cross world thread
The God in Disguise
First, who he is: the god who stakes his own head in a riddle-duel, who has given an eye for wisdom — the restless seeker behind every disguise. Hold this Odin in mind for what follows.
The god who staked his head
If Hávamál showed Odin's wisdom and Völuspá his vision of doom, these poems show him seeking — restlessly, at any cost. In Vafþrúðnismál, the Allfather, against Frigg's worried counsel, travels to the hall of the wisest of giants, Vafthruthnir, to test his lore in a riddle-contest, each staking his own head on the outcome.[1] They trade questions about the make and history and end of the world — a whole cosmology delivered as a deadly quiz.
Odin wins, of course, but the way he wins is the point: at the last he asks the one question no one can answer — what he himself whispered in the ear of his dead son Baldr on the funeral pyre.[2] The giant, realizing he has been contending with Odin himself, knows he is doomed. This is the essence of Odin in the myths: a god so hungry for knowledge that he will gamble his head to gain it, who has given an eye and hanged himself for wisdom, and who carries always the one secret grief — Baldr — that even his vast knowing cannot heal. The chief of the gods is, before all else, a seeker.
The source text · 2
Othin spake: / "Counsel me, Frigg, / for I long to fare, / And Vafthruthnir fain would find; / In wisdom old / with the giant wise / Myself would I seek to match."— eddic myth poems
Odin resolves to test his wisdom against the giant Vafthruthnir, head against head (Bellows 1923).
Vafthruthnir spake: / "No man can tell / what in olden time / Thou spak'st in the ears of thy son; / With fated mouth / the fall of the gods / And mine olden tales have I told; / With Othin in knowledge / now have I striven, / And ever the wiser thou art."— eddic myth poems
the unanswerable question — what Odin whispered to the dead Baldr (Bellows 1923).
Now watch him act: a one-eyed stranger strides into the Völsungs' hall and thrusts a sword into the Branstock, a gift only the greatest will draw. Odin, unnamed, founding a hero-line and its doom.
The sword in the tree
The Völsung line is marked from the start as half-divine and wholly doomed. At a great feast in King Völsung's hall, built around a living tree called the Branstock, a one-eyed stranger in a grey cloak strode in, drove a sword to the hilt into the trunk, and declared it the prize of whoever could pull it free. The stranger was Óðinn, and the sword was his gift and his test.[1]
One man after another tried and failed. Only Sigmundr, Völsung's son, drew it out — clean, as though it had waited for his hand alone. It is the deep root of a story the whole world half-knows: the god-given blade, the chosen man, the weapon that will pass down a bloodline of heroes. But a Völsung gift is never free. The same Óðinn who gave the sword would one day, in another battle, shatter it against his own spear — and Sigmundr would fall.
The source text · 1
The tale tells that great fires were made endlong the hall, and the great tree aforesaid stood midmost thereof; withal folk say that, whenas men sat by the fires in the evening, a certain man came into the hall unknown of aspect to all men; and suchlike array he had, that over him was a spotted cloak, and he was bare-foot, and had linen-breeches knit tight even unto the bone, and he had a sword in his hand as he went up to the Branstock, and a slouched hat upon his head: huge he was, and seeming-ancient, and one-eyed. (2) So he drew his sword and smote it into the tree-trunk so that it sank in up to the hilts; and all held back from greeting the man. Then he took up the word, and said—— volsunga saga
Óðinn drives the sword into the Branstock; only Sigmundr draws it (Morris & Magnússon 1870).
In Saxo's Latin history, the same figure: an aged man on a great horse snatches the imperilled Hadding to safety and prophesies his future. The Norse Odin, walking through a Danish chronicle, still himself.
The old man on the horse
The defining moment of Hadding's tale — and one of the most vivid Odin-appearances in any source — comes when the young hero is in deadly peril. A mysterious aged man appears, takes the imperilled Hadding up onto his horse, and bears him away to safety; and as they ride, the old man prophesies, telling Hadding what dangers await and how he will escape them.[1] Wrapped under the rider's mantle, Hadding peers out and glimpses the world rushing by far below — for the horse is no earthly steed.
Every detail marks the rider as Odin: the aged appearance, the great horse (the god's eight-legged Sleipnir), the gift of prophecy, the sudden rescue of a favourite. This is the same figure who strides through the Norse poems — the one-eyed wanderer who turns up at the hinge of a hero's fate. Saxo, the Christian historian, does not always name him plainly, but the pattern is unmistakable to anyone who knows the Eddas: the war-god has chosen Hadding, and will carry him — literally, here — through the perils of his life. It is the Norse Odin, recognisable across the language barrier, doing in a Danish history exactly what he does in Icelandic verse.
The source text · 1
And as he spoke, he took back the young man on his horse, and set him where he had found him. Hadding cowered trembling under his mantle; but so extreme was his wonder at the event, that with keen vision he peered through its holes. And he saw that before the steps of the horse lay the sea; but was told not to steal a glimpse of the forbidden thing, and therefore turned aside his amazed eyes from the dread spectacle of the roads that he journeyed. Then he was taken by Loker, and found by very sure experience that every point of the prophecy was fulfilled upon him. So he assailed Handwan, king of the Hellespont, who was entrenched behind an impregnable defence of wall in his city Duna, and withstood him not in the field, but with battlements. Its summit defying all approach by a besieger, he ordered that the divers kinds of birds who were wont to nest in that spot should be caught by skilled fowlers, and he caused wicks which had been set on fire to be fastened beneath their wings. The birds sought the shelter of their own nests, and filled the city with a blaze; all the townsmen flocked to quench it, and left the gates defenceless. He attacked and captured Handwan, but suffered him to redeem his life with gold for ransom. Thus, when he might have cut off his foe, he preferred to grant him the breath of life; so far did his mercy qualify his rage.— gesta danorum
the aged rider bears Hadding to safety on his horse and prophesies (Elton 1894).
At Rolf Kraki's last stand, the dying Bjarki longs to see 'the husband of Frigg' on the field — for to glimpse Odin in battle is to know the doom is sealed. The god as the sign of death come to claim his own.
Bjarki's slaughter and Odin on the field
The greatest of the champions is Bjarki — in the Norse tradition a were-bear, whose fighting-spirit is said to take the form of a great bear at the battle. In Saxo he sleeps strangely deep as the attack begins, and Hjalti must call him again and again before he rouses;[1] but once awake, Bjarki deals terrible slaughter among the attackers, a one-man wall before his king. The champions fight with the desperate valour of men who have chosen to die well.
And at the climax comes the detail that ties this Danish legend straight to the heart of Norse myth. As the battle turns hopeless, the dying Bjarki says that if only he could look upon the awful husband of Frigg — Odin — however the god be covered with his white shield, riding his horse across the field, he would not let him go unhurt.[2] The appearance of Odin on a battlefield is, in the Norse mind, the sign that the war-god has come to claim his chosen dead; to see him is to know the doom is sealed. Bjarki's defiant wish to wound the very god who has decreed the king's fall is the legend's grandest moment — and it is unmistakably the Odin of the Eddas, the chooser of the slain, walking through Saxo's Latin to gather Rolf's fallen champions to Valhöll.
The source text · 2
"Bjarke, why art thou absent? Doth deep sleep hold thee? I prithee, what makes thee tarry? Come out, or the fire will overcome thee. Ho! Choose the better way, charge with me! Bears may be kept off with fire; let us spread fire in the recesses, and let the blaze attack the door-posts first. Let the firebrand fall upon the bedchamber, let the falling roof offer fuel for the flames and serve to feed the fire. It is right to scatter conflagration on the doomed gates. But let us who honour our king with better loyalty form the firm battle-wedges, and, having measured the phalanx in safe rows, go forth in the way the king taught us: our king, who laid low Rorik, the son of Bok the covetous, and wrapped the coward in death. He was rich in wealth, but in enjoyment poor, stronger in gain than bravery; and thinking gold better than warfare, he set lucre above all things, and ingloriously accumulated piles of treasure, scorning the service of noble friends. And when he was attacked by the navy of Rolf, he bade his servants take the gold from the chests and spread it out in front of the city gates, making ready bribes rather than battle, because he knew not the soldier, and thought that the foe should be attempted with gifts and not with arms: as though he could fight with wealth alone, and prolong the war by using, not men, but wares! So he undid the heavy coffers and the rich chests; he brought forth the polished bracelets and the heavy caskets; they only fed his destruction. Rich in treasure, poor in warriors, he left his foes to take away the prizes which he forebore to give to the friends of his own land. He who once shrank to give little rings of his own will, now unwillingly squandered his masses of wealth, rifling his hoarded heap. But our king in his wisdom spurned him and the gifts he proffered, and took from him life and goods at once; nor was his foe profited by the useless wealth which he had greedily heaped up through long years. But Rolf the righteous assailed him, slew him, and captured his vast wealth, and shared among worthy friends what the hand of avarice had piled up in all those years; and, bursting into the camp which was wealthy but not brave, gave his friends a lordly booty without bloodshed. Nothing was so fair to him that he would not lavish it, or so dear that he would not give it to his friends, for he used treasure like ashes, and measured his years by glory and not by gain. Whence it is plain that the king who hath died nobly lived also most nobly, that the hour of his doom is beautiful, and that he graced the years of his life with manliness. For while he lived his glowing valour prevailed over all things, and he was allotted might worthy of his lofty stature. He was as swift to war as a torrent tearing down to sea, and as speedy to begin battle as a stag is to fly with cleft foot upon his fleet way.— gesta danorum
Hjalti calls the deep-sleeping Bjarki to come out and fight (Elton 1894).
Then said Bjarke: "If I may look on the awful husband of Frigg, howsoever he be covered with his white shield, and guide his tall steed, he shall in no wise go safe out of Leire; it is lawful to lay low in war the war-waging god. Let a noble death come to those that fall before the eyes of their king. While life lasts, let us strive for the power to die honourably and to reap a noble end by our deeds. I will die overpowered near the head of my slain captain, and at his feet thou also shalt slip on thy face in death, so that whoso scans the piled corpses may see in what wise we rate the gold our lord gave us. We shall be the prey of ravens and a morsel for hungry eagles, and the ravening bird shall feast on the banquet of our body. Thus should fall princes dauntless in war, clasping their famous king in a common death."— gesta danorum
dying Bjarki longs to look on Odin, the husband of Frigg, on the field (Elton 1894).
And the deepest proof: in Saxo, just as in the Eddas, Odin begets a son expressly to avenge Baldr. The same specific act in two traditions — the god is shared, not invented by either.
Odin's vengeance, and the shape of a shared myth
And here the two traditions clasp hands again. Just as in the Norse myth the gods must answer Baldr's death, so in Saxo Odin, grieving for his slain son, consults prophets and diviners to learn how the death may be avenged — and, on their counsel, begets a special son for the single purpose of taking the vengeance.[1] (In the Eddas this avenging son is Váli, got by Odin to kill the blind Höðr; in Saxo he is called Bo, got to kill Hother.) The detail is so specific — Odin fathering a child expressly to avenge Baldr — that its presence in both a Norse poem and a Danish Latin history, in such different surroundings, can only mean it is genuinely ancient, older than either telling.
That is what this journey adds to the atlas, and what the whole Saxo tier is for. A single myth — Odin's son, the one fated weapon, the death, the avenging son begotten on purpose — survives in two languages and two religions' worth of distance, euhemerized almost beyond recognition by Saxo yet still unmistakably the same story. Where a node like the death of Baldr is attested in both the Norse and the Latin traditions, the atlas can show it lit from two sides at once: not one source's tale but a shared inheritance, corroborated across cultures, reaching back past all our written records into the common deep memory of the North. The contradictions are not a problem to solve; they are the evidence — two faithful memories of something older than both.
The source text · 1
But Odin, though he was accounted the chief of the gods, began to inquire of the prophets and diviners concerning the way to accomplish vengeance for his son, as well as all others whom he had beard were skilled in the most recondite arts of soothsaying. For godhead that is incomplete is oft in want of the help of man. Rostioph (Hrossthiof), the Finn, foretold to him that another son must be born to him by Rinda (Wrinda), daughter of the King of the Ruthenians; this son was destined to exact punishment for the slaying of his brother. For the gods had appointed to the brother that was yet to be born the task of avenging his kinsman. Odin, when he heard this, muffled his face with a cap, that his garb might not betray him, and entered the service of the said king as a soldier; and being made by him captain of the soldiers, and given an army, won a splendid victory over the enemy. And for his stout achievement in this battle the king admitted him into the chief place in his friendship, distinguishing him as generously with gifts as with honours. A very little while afterwards Odin routed the enemy single-handed, and returned, at once the messenger and the doer of the deed. All marvelled that the strength of one man could deal such slaughter upon a countless host. Trusting in these services, he privily let the king into the secret of his love, and was refreshed by his most gracious favour; but when he sought a kiss from the maiden, he received a cuff. But he was not driven from his purpose either by anger at the slight or by the odiousness of the insult.— gesta danorum
Odin consults the diviners and begets a son to avenge Balder (Elton 1894).
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