The Norse Myths Page 6

  Hœnir (whose name, oddly, connects him with chickens) has, as we will see, limited further appearances in the extant mythology. Mímir’s head seems to be associated with the Well beneath Yggdrasill, where Óðinn’s eye is lodged, and the god consults the head from time to time. Other figures called Mímr or Hodd-mímir are named in the myths; whether they are versions of Mímir himself or are separate beings is unclear. Kvasir is also one of the Vanir and he too is involved in the hostage swap; his fate is described in the next chapter. The remaining Vanir seem to accommodate themselves to their new surroundings, acquiring palaces and occupying a distinctive fertility niche among the divine functions. Njörðr is patron of seafarers and fishermen; the evidence is in the little verses recorded by Snorri to account for his and Skaði’s marital breakdown:

  Njörðr said:

  I’m tired of the mountains

  I wasn’t there longer

  than nine nights;

  the howling of the wolf

  seemed to me horrible

  beside the song of the swan.

  Skaði said:

  I couldn’t sleep

  in the beds by the sea

  for the clamour of birds;

  that one woke me

  every morning

  coming from out at sea: the gull.

  THE TRICKING OF GYLFI, CH. 23

  Óðinn hurls his spear over the Æsir before the battle against the Vanir commences, in order to confer invulnerability upon the gods. Lorenz Frølich (1895).

  Seiðr: Secret Rites

  We know very little about seiðr as a set of magical practices. It may have been a form of spirit divination, associated with the Sámi (Lapps), the Scandinavians’ northern neighbours. Loki’s taunting of Óðinn that ‘you beat on a drum as seeresses do’ suggests Sámi-type ritual. Usually women perform seiðr; in Eiríks saga rauða (Erik the Red’s Saga) a seeress, wearing a glass-bead necklace and catskin gloves, after a meal consisting mostly of animal hearts, sits on a special platform; aided by ritual chanting, she prophesies when the famine in that part of Greenland will end. Cross-dressing seems to be involved for male seiðmenn; this is particularly disreputable. An early Norwegian king thought nothing of drowning eighty such wizards by marooning them on a skerry (a low-lying group of rocks in the sea) for plotting against his life.

  The seiðmenn drown on the skerry where King Haraldr Fairhair has sent them for execution. Halfdan Egedius (1899).

  Njörðr, crowned with seaweed, and Skaði, accompanied by her favourite wolf, discuss their differences. Friedrich Heine (1882).

  The Vanir seem to be subject to discrimination with regard to whom they may marry. Freyja marries up, it seems; her husband is a shadowy figure, one of the Æsir named Óðr, perhaps a double of Óðinn. He went away on a long journey, and she wept tears of gold for him (a popular kenning in skaldic verse for ‘gold’ is grátr Freyju, ‘Freyja’s tears’). Freyr lacks a wife until he falls in love with the giantess Gerðr (see Chapter 3), and Njörðr manages only this unsatisfactory match with Skaði; Snorri tells us that after their separation, Skaði and Óðinn had a large number of sons together. One of these, Sæmingr, was the ancestor of Jarl Hákon, an important Norwegian ruler.

  This chapter has established the world in which the gods live, the constraints under which they must function and the space through which they move. In the next chapter we’ll meet those other important inhabitants of the Norse cosmos: the giants.

  GIANTS AS OTHER

  Our image of the giant tends to be derived from European folklore: we picture them as extremely large, hulking and ugly, and none too bright. While some of the giants encountered in legend fit this folkloric model, the giants of myth are a complex and variable group. Ymir must have been very large indeed if he could furnish the material for manufacturing the universe, but other giants are closer to human (or divine) scale; some indeed can change their size depending on circumstances. Nor should their intelligence be underestimated. Giants take precedence in the mythic universe and have reservoirs of wisdom which the gods are eager to tap. Moreover, they have cunning and duplicity, which they harness to pursue their longer-term aims; and it’s not always the gods who come out on top in these tales.

  There is a range of different kinds of giant – and terms for giant – in Old Norse. It’s not clear, however, if the words systematically distinguish different types. Þurs, sometimes translated as ‘ogre’, is related to the Old English word þyrs, the type of fen-haunting, demonic, cannibal creature that we meet in the poem Beowulf in the form of Grendel; but these associations are not shared by Grendel’s northern cousins. The boundary between ‘troll’ and ‘giant’ is a distinctly fuzzy one; certain giants have three or more heads and are clearly envisaged as hideous and undesirable. Some giantesses can be ugly, sexually voracious and sinister; they harass heroes and gods alike and Þórr has no compunction in smiting them with his hammer. In a boasting match with his disguised father Óðinn, Þórr recounts one of his exploits:

  I was in the east and I fought against giants,

  malicious women who roamed in the mountains;

  great would be the giant race if they all survived;

  there’d be no humans within Miðgarðr.

  HÁRBARÐR’S SONG, V. 23

  Þórr’s population control, achieved by extermination whenever he can find giants, seems to be important; in myths his absence is often explained by his being away in the east battling against them.

  Giants are not always so ugly or threatening. Some giant women, such as Skaði, are fierce, but capable of a degree of assimilation into divine society; her association with hunting and skiing may suggest connections with the far north of Norway and the Sámi (Lapps) who lived by hunting, trapping and reindeer herding in the northernmost regions. Skaði’s giant Otherness may reflect the Otherness of the Sámi, whose culture was very different from the Norse and who traded with, and paid taxes to, their southern neighbours. Gerðr, the daughter of the giant Gymir, captures Freyr’s heart with her beauty and radiance; the young god sees her from afar and falls into despondency until his anxious parents (Njörðr and Skaði, in the role of stepmother) send one of his intimates, Skírnir, to winkle out of him why he is moping. Skírnir, an indeterminate being, whose name means ‘Shining one’ and who seems to represent some element of Freyr’s fertility function, is dispatched with Freyr’s magic sword to woo the young woman on his lord’s behalf. Gerðr offers the visitor a polite welcome, but is unimpressed by his suit. Offers of the magic ring Draupnir and of eleven apples (maybe identical with Iðunn’s apples of eternal youth) have no effect, nor Skírnir’s threat that he will do battle with Gerðr’s father. Only when the messenger threatens her with a long and complex curse, activated by carving runes on a stick cut from the green wood, a curse which would condemn her to sterility, nymphomania, misery and horror – and having only a three-headed giant for a husband – does Gerðr relent. She agrees to grant Freyr a rendezvous in nine nights’ time, and Skírnir rides home with the good news, only for the impatient Freyr to complain at having to wait so long.

  Þórr’s Battle at Geirrøðr’s House

  One such battle is recorded, unusually, in a skaldic poem. Loki has flown into the giant Geirrøðr’s territory, using the flying-cloak, and has been captured. In order to ransom himself, Loki promises to induce Þórr to come to Geirrøðr’s home, without his hammer Mjöllnir or his belt of divine power – it’s a trap. Fortunately Þórr and his servant Þjálfi stop off at the home of a giantess called Gríðr and the god borrows a spare magic belt, her staff and some iron gloves. The weather in the mountains is grim, the river rises and the travellers are nearly swept away. They realize that the rising river is caused by one of Geirrøðr’s daughters urinating; Þórr throws a stone up at her and ‘dams the river at its source’, or so he quips. At Geirrøðr’s, Þórr is accommodated in a guest-room, but when he makes himself comfortable on a chair, it rises towards the ceiling, threatening to crush him. Usi
ng Gríðr’s magic staff for support, Þórr bears down on the chair. Not only does he save himself, he breaks the backs of the two giant daughters hiding beneath it. When Þórr is summoned into Geirrøðr’s hall, the giant casts glowing red-hot molten metal at him, but with his handy iron gloves, Þórr catches the missile and throws it straight back, through a pillar behind which the giant is sheltering, and through the giant himself. Þórr triumphs once again.

  Þórr crushes the backs of Geirrøðr’s giant daughters, who were hiding beneath his chair. Ernst Hansen (1941).

  Freyr gazes out from the high seat Hliðskjálf, seeking his beloved Gerðr, while his anxious father and stepmother, Njörðr and Skaði, consult behind him. Illustration by W. G. Collingwood for a 1908 translation of the Poetic Edda.

  Snorri’s version of this story tailors it into a little romance; Freyr catches sight of Gerðr from Óðinn’s high seat Hliðskjálf, and there’s a distinct suggestion that his passion is a punishment for his trespass into the divine leader’s space. Gerðr is undeniably lovely: ‘her arms shine and from them / all the sea and the air catch light’. Skírnir is briskly dispatched and soon returns with the lady’s agreement; there is no mention of her resistance or of the curse. The story is recounted in The Tricking of Gylfi to explain why Freyr has no sword, with the implication that it was foolish to trade that symbol of warlike masculinity for a mere woman – a misjudgment which Loki echoes in his critique of all the gods in Loki’s Quarrel. How will Freyr fight at ragnarök, Loki taunts him, now he’s given away his sword for Gymir’s daughter?

  Whether Gerðr consented to marry Freyr and came, like Skaði, to live among the gods, or whether the precious sword was bartered simply for a night of sexual satisfaction, is not related here. Elsewhere, Gerðr is explicitly identified as Freyr’s wife and they have a son, Fjölnir, ancestor of the Swedish kings. That both Njörðr and Freyr end up with partners who are giantesses, not goddesses, may, as mentioned above, be an indicator of their lower status in comparison with the Æsir. The myth of Freyr and Gerðr has consistently been interpreted as a nature or fertility myth; the god of growth and fecundity must couple with the earth (Gerðr’s name means ‘enclosed place, field’ and is related to ‘garðr’ in Miðgarðr and Ásgarðr). If the land is to be productive, it must yield to the god’s embrace and open itself up to his fructifying touch. Yet it’s not clear why Gerðr as symbol for the earth should resist the god’s fertilizing ray (Skírnir), nor why she should have to be coerced into submission. The conflicted gender politics of the myth open it up to other readings. For although giants are strongly affiliated to nature, to chaos, the way in which they chiefly signify is as the Other, the oppositional, the different. In that role they are incorporated within the world of the gods, not situated completely outside it. There’s a lot of coming and going between the domains of the gods and the giants. The gods, like Norse kings or great land-holders, seek to impress their authority on those they see as subordinate: they command that the giants entertain their superiors at feasts and provide the gods with the various benefits that are sought from them.

  The myth of Freyr and Gerðr, in particular the relationship between the Vanir god and the giant woman’s kindred, has also been read as political; the superior social group seeks to forge an alliance with those lower in the hierarchy and the gift – importantly, not exchange – of a woman is meant to seal the relationship. But this interpretation does not really map onto the poem as we have it. Freyr has no interest in Gerðr’s family, no strategic reason to ally himself with Gymir by taking his daughter to wife. Rather he is driven by desire, and the tactics his envoy uses (bribery, with gifts that Skírnir may not have the authority to offer; threats; and finally curses) are disturbingly violent. To me the story has always seemed to reflect alarmingly the politics of the patriarchy. The powerful man sees a woman he desires and – by displacing the coercion onto his servant – succeeds in getting what he wants, despite the woman’s refusal and her depiction as having independence and agency (she has authority over her father’s gold and a mind of her own). It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that Snorri offers a more conventionally romantic version.

  Skírnir, bearing the magic sword, and Gerðr; Gerðr raises her hand defiantly, in apparent rejection of his overtures. Lorenz Frølich (1895).

  THE BATTLE FOR CULTURE

  During the Æsir–Vanir war, the walls of Ásgarðr suffered consid-erable damage. In the aftermath, a builder presents himself, offering to rebuild the stronghold walls and make them impregnable in three seasons (the typical Norse time-measurement is half a year). In exchange, he demands the sun, the moon and Freyja. The gods meet in conclave and successfully haggle him down to a period of a single winter, and he has to perform the work single-handed. The builder agrees, on the quite reasonable condition that he may have the help of his horse, and the bargain is concluded. Imagine the gods’ horror, then, as builder and horse labour day and night and the walls rise rapidly about their domain! It seems clear when only three days of winter are left that the heavenly bodies and Freyja will be lost, unless someone can come up with a plan – and Loki, blamed for persuading the gods to accept the original agreement, is threatened with death if he can’t find a way of disrupting the builder’s schedule. Loki turns himself into a mare, who entices the builder’s helpful stallion away with a whinny and a toss of her mane. Although the builder pursues his horse all night long through the forest, the construction timetable is fatally curtailed. At this the builder falls into ‘giant-rage’ and reveals his true identity. Despite the oaths of safety which had been sworn to the builder, Þórr is summoned, and (on the grounds that the builder is not who he purported to be) the god annihilates the giant with his hammer. Eight months later Loki gives birth to a foal: the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, who carries Óðinn through all the worlds.

  The Myth of the Master-Builder

  This tale of the master-builder, the supernatural figure whose skills are coveted, but whose cost is impossibly high and who ends up cheated of his reward, is an international folk-tale; Snorri’s version of it is an extremely early one. In folk tradition the story is usually a stand-alone; the audience is expected to sympathize with the clever contractor who ends up with something for nothing. Quite often the builder is the devil in disguise and his being cheated is not ethically problematic. Richard Wagner makes use of the tale in Das Rheingold (The Rhine-gold), the first part of his operatic cycle Der Ring des Niblungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). Wotan (the equivalent of Óðinn) has concluded a bargain with the giants Fafner and Fasolt to build Walhall, his new palace. He has agreed to give them Freia as a reward, but when the other gods protest he negotiates with the giants to give them the Rheingold instead and, finally, he has to part with the ring of the Nibelung, stolen from the dwarfish Alberich. Alberich has forsworn love in order to steal the gold that belongs to the Rhine-maidens, and Wotan’s confiscation of the treasure, and of the cursed ring, is partly responsible for the tragedies that follow in the cycle – including the downfall of the gods themselves.

  Fafner and Fasolt drag Freia away. Arthur Rackham (1910).

  The mysterious master-builder and his horse, constructing the walls of Ásgarðr. Robert Engels (1919).

  Óðinn rides his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir, towards a woman who offers him a drinking horn, on the Tjängvide picture stone, Gotland.

  Just as in Wagner’s retelling, the Norse gods are guilty, for they have sworn oaths to the builder, guaranteeing not only his reward but also his immunity while the work is under way. That these oaths are broken – on the grounds that the builder was a ‘mountain-giant’ in disguise – is troubling. Snorri foregrounds the ethical issue, citing a verse from The Seeress’s Prophecy:

  The oaths broke apart, words and promises,

  all the solemn pledges that had passed between them.

  Þórr alone struck a blow there, swollen with rage.

  He seldom sits still when he hears such a thing!

  THE
SEERESS’S PROPHECY, V. 26; THE TRICKING OF GYLFI, CH. 42

  The gods are shown to be oath-breakers, opening up questions of moral culpability which resound through divine history. Is it permissible to break solemn oaths to giants – even if this one had disguised his identity? This sundering of a sworn oath marks the beginning of the gods’ corruption and leads inexorably, it has been argued, to their downfall. This may be to assume too much coherence and continuity between different myths, recorded in very different contexts, but certainly in The Seeress’s Prophecy, as we’ll see in Chapter 6, the events leading up to ragnarök are carefully selected and arranged in a sequence which strongly suggests cause and effect.