The Creation of Poetry

At a Glance

• Central figures: Kvasir, a being of pure wisdom made from the combined spit of the Aesir and Vanir; the dwarf brothers Fjalar and Galar; Suttung, a frost giant; Gunnlod, Suttung’s daughter; and Odin, the Allfather.
• Setting: The Nine Realms - Asgard, Jotunheim, and Midgard - in the period following the truce between the Aesir and Vanir gods.
• The turn: Odin, disguised as a mortal laborer named Bolverk, tricks his way into the mountain where the Mead of Poetry is hidden, seduces its guardian Gunnlod over three nights, and drinks all three vats dry before escaping as an eagle.
• The outcome: Odin carries the mead back to Asgard, where most of it is secured for the gods; a few drops spill down to Midgard, and from those drops mortals receive the gift of poetry.
• The legacy: The drops that fell to earth are the origin of the poetic gift among humans - those with true skill at verse were said to have drunk of the mead.

Kvasir was made from spit. That is how wisdom entered the world. When the Aesir and the Vanir ended their war, they sealed the peace by spitting into a common vessel - each side mixing their divine essence with the other’s - and from that mingled spit they shaped a man. His name was Kvasir, and he knew the answer to every question anyone could put to him. He walked the Nine Realms freely, speaking to gods, men, and dwarves, turning away no one who came seeking counsel.

He should have been harder to kill.

Fjalar and Galar

The dwarf brothers Fjalar and Galar were craftsmen of some renown and of no conscience whatsoever. They invited Kvasir to their hall as though they wanted his wisdom. They did - but not in any form Kvasir would have offered willingly.

When he sat among them, they cut his throat. They caught his blood in three vessels: Odrerir, Son, and Bodn. Into the blood they stirred honey, and the mixture became the Mead of Poetry. A draught of it made a man a skald or a scholar - words came perfectly, knowledge flowed without effort, speech fell into patterns that did not break. The dwarves sealed the vats and believed the mead was theirs.

They moved on quickly. Fjalar and Galar invited the giant Gilling to their hall next, drowned him at sea for sport, and then killed his wife when her weeping annoyed them. They were not men who understood consequences. Gilling’s son was Suttung, a frost giant of considerable size and worse temper, and he arrived to find his father dead and no one apologetic about it.

Suttung’s Mountain

Suttung dragged the dwarves out to the open sea and left them on a reef at low tide. They begged. They offered treasure. Suttung was not interested in treasure. He was interested in the mead.

They gave it to him. There was nothing else they could do.

Suttung carried the three vats back to Jotunheim and hid them inside a mountain called Hnitbjorg. He put his daughter Gunnlod there as their guardian. She sat in the dark with the mead of all wisdom and all poetry, and the world outside went without it.

Odin noticed.

Baugi’s Farmhands

Odin did not arrive in Jotunheim wearing his own face. He came as Bolverk - a wandering laborer, nothing remarkable about him. He found the farm of Baugi, who was Suttung’s brother, and he found Baugi’s nine farmhands arguing in a field, each of them wanting the same whetstone.

Odin had given them the stone. He had claimed it would put an edge on their scythes like nothing they had used before. Every one of them reached for it at once, and Odin threw it into the air. In the scramble, the nine men killed each other.

He walked up to Baugi and offered his services. Nine laborers’ worth of work, one man’s wages - one sip of Suttung’s mead, paid at the season’s end. Baugi had no other options. He agreed.

Odin worked through the season. When it ended, he reminded Baugi of the bargain. Baugi took him to Hnitbjorg and asked Suttung for the sip.

Suttung refused.

So Odin produced an auger called Rati and told Baugi to drill. Baugi drilled, and when he stopped and said the hole was through, Odin blew into it and the chips flew back in his face - the rock behind was still solid. Baugi drilled further. The second time, the chips blew outward. The hole was through.

Odin became a snake and slid inside.

Gunnlod

Gunnlod had been in the dark for a long time. Three nights Odin stayed with her, speaking quietly, making promises he may or may not have intended to keep. By the third night she trusted him enough to offer him a drink from each of the three vats.

He drained them all. Three sips, three empty vessels. Every drop of the mead that Kvasir’s blood had made, everything the dwarves had brewed and Suttung had stolen and locked away - gone.

Then Odin was an eagle. He beat through the tunnel and into the open air and turned north toward Asgard.

The Chase

Suttung saw him. Suttung became an eagle also and came after him, and the two shapes crossed the sky together, the pursuing eagle closing the gap.

The gods of Asgard had been watching. They saw Odin coming and set great vats out at the gates of the realm. Odin reached the walls and released the mead - it poured from his beak into the waiting vessels, and it was safe.

Most of it. In the speed of the flight and the urgency of the pour, a few drops fell from the wrong side of the wall. They fell down through the air of Midgard and landed where they landed. Any man who found himself suddenly able to shape words that others could not - able to find the exact phrase, the right line, the verse that lasted - was said to have drunk of those drops. The skald’s gift came from Odin’s haste and a giant’s fury and three vats of blood and honey sealed in the dark of a mountain, and some of it spilled.

That is the part that reached the world.