The Tale of Þjazi and Iðunn
At a Glance
- Central figures: Iðunn, goddess of youth and keeper of the golden apples; Þjazi, the frost giant who coveted them; and Loki, who first betrayed Iðunn and then rescued her.
- Setting: Asgard and Jotunheim, the realm of the giants; from the Norse mythological tradition preserved in the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda.
- The turn: Loki, coerced by Þjazi mid-flight and fearing death, swears an oath to deliver Iðunn and her apples into the giant’s hands.
- The outcome: Iðunn is taken to Jotunheim and the gods of Asgard begin to age; Loki retrieves her by turning her into a nut, and Þjazi is killed in fire at Asgard’s gates.
- The legacy: The gods’ continued youth - and survival - rests entirely on Iðunn’s return; without her apples, even Odin and Thor grow frail.
Þjazi wanted the apples. He had wanted them a long time. What he needed was a way through Asgard’s walls, and when Loki, Odin, and Hoenir walked into Jotunheim looking for a meal, Þjazi found his way.
The gods had slaughtered a bull and built their fire. The meat would not cook. It sat above the flames and stayed raw, no matter how long they waited, and none of them could understand why until they heard the voice from the tree above - a great eagle settled in the branches, watching them with cold eyes.
“You will not eat,” the eagle said, “until I have my share.”
The Meat That Would Not Cook
Hunger does what threats cannot. The gods agreed. Þjazi dropped from the branches and took the best of the meat - the haunches, the shoulders, the cuts that had been worth the killing - and Loki watched him do it.
Loki grabbed a branch from the fire and struck the eagle across the back.
The moment he did, his hands locked to the wood. He could not let go. Þjazi lifted into the air, branch and Loki and all, and beat upward until the treetops were far below and the wind was cold and the ground was a long way down.
He flew until Loki screamed for terms.
Loki’s Oath
“Your life,” Þjazi said, “for Iðunn. Bring her out of Asgard with her apples, and I will set you down.”
Loki swore it. Þjazi released him, and Loki walked back to Asgard with an oath he intended to keep, because the alternative was being dropped from a height that would end him. He had made worse bargains. He told himself that.
The Taking of Iðunn
He found Iðunn in the way he found most things he wanted - by being charming and lying.
“I have seen apples beyond Asgard’s border,” he told her. “Finer than yours. You should come and compare them.”
Iðunn was not a suspicious goddess. She trusted Loki because she trusted most people, and she brought her apples because he had asked her to. She walked with him past the walls and into the open country beyond, and the moment she did, Þjazi came down out of the sky in eagle form, seized her in his talons, and carried her north to Jotunheim.
Loki walked back to Asgard alone.
The Gods Begin to Age
The apples were gone. Iðunn was gone. The gods did not notice the difference immediately, but it came on fast. Odin’s face lined. Thor’s grip on Mjolnir felt uncertain in ways it never had before. Freyr moved slower. Baldr, who had always been the brightest of them, looked drawn and grey. The Aesir looked at each other and saw old men, old women, things that would soon be bones.
They found out about Loki.
He was seized before he could explain himself, which would not have helped him anyway. The gods were not interested in his reasons. They told him the options: bring Iðunn back, or die here.
“Give me the Falcon Cloak,” Loki said. “Freyja’s. I need the flight.”
The Falcon Cloak
Freyja gave it to him. He put it on and felt the wings take hold and he went north, over the mountains and the ice fields, until Þjazi’s hall rose out of the grey rock of Jotunheim below him. Þjazi was out on the water - gone hunting, gone fishing, gone somewhere that was not here. Iðunn was alone inside.
Loki landed. He told her he had come to take her home. He used his magic to turn her into a nut, small enough to carry, and he closed his claws around her and ran for the sky.
He flew south at everything the cloak had.
Þjazi came back to an empty hall. He did not take long to understand what had happened. He shed his man-shape for the eagle and came south after Loki, and he was fast - a giant’s wings carry more air than a falcon’s, and he closed the distance over the long miles between Jotunheim and Asgard.
Fire at the Gates
The gods on the walls of Asgard saw them both coming - the small shape of the falcon, and behind it the eagle filling the sky. They built fires. They piled wood along the gates and set it alight and let the smoke rise, and they waited.
Loki came through the fire at full speed and cleared it.
Þjazi’s wings caught the heat and he faltered, and Thor was waiting with Mjolnir already swung. The blow took Þjazi as he stalled in the smoke. He came apart and fell.
Loki set the nut down inside the walls. Iðunn came back to herself and opened the box she carried and the gods ate, and their faces changed - the lines smoothing, the grey going out of their hair, the strength returning to Thor’s hands and the clarity to Odin’s eye. They were themselves again.
Þjazi was ash at the gate. Loki stood among the gods he had nearly destroyed and had just saved, and no one said much about either thing. The apples tasted the same as they always had.