icelandic
Short Saga of Sorli
, Odin has Loki steal it. The Old English poem
Beowulf
speaks of a similar mysterious piece of jewellery called the
Brosinga mene
(the necklace of the Brosings).
The
Edda
also mentions many lesser goddesses and other types of supernatural women. These include Idunn, who guards the apples of immortality, and Eir, who brings healing. Gefjun, whose name means âShe Who Gives', appears in one story as the founding mother of the main Danish island of Sjaelland. The virgin Fulla is a mysterious goddess. She serves as Frigg's attendant and carries a box made of ash wood, but we know nothing about its contents. Supernatural women include Norns, who shape men's lives at birth, and Valkyries, whom Odin sends into battle. On the battlefield, Valkyries choose warriors
to be slain and taken to Odin's Valhalla, where his swelling army of warriors enjoys a vibrant afterlife, feasting and fighting daily in preparation for Ragnarok. Another female figure wielding supernatural power is Hel. Gloomy and cruel, she does not appear to be a goddess but presides in the underworld over those who die of disease and old age. A fearsome creature, Hel is described as half black and half white, and even some gods, such as Baldr, the son of Odin and Frigg, cannot escape her grasp. At Ragnarok, Loki leads into battle all of the dead from the realm of his daughter Hel.
The gods are integrally connected to other supernatural creatures, some of whom are specifically linked to the earth, and others of whom are threatening monsters. Modern mythographers use the Greek term âchthonic' to describe creatures who are connected to the earth, and in the
Edda
, such beings fall into several categories. One type is the
jötnar
or
thursar
, Old Norse terms which roughly translate to the English word âgiants'. Their home is in Jotunheim (Giant Land) or Utgard (Outer Enclosure), from where they threaten gods and men. The killing of the primal giant Ymir at the beginning of time is an essential feature of the Norse creation story. As part of this creation the giants face a survival test. When Ymir falls, so much blood gushes from his wounds that all the original giants except Bergelmir and his wife are killed in the resulting flood. The frost giants, the perpetual antagonists of the gods, are descended from this lone couple.
Although the
jötnar
and
thursar
often resemble our notion of giants, the equivalence is not exact. In the
Edda
, for example, Norse giants are not always exceptionally large, and we learn from descriptions of giantesses that some were of similar size to the gods with whom they intermarry. Giants are portrayed in the
Edda
as complex social beings with characteristics similar to those of the gods. Giantesses and ogresses are also memorable characters in the
Edda
, and their range of types is so broad that it is scarcely possible to classify such women as belonging
to a single group. Sometimes they are oafish, troll-like beings, but at other times giant women are of such beauty in the eyes of the gods that they wish to marry them. Odin's connection with the giants, male and female, is especially close. His mother, Bestla, is the daughter of a giant, and Odin frequently seeks knowledge from these creatures.
Dwarves (
dvergar
) appear many times in the
Edda
and are rarely described in a sympathetic light. The
Edda
recounts that the dwarves emerge first of all the creatures who live in the flesh of the primordial giant Ymir. âThey were maggots at that time, but by a decision of the gods they acquired human understanding and assumed the likeness of men, living in the earth and the rocks'
(p. 22)
. We can only guess why the gods changed the nature of the dwarves, but the answer may be connected to the history of forging or smithying. The Old Icelandic sources tell us that, in the earliest times, the Ãsir were master smiths who worked metal, wood, stone and especially gold. The eddic poem
The Sibyl's Prophecy
(
Völuspá
) tells us that the period following the creation of the universe was a special age, before the era was spoiled by the arrival of mysterious women from Giant Land. For reasons that are unclear to us, the gods thereafter abandoned forging, leaving this essential art to the dwarves. Sometimes willingly but often under duress, the dwarves become the major smiths or artisans of the gods. From their underground world, these craftsmen produce precious objects and forge the implements used by the gods to prevail over the natural and social worlds. The
Edda
lists the names of many dwarves, including Durin, Dvalin, Dain, Gandalf, Thorin, Bifur, Bafur, Bombur, Nori, Oin, Fili, Kili, Throin, Gloin, Dori, Ori and Oakenshield, who are familiar to modern readers through J. R. R. Tolkien's writings.
The
Edda
frequently mentions elves, but mostly in passing. A line in
The Sibyl's Prophecy
, âWhat of the Ãsir? What of the elves?', implies that elves (
alfar
) were also important in Old Scandinavian mythology. The elves, it seems, lived apart from other beings and at different places, such as Alfheim and Vidblain. There were various types of elves, including light and dark ones, and the latter, who lived at Svartalfaheim, seem to