Episode 320: Odin
/We’re kicking off It’s Norse of Course with a look at the All-Father himself. Come for the history of Norse mythology’s father figure, and stay for inevitable contemplations on death and meaning!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of White supremacy, antisemitism, murder, hanging, maiming, and climate change.
Housekeeping
- Recommendation: This week, Amanda recommends the new competition show Pressure Cooker.
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Transcript
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And this is episode 320, where—what's that I hear? Are those the hoofs of the chariots of Odin?
JULIA: Oh. Well, Amanda, here's the thing. After really like an awesome response that we got to our it's all Greek to me series last year, I really want to do something that was kind of like a similar deep dive into another Pantheon, and kind of give it the same treatment. And we got a lot of really good feedback about what people want to see if we did another series like that. And almost overwhelmingly people asked for Norse mythology.
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: So we are introducing here drumroll, please.
AMANDA: [drum roll sound] If you can do better than my tongue drum roll please go ahead. But you know, it's just an option for you.
[Norse Music Plays]
JULIA: We are introducing, It's Norse, of course. Weeee. And because we are starting a new series, we have to start with one of the most important figures in Norse beliefs, the big man himself, Odin.
AMANDA: Oh, baby is Odin the fuck father of Norse mythology? Let's find out.
JULIA: We'll talk about it because I feel like a lot of people will make comparisons to him with Zeus, but we will. We'll talk about the differences there. But of course, we will need a little bit of background on the world of the Norse gods, since it's been quite a while since we kind of touched on the minutiae of this mythology. So let's get a little background of the Norse gods as a whole before we dive deeper into who Odin is himself.
AMANDA: Hell, yeah.
JULIA: Alright, so a little aside, before I go further, I want to acknowledge that as we start to talk about Norse mythology, that a lot of white supremacists have kind of tried to co-op these beliefs and incorporate them into their own. And this is something that I want people to keep in mind as we go through these episodes like we are in no way I want to say explicitly, trying to platform any sort of hateful ideology here on the show. Our goal was always to examine mythology through our own like modern queer feminist lens, but I think it's important for us to acknowledge that some people have tried to corrupt this mythology for their own twisted purposes. And we're not going to allow that here.
AMANDA: Bashing doesn't fly here.
JULIA: Does not fly here. We will not allow it.
AMANDA: Yeah, also, they don't get to take all of Norse mythology. We—we get to examine it. Make it queer, make it feminist. [3:13] on microphone, right—right over here. So you know, it's the one little way we can fight back.
JULIA: Yeah, fuck yeah. And now that being said, let's talk about the world of the Norse gods. As we've talked about in past episodes, Norse Mythology is, is very cyclical in a way, there's a clear beginning for the gods known as Voluspa, and a clear ending which is Ragnarok. So they're also important for us to know three groups or kinds of beings, there are the Aesir, who live in Asgard. Most of the gods that we'll be talking about in this series are part of the Aesir, though there is like a few exceptions to this, which we will discuss in later episodes. There's also the Vanir, who are Gods similar to the Aesir, but are like basically from a different lineage if that makes sense, and they live on Vanaheimr. It's worth noting that there are stories of like a war between the Vanir and the Aesir, and eventually that led to the Vanir being somewhat subsumed into a subgroup of the Aesir, kind of we're thinking like, oh yes, these are two different groups who eventually we're kind of combined into one.
AMANDA: I'm glad for that Julia, because I do hear the word Vanir, and all I can think about is ugly kitchen cabinet. So, it happens.
JULIA: It does, it does, I'm sorry. There is another notable group which is the Jotnar, the plural form of Jotnar is Jotunn, and there are a lot of times translating yo tongue to English, giant is used, though there's no implication in the original Norse that the Jotunn were giants in the same sense that we would use it in English, right? So actually, a more accurate translation would be devourer, since that is seemingly the origin of the Norse word from the proto-Germanic. So I love the idea of the devourer, very evocative, big fan of it as a whole.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: And it's also important to know that the Jotunn we're not considered gods in the same way as the Aesir and the Vanir are. So when we are talking about the Norse gods and Norse mythology as a whole, we're usually pulling from these two main sources. There's the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. A little background for those, the Poetic Edda, definitely came first, it was written around 1200 CE by an unknown author. We love an unknown author here on the podcast.
AMANDA: Unknown, Julia has so many of my favorite books. I do remember, side note, having a couple of novels like Go Ask Alice and others that are, you know, in theory, anonymous and shelf and looking at them and being like, okay, do I—do I file them in my library under A for anonymous, or S for Beatrix sparks, the quote-unquote “editor” who actually had an ideology and just made the shit up.
JULIA: Incredible.
AMANDA: Yeah. Questions that plagued me as a child.
JULIA: Amanda, I appreciate where your priorities were as a child. That's all I have to say about that. So this unknown author basically collected stories that had survived the spread of Christianity across Europe two centuries prior. Again, a very law, it's not pagan, it's fine situation. Now the Poetic Edda was made up of 30 poems that recounted the stories of Gods, dwarves, elves, and human heroes. It's also somewhat important to know that like, much like we discussed with the codification of mythology with Jacob Grimm in the Wild Hunt, that this one person wrote down stories that were sourced from different people and different sources. So there are some contradictory stories and tales in the Poetic Edda, that's just kind of what happens when you're pulling from a bunch of different sources, and people have different versions.
AMANDA: Totally, and gives us more to think and talk about and wonder why those differences existed, and what they say about the source material.
JULIA: And Amanda we have even more to kind of compare and contrast here, because other than the Poetic Edda, we have the Prose Edda. And we actually do know the author of the Prose Edda, that Snorri Sturluson. He was a legal figure and scholar and he had assembled versions of stories that he had seen in the Poetic Edda around 1222 CE. So only like 20 years after the estimated time that the Poetic Edda was put together.
AMANDA: That seems pretty unusual to me.
JULIA: Yeah I know, it's like a short amount of time for the time period, because again, like it's not the internet, Amanda, we didn't have time, like, he didn't just automatically get that source, you know, he had to wait for it to be published, and then spread out, and then find a copy, and then be like, oh, I know these stories, let me write them.
AMANDA: Incredible. Is just such a relatable impulse to me to be like, you know, what, you know, all these things I've like heard swirling around, let me catalog them, which is why librarians are the best.
JULIA: Librarians are the best. So Snorri was very much interested in preserving the stories, but also in the style of storytelling when creating his version of the tale. So he, as we like to say, took a lot of poetic license with us. So the Prose Edda is much more coherent than the Poetic Edda because again, the Poetic Edda is just like a compilation of the stories that were found by our unknown author. But the Prose Edda is also organized more linearly. So it begins with the Voluspa, which is the creation, and ends with Ragnarok, which is the destruction of the world. However, much like the Poetic Edda, it also has some of those contradictions in it that we have to kind of acknowledge as we go forward, being like, oh, well, one story said that, and the other one said the other thing. Is just because different people were telling those stories, and that's fine.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So keep in mind, though, that the Poetic Edda is sort of the closest that we have to primary sources when it comes to Norse mythology as a whole. While the Prose Edda is more like Snorri Sturluson is retelling of the tales, which sort of like puts together these untied stories into one narrative. So because we are pulling from these two sources, let's start with what the Prose Edda says the creation started with. Okay?
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: So the Prose Edda says, before there was soil or sky, or any green thing, there was only a gaping abyss.
AMANDA: Get Dr. Mctier on the line, that seems about right.
JULIA: Mmm. Hmm. So it was a chaos of perfect silence and darkness that lay between the land of fire which was Muspelheim, and the land of ice which was Niflheim.
AMANDA: Yes, that's where Tom Hiddleston lives.
JULIA: That is, that's where Tom Hiddleston was from. So the flames of Muspelheim and the ice of Niflheim crept toward each other until they met in the abyss. And when the fire met the ice, it melted and created the Ymir, the first of the godlike but destructive giants. Again, we're using giants as the English translation. It wasn't like actually a giant. So Ymir, as he slept, gave birth to giants and gods from the sweat of his armpits and the crook of his legs.
AMANDA: Gross, but right on.
JULIA: Gross, but we love it. As more of the frost of Niflheim began to melt, a cow, known as Audhumla, which means an abundance of humming, which I'm [10:06]
AMANDA: Oh shit. Yeah.
JULIA: Best name for a cow I've ever seen, emerge and fed Ymir her milk. So she also apparently, I loved this little detail, lick to the apparently salty ice of Niflheim and from her licking, revealed Buri, who was the first Aesir.
AMANDA: Dang, that's amazing.
JULIA: So Buri had a son named Borr, though how or who might have birthed him is kind of lost to us through the translations. But Borr married the daughter of one of Ymir's giants whose name was Bestla, and the half-god, half-giant children born of this union were Vili and Ve and of course the man of the hour, Odin.
AMANDA: I'm picturing this whole family just living on like an open tundra, with like flames in the background. I'm sure they had a house and stuff. But gosh, what a cinematic beginning.
JULIA: Yes. And like Odin existed before the world as we know it, existed.
AMANDA: It's amazing.
JULIA: So he's been around a while.
AMANDA: Who knew Anthony Hopkins, is that old?
JULIA: Yeah. I know right.
AMANDA: Sorry. I'm not going to do this the entire time. We do it Norse of course. But it's hard to shake at least in this beginning.
JULIA: I get it. I mean, honestly, like a lot of the characters that we're going to talk about in its Norse, of course, a lot of the gods that we're going to talk about in its Norse, of course, don't play a huge role in the Marvel movies franchises. So it's fine.
AMANDA: I'll shake it, it's fine. But I do encourage everybody to imagine Tessa Thompson whenever the word Valkyrie comes out. Just—just for your own like happiness. You know it's all fair.
JULIA: Just for your own edification. That's fine, don't worry about it. So Amanda, now that we've introduced Odin, who is Odin? He's also known as Woden, Wuodan or Woutan. In English, we translate his name to mean the mad one. And much like in English, it has a little bit of a double meaning, it's both mad isn't angry, and also mad is in kind of like Mad Hatter crazy. And in many ways, we're going to discover that it does quite suit him for a lot of reasons. But he is also known as the all-father and you'll be able to recognize him in a lot of artwork from his single eye. Usually, he's wearing an eyepatch in a lot of other art, and his long beard. We often see him wearing a cloak, and occasionally a helmet and most art of him has been accompanied by two ravens on his shoulder, a thing we'll talk about in a little bit, and two wolves at his feet. And as we mentioned in the Wild Hunt, Odin's land is Valhalla, the hall of the dead, and he collects dead warriors to join his army.
AMANDA: Now, Julia, we talk often about the wolves inside each of us, but we haven't talked about the two ravens on each of our shoulders. And I just think the internet as a whole needs to get on that.
JULIA: Yes wolves, a little bit racist trying to, like co-opt basically Native American traditions, two ravens on your shoulder, though.
AMANDA: Hey, give it a try.
JULIA: So I know we talk a lot about Greek mythology here on Spirits. It's something that we do very often. And because of his role in the Gods, we might be tempted to conflate Zeus and Odin, right? But Odin, definitely not Zeus. Odin kind of holds himself apart from the other Gods. He does not like enjoy the revelry of being powerful the way that someone like Zeus does. He's very serious. He only speaks in verse, which is a fantastic little part that [13:14]
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: He does not eat, he only drinks meat and wine. And much of the way that Odin acts has to do with the prophecy that he received about Ragnarok, which we'll talk a little bit about later. And his focus on trying to hold off the destruction of the world began. So basically, Odin's whole vibe is like, I know something bad is happening. I'm trying to do everything within my power to make it stop. All of you stop bothering me.
AMANDA: This is sounding much more relatable than Zeus has ever been.
JULIA: I mean, we all want to kind of just party hard on Mount Olympus any day of the week. But at the same time, like Odin is like, what we are after we graduate college and we need to be responsible human beings now, that's what Odin's whole life is.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: Oh, and it's like I'm the man of the house now, I have to take care of things.
AMANDA: Odin's like if I had been identified too young, what's happening to me?
JULIA: So let's talk a little bit about the important relationships for Odin, but mostly it is his relationship with his wife Frigg, and then the rest of the Aesir. So from his marriage to Frigg and his children, he really is like the all-father, he's the father of all of the gods and men, and everything that he and his power is created, right? So his kin are those who inhabit ancient Asgard, his bloodline is the Aesir, and Odin has two sons for sure, though sources say that Borr call Odin father, but these are the ones that we know for certain, Odin is the like direct bloodline father too.
AMANDA: Gotcha.
JULIA: So the first is probably the one that most people have heard about, which is Thor, who was his son by Jord, who is the embodiment of the earth and Odin's both daughter and wife. Again, much like we talked about with the Greeks. It's fine. It's not weird. Thor, as you can imagine, is a mighty and strong God. He's famously said to dominate every living creature because he's Thor, so why not? And we've covered Thor a lot on this show. So I'm going to tell you more about Odin's other son Baldr, who unfortunately is defined mostly in the stories that we have records of by his death.
AMANDA: Oh, man.
JULIA: Yes, but we'll talk about that in a later episode because Baldr is a catalyst for a lot of things that happen in Norse mythology.
AMANDA: Alright, listen, there are worse ways to be remembered, which is not.
JULIA: Yes. 100% that's true. And also just like a little aside, Baldr, god of light, beautiful, just, and that's what we know about.
AMANDA: I mean, sounds great.
JULIA: Exactly. Going back to Snorri Sturluson for a second. Snorri also refers to Heimdall, Bragi, [15:51], and Hodor as the sons of Odin, but this might be like a metaphorical thing, rather than a literal reading of the stories, or he's the father in the sense that Odin is the all-father, you know what I mean? So Odin has several animal companions, some of which we've talked about before, there are the two ravens, which we're very excited about. That's Hugin, which is thought, and Munin, which is memory. And they fly around the world and report back what they see to Odin.
AMANDA: Absolute legends.
JULIA: I love them so much. One, I think ravens are incredible creatures. I don't want to own a raven, but I want to be friends with a Raven, because one—
AMANDA: Oh yeah.
JULIA: —you shouldn't be able to own birds, in my opinion, don't own birds. But two, I just— I want to be Odin in the sense. I want my birds to come and tell me the things they saw.
AMANDA: Yeah, it's that real childhood fantasy of like, you know, as a horse girl, you want to like walk into the barn and have all the horses you know, you don't know who you are, and nozzle you'd be excited to see you. My entire life would be made if that happened to me with a raven. And I walk outside and the raven is like, ah, yes. here's a little nickel I gathered for you. Ah, yes, the show here is my—my special nest. Ah yes, let me accompany you on your journey. It'd be perfect.
JULIA: I love that for you. And also speaking of horse girl, the next one we'll talk about is one that we've talked about plenty on the show, which is the eight-legged horse Sleipnir.
AMANDA: Sleipnir.
JULIA: Who is the child of Loki and is also Odin's steed?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And then as I mentioned before, he had a two wolves which were Geri and Freki. Geri is not spelled the same way as the English name is. And I'm pretty sure that's right but, but it's G E R I. So we would also be remiss not to talk about the Valkyries, not Tessa Thompson. Even though we love hot Tessa Thompson. The Valkyries were Odin's attendants and they were the residents of Valhalla. While in Valhalla they basically act as like waiters in the halls of Valhalla, waiting tables and keeping the drinks flowing. But on the mortal battlefield when they are called, they decide who wins and who dies and they carry back the brave dead to Valhalla, to join Odin's ranks.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: I just love a waitress who can also do battle real. That's nice.
AMANDA: You have a good point.
JULIA: I'm into that.
AMANDA: I'm sure most people who work in customer service out there and food service specifically, it would be like yeah, that's kind of half the job.
JULIA: I was gonna say I think all food service people now who like make that their lives I'm like, you're just a Valkyrie in my mind. Seriously.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: You could fight anyone who comes in here
AMANDA: A thousand percent.
JULIA: It was that in battle, a doomed hero was said to see quote, maidens excellent in beauty, riding their steeds in shining armor, solemn and deep in thought with their white hands beckoning.
AMANDA: Beautiful.
JULIA: Yeah. I would be like, you know what, I'm sad, I'm dead. But if I get to come with this hot lady, So be it mam, so be it.
AMANDA: Julia, there are many worse ways to go.
JULIA: Indeed, indeed. So with this background on Odin and Norse mythology as a whole, we can explore some more of his stories. But first, let's grab a refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
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AMANDA: Now Julia, not to criticize you, but I do think this drink would taste a little bit better if a Valkyrie in the village of Tessa Thompson delivered it to me. Just— just a note, just a note.
JULIA: You would be correct Amanda, 100%. She would do it perfectly to because—so we're going to be doing a lot of mead cocktails in these episodes, I have a feeling since Mead is so intrinsically tied to Norse culture and mythology. And we'll do a little mead story later on in the episode. But the cocktail that I picked for Odin is one that has whiskey mead. And this is where we need the Valkyrie to deliver it perfectly to your table of floater of red wine because you need steady hands to make sure that doesn't mix into well. And I think that really captures the complexity of who Odin is.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: So now with these in hand, let's tell the stories of Odin. The first is harken back to the origin of Odin. As I mentioned before Odin was the grandson of the giant Ymir in true mythological fashion. Odin and his two brothers end up killing Ymir and created the world as we know it out of his body. Got to be a little gory, the description we're about to do, so just heads up for that. But basically, they tore Ymir into massive pieces, and a vast de luz of blood burst forth. This blood became the world's oceans and the wave of blood swept away all of the other giants except for one family who escaped on a wooden Ark.
AMANDA: Okay, seeing some similarities.
JULIA: I'm very curious. Now, this is really interesting, because, again, the Poetic Edda, as we talked about before, is a series of stories that were said to predate the spread of Christianity through Europe, right? But again, this is two centuries before they were collected. So does this kind of like Bible Ark Noah's story? Is this a lol, it's not pagan, It's fine thing. We're seeing some sort of like syncretism there, or do you think that much like we talked about in the world floods episodes all the way back when that they had a flood story before the spread of Christianity through Europe?
AMANDA: I've got to think a flood story is common to almost all places, especially in a region, so inherently linked to water. So that's kind of where I put my bets.
JULIA: Okay, good. I just thought—I was curious to see what your thought was on that. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. And I probably leaning more toward you. But I was just very curious in that moment. I was like, that's a—that's a great question I should ask. So the giant and his family who escaped on this wooden Ark, this giant named Bergelmir, they would later be the kind of progenitor for all of the later giants that we see in the stories of Norse mythology. So Odin and his brothers then made the land out of the Ymir's corpse. They use his teeth and broken bones to form the stones and the mountains. They use the dome of his skull to form the sky, and even his thoughts formed clouds. So it was said that thin and wispy clouds were Ymir's good thoughts, and while the dark and brooding ones were his bad.
AMANDA: Hell, yeah.
JULIA: Isn't that beautiful? I love that so much.
AMANDA: So beautiful.
JULIA: That clouds are thoughts. God so good. They called the world that they created Midgard, and they encircled it with a mighty barrier made out of Ymir's other eyelashes or eyebrows, it depends on the translation. And they also, at the same time made their own realm, Asgard. So Asgard and Midgard, among the nine worlds became known as [30:13] which meant that they were places of protection that were ruled by the gods, specifically the Aesir. The other realms such as Jotunheim, Hel, and others. Hel with one L, not two, were known as the [30:28] which means beyond the enclosure, which I think is really, really beautiful. I love translations.
AMANDA: And I'm sure that we're missing a lot of this. Like one of the things that I took away most from studying the Torah in conversion class, is the amount of wordplay that there is in Hebrew.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: And I just—you know, totally good translations can of course, put some of that back in. But there was so much and just even like the first couple paragraphs of Genesis where I was like, oh, my God, like every single word is super intentional and has a really interesting meaning. That completely slipped my mind when meaning like the King James Bible.
JULIA: Amanda, exactly. And that's what I like about this kind of stuff like a good translation is poetic in the way that was intended. And a bad translation is just like a, we're just reading it the literal translation of a thing. So I love a brought that up, thank you. So because Asgard and Midgard as this, like joint [31:22] we're kind of separated from the rest of the realms. This kind of pissed off the Jotunn, because they were basically cast out into the darkness of [31:36] and they basically hold a grudge against Asgard and Midgard, and they want to conquer it. So this is kind of the sort of like exterior antagonism that is kind of prevalent throughout Norse mythology. So Amanda, Odin, and his brothers also created the first man and woman.
AMANDA: No way!
JULIA: Yeah, there you go. So one day while walking along the seashore, they found two trees, an ash tree and an elm tree, right? From these trees, they created the first man asks or ash, and the first woman which was Embla or elm.
AMANDA: Beautiful.
JULIA: They like literally they're like, you're an ash tree. We're gonna name you ash, you are Elm tree, we're gonna name, you Elm. Great, we'll make it work.
AMANDA: As a kid I always really wish that my name were something related to nature like I always thought Rowan was the most beautiful name. So jelly.
JULIA: So Odin gave these to their spirit and their life. Villi gave them understanding and the power of movement. And Ve gave them clothing and names. And from these to all races of man who lived in Midgard would be born.
AMANDA: It's really interesting. I love that it was kind of a group project and does this—does this mean that like they were the first human beings, they were the first instances of like gender in Norse mythology?
JULIA: I think this is like the first mortal beings because we had gender—actually really interesting. I—I didn't talk about it exactly. But the way that Ymir is portrayed is like I'm not sure if they describe him specifically as hermaphroditic because he wasn't or at least like he was asexual in the way that like plants can sprout buds. So his gender while we use like he/him pronouns for Ymir like he wasn't like just like a dude who needed a woman to procreate. You know what I mean?
AMANDA: Interesting.
JULIA: Yeah, good as it should be. Yeah.
AMANDA: People who don't belong to the binary are godly.
JULIA: Exactly. Good question, though Amanda, I appreciate that. I talked earlier about a prophecy that Odin received that he actively spends most of the mythology trying to prevent happening, right? So this is actually the first story from the Poetic Edda which is called the Voluspa. This essentially recounts the beginning of the world that we just discussed, as well as the first war between the Aesir and the Vanir, by this seer or wise woman known as a vulva. Not the anatomical part, not a car, but rather the vulva, Aesir, or a wise woman. So she then turns to Odin to further prove her wisdom, some of his secrets, she tells him and details of his search for knowledge that he has not disclosed to many others. And Odin kind of recognizes the truth of her words. And so he's like, go on. And she goes on to tell him the true prophecy that he had come there for, which lays out the final destruction of the gods, which is Ragnarok. And it is this prophecy that motivates Odin's actions in many of the stories in Norse mythology, so important to know.
AMANDA: I wonder if I would never laid in bed and been like, God, I never should have gone God. What if I didn't know?
JULIA: I mean, Amanda, we talked about like hubris and prophecy in Greek mythology all the time. And yeah, I feel you, sometimes even if you decided, oh, I wish I hadn't gone because then I wouldn't know you still would have somehow stumbled upon it one way or another.
AMANDA: That's true, prophecy is not like, I'm chill I'm here if you're ready, prophecies like, no, you're—you're coming we're doing this.
JULIA: Perhaps one of the most well-known or important stories of Odin is the story of how he lost his eye. As we talked about before, he is normally portrayed either with an eyepatch or with one eye. So in his pursuit of knowledge, Odin had traveled to the well of Mimir, which was in the root of the Sacred Tree, Yggdrasill. So Yggdrasill was where the gods held their daily court, and it was said that its branches spread out over the world and reach up over heaven. And at the will of Mimir dwelled the Vanir, again Mimir is his name, whose cosmic knowledge was even greater than that of Odin's.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: That's saying something.
AMANDA: That is.
JULIA: Odin realizes that Mimir achieved his powers by drinking the waters of the well. And so ask the Vanir if he could take a sip as well. Right. Sure, it makes sense. I mean, it's nice to ask.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Exactly. So Mimir agrees. Like, of course, you can drink from the well, but only if Odin sacrificed one of his eyes as payment. Thirsty for the powers that the well possessed. Odin agreed, gouged out an eye, tossed it into the well before drinking from the waters.
AMANDA: Alright. Alright.
JULIA: Listen, I think that it's a really interesting dynamic that we don't often talk about in mythology, that knowledge requires sacrifice, power requires sacrifice and Norse mythology, especially the stories of Odin, really hone in on that and make it like very clear from the beginning. Like if you want to be as powerful as someone like Odin, you need to make the sacrifices that Odin makes. And we'll talk about the next sacrifice that he makes because it's a big one, but one I comparatively not as intense as what he goes on to do.
AMANDA: Wow, I can't imagine what's next. But I think that's really fascinating. And it's a sort of difference or philosophy that I'll be tracking throughout these episodes, is thinking about power as something you are owed, versus power as something you earn, or something you give up like a burden that you bear in exchange for other burdens, or like pleasure that you revel in. I think it's a very, very interesting theme.
JULIA: Yeah. And I mean, if we think about Odin, like the burden that Odin bears throughout the entirety of Norse mythology, is the knowledge that the world is going to end and that he's going to die. And that is like, what colors him so much. He doesn't get up to shenanigans, because he got more important things to do.
AMANDA: And that's, I mean, that's the, you know, I feel like one of the themes that we see in storytelling over and over again, is like, in some ways what defines us as human beings is the knowledge that we're going to die one day. Like understanding that fact. And so it makes sense that the sort of you know, father figure from which we all flow in this worldview, would struggle with that in the biggest way possible. And not just his death, but the death of the universe.
JULIA: Yeah, exactly. Oh, Amanda, brilliant, as always brilliant. I love it. There is one other version of the story that I want to touch on with the— the well of Mimir and Odin losing his eyes. So in this version, Mimir is one of the Aesir and is sent as a hostage to the vineyard during their war. However, while in their custody, the Vanir kill Mimir and sent his head back to Odin. And now Odin kept this head, not just being like oh, my poor sweet Mimir what happen to you? He kept the head around because occasionally it would speak knowledge and answer questions, which I think is really fun. But Odin eventually wanted the source of that knowledge, and so Mimir told him about the well. And so he asked him Mimir what he would need to do in exchange for the knowledge from the well, and Mimir says, again that it would require his eyes. So once again, he removes his eye, drinks from the well and gains the same knowledge that Mimir had.
AMANDA: Dang.
JULIA: But even after all of this, Amanda, this is—this is Odin's constant struggle, he is still hungry for knowledge, which leads us to our next story. So he decides that the best way to gain more knowledge is to sacrifice more of himself.
AMANDA: I mean, yeah, also Julia a much better plan than like taking it and then hoping no one comes to collect, which I think it happens in like fake stories all the time.
JULIA: Yes. No, but instead, Odin, very responsible. So what he does is he spears himself with his own spear through the chest, and then hangs himself up on a [39:35] So he hangs there for nine nights. And also this is a complete like, because of this story. Odin is associated with the gallows and with hanged man. So he hangs there for nine nights, and after nine nights, he starts to see in the ground ruins, like magical rooms, right?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And so he frees himself and seeking out those ruins, he gains the knowledge that he has been looking for. Right?
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: And actually, Amanda, this brings us into our poetry corner.
AMANDA: Yaaaaay. Yes, please.
JULIA: Because we can't have one of these episodes without a poetry corner. We simply can't.
AMANDA: Oh, thank goodness.
JULIA: So this comes from the Havamal in the Poetic Edda, and this is Odin speaking of the knowledge that he gained from his days hanging from a [40:27] And remember, Odin only speaks in verse. So this poetry is supposed to be like his literal words, except for the ending part. So.
AMANDA: Hell yeah, dude.
JULIA: Alright. Are we ready for poetry corner?
AMANDA: So ready.
JULIA: We start with, nine mighty songs I learned from the great son of Belle Thorne. Bestla Sire. I drank a measure of the wondrous mead with the soul stirs drops, I was showered. Air long I bear fruit and throve full well. I grew and waxed in wisdom word following word, I found me words, deed following deed, I rot deeds. Hidden ruins shalt thou seek an interpreted signs. Many symbols of might and power by the great singer painted by the high powers fashioned graved by the [41:19] of gods. For God's graved Odin for elves, grave dane. Devall in the dahliar for dwarfs, all-wise for Jotunns, and I of myself graved Psalm for the sons of men. Thus know how to write, thus know how to read, thus know how to paint, thus know how to prove, thus know how to ask, thus know how to offer, thus know how to spend, thus know how to spend. Better ask far too little than offer too much, like the gift should be the boon, better not to send than overspent. Thus Odin graved air, the world began. Then he rose from the deep and came again.
AMANDA: Dang, it's beautiful and hypnotic. I really use some poetry seems like a thought that resonates in your head and lives unspoken. And some poetry really seems like a speech, and this is one of the latter.
JULIA: Yes, I can really like picture Odin saying this to someone being like, oh, you seek the knowledge that I know. Well, first, here are the things that I've learned. And so basically this like secret wisdom that Odin learned, our magic for lack of a better phrase. He said to have learned nine ruins for the nine days, that he hung up on a [42:42] So he learned how to cure the sick, to calm storms, to turn weapons against his attackers, to make women fall in love all with a look, as well as changes shape into another person or animal. And I just—it's really beautiful poetry besides the point. But it's also really interesting and really beautiful from a Norse mythology sense because this is something that I'm sure we're going to talk about in later episodes as well. But the use of magic and practicing prophecy which is a skill that he learned from the goddess Freya, were considered very feminine.
AMANDA: Really?
JULIA: Only women practice magic.
AMANDA: Right on.
JULIA: And we'll also talk about like someone like Loki also practices magic. But again, that is like, they look down on Loki for practicing magic, but no one looks down on Odin for practicing magic. But it seems like for the Norse at least, Odin is the exception to this kind of feminization of magic. They're like, it's Odin. So he can, he can know magic, he can do whatever he wants, he's always looking for knowledge. And that's what's important to him, you know.
AMANDA: 100%. And I think it's also really interesting that we get to see, like, he's not born inherently powerful. He's not born the most, the biggest, the best, the one who knows at all. He needs to make some kind of choice, sacrifice, trade-off and knows what it's like both to live without power, and to live with power, which I think, you know, I think a lot about like inherited, you know, wealth and political dynasties and kind of all these things that we're thinking and talking about in the modern age. And there's a real difference between people who know what it's like to lack and people who don't, and I think it's really fascinating.
JULIA: I 100% agree. I've also been thinking a lot as we start to prep more of these, it's Norse, of course, episodes. I can't help but make comparisons between Norse mythology and Greek mythology. And in Greek mythology, we talk a lot about how the gods are very human-like like the gods have their foils. The gods make mistakes, they—they drink too much, they partied too hard. They do things that we wouldn't like, want humans to do, but they do, they make those mistakes. And Odin is in a lot of sense very human-like, but not in the way that someone like Zeus is you know, like Odin we understand where he's coming from because he has given this burden. And like you said, he like kind of came from nothing. And now he's here. But he's not infallible. You know what I mean? He is absolutely fallible. And we see what happens to him at the end of the day. And we'll talk about Ragnarok in just a second. But he, like everyone else in the world, God or mortal of like, is part of this cycle, whether he likes it or not. And he spends all this time trying to fight against the inevitability of what is to come. And I think that is why I like him, because that is human, in a lot of ways.
AMANDA: Totally. And what a difference from the sort of like permanence of Greek mythology and the Greek gods, right, like Olympus is there, Zeus will be there, all the gods will be there. He might, you know, lose this child, this hottie, right, like this wife, this girlfriend, this power struggle, but they will be there. And I think that permanence like we've touched on is, you know, a tool of the Hellenistic state, right, like trying to say like, hey, this will be here, this is permanent. This is society. This is, you know, culture, like this, this is it, and nothing will ever be greater than it, and nothing ever has been greater than it. And it seems like the, you know, this whole kind of foundational story of Norse mythology says no, like, we're all gonna die. This will all change. Everything's impermanent. And it's what we kind of do with that knowledge that defines us.
JULIA: Yeah, I—if I was still in college, Amanda, I would love to write a paper on how the apocalyptic nature of Norse mythology, flavors the way that the stories are being told, or what stories are being told. But for now, I am no longer 19 and trying to write papers on Apocalypticism. so here we are.
AMANDA: Listen, that's what we have podcast for baby.
JULIA: Yeah. So Amanda, I have one final story of Odin that I want to touch on before we touch on, the final story of Odin. And this is Odin's magic Mead.
AMANDA: Yay.
JULIA: So as I mentioned before, Odin only speaks in verse, and as such poetry was a gift that he granted only to a few. The way that he granted that gift was to offer anyone a sip of his magical mead, which he had originally stolen from a greedy giant named Suttung, who hoarded the brew all to himself. The Mead gave anyone who drank it the ability to speak in beautiful prose, which I think is incredible.
AMANDA: And Julia, one of the oldest jokes of this podcast is that when I drink, I love to recite poetry and whoever is around me.
JULIA: That's true.
AMANDA: So you know, I'm just like, Odin.
JULIA: Yeah, exactly. So Odin desired this magical mead that was being hoarded, and so snuck in, swallow to the entire of that, and then took the form of an eagle to escape an enraged Suttung. So weighed down by the mead, and with a giant in hot pursuit, Odin just barely managed to reach the safety of Asgard. He then spat the mead into a huge container and has had it guarded ever since. But it is said that a few drops spilled and fell to earth, which is where we get the mortal poets and our version of mead.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Isn't that beautiful, I love that so much like—
AMANDA: I love that.
JULIA: —oh a couple of drops, like escaped. And that's why that guy's such a good poet. He's just really good at it.
AMANDA: It's truly amazing. And of course, makes you think like, God, what if I had a whole sip, what if I had a whole glass?
JULIA: I know imagine how we would—it would be like the story of Orpheus, we would just be moving gods to tears, and they can't have that.
AMANDA: No, they certainly can't.
JULIA: And so that brings us to the final story, which is Ragnarok, and the death of Odin, the prophecy that he cannot avoid. And again, we've talked a little bit about Ragnarok on the show before, and we will continue to mention it because it is so fundamental to the story of all the gods, Aesir, and Vanir, and more. But there will be many things that come to herald Ragnarok according to the stories. First is the great winter which is Fimbul winter, which is three consecutive winters that will ravage the earth with no summers between them. Which honestly sounds a little bit better than the slow creep of global warming that's happening to us personally. But what can you do?
AMANDA: Eeee.
JULIA: It is said that the two wolves, Skoll and Hati who have always chased the Sun and Moon will finally catch their prey, which will bring the world into darkness. Again, beautiful imagery. And of course, like if you're gonna—again, a lot of mythology has like, oh, you know, this creature or this person is chasing after the moon or the sun and that's why, you know, we get the waxing and waning, and the rise and fall, but I really liked the idea of finally if someone catches it, and that's when the end of the world happens. There's also Jormungandr, who is the sea serpent who will break the land as the water is flooded and will spit venom across the land and sea poisoning everything, not a good time. The dome of the sky will split open and the fire giants of Muspelheim will burst forth. In this time Odin will go into the roots of Yggdrasill, looking for the Council of Mimir. And despite everything that Odin knows, for he knows how this will all end because he received that prophecy, he and the other Gods will gather up their arms and go off to fight. It's kind of like poetic full circle moment here, and I'm—I'm kind of obsessed with that.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: So in his golden armor, Odin and his chosen warriors of Valhalla will clash with the giant wolf Fenrir and fight more bravely than any warriors in the history of the world. It's not to brag or anything like that. However, he and his warriors will be overwhelmed and swallowed by Fenrir. And he is avenged by his son Vidar who rips apart the giant wolf's mouth, because why not?
AMANDA: Dang. I mean, they really pickled hearts, Julia. We thought Grimms fairy tales went hard. That's nothing.
JULIA: Yeah, that's nothing. So with Odin defeated, the world is engulfed in fire from the fire giant Surtr. Sometime later, though, it's not specified how much longer the flames will die down, and the earth will reappear from the seas. Life returns to the world, the gods Hodor and Baldr who had died are resurrected, and Odin and Thor's sons survive and reside in the temple of the gods. So while Ragnarok is the destruction of the world, it is not the end of the world. The prophecy while tragic kind of ends on a positive note, that the world will be reborn, a fresh and a new, just without Odin.
AMANDA: And that's the rub, isn't it? That life will go on just without us.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: You know, individually, and that is tough to hold in your brain.
JULIA: Yeah, it is. And like that is what flavors all of Odin. Again, like I don't mean to like keep harping on this. But it's so fundamental to who he is, as a person as a character in Norse mythology that you have to like, just keep reminding yourself, you're like, yeah, he made that decision, but it's because he knows the prophecy. He knows Ragnarok is coming, he knows he's going to die, but he's going to try to do everything to prevent it anyway. And it's beautiful in that sense. This is the Odin that we see in the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda. And of course, because he is such an impactful figure in Norse mythology, he has been portrayed many times in our modern pop culture. I'm sure, as anyone knows, Amanda has already made the reference to it. And as anyone who is familiar with Marvel whatsoever, knows that he has been portrayed by Sir Anthony Hopkins, one of my favorite actors of all time. In some very relevant video game news, Odin is portrayed in God of War Ragnarok by another one of my favorite actors, Richard Schiff of the West Wing Fame.
AMANDA: Oh my God, I didn't know that.
JULIA: It's very funny to like, watch the trailer. And all of a sudden, like Richard Schiff, just starts talking and you're like, Richard Schiff, what are you doing here? It's very funny, he only took the job because the son was like, dad, you can be in God of War being, God of War dad.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Yeah. Also interesting for our Lord of the Rings fans out there. Odin served as inspiration for the character of Gandalf. In a letter to Sir Stanley Unwin, in 1946, Tolkien wrote complained about the illustrations for the Hobbit, saying that Gandalf was to quote-unquote, “disneyfied”, which was a thing that you could say in 1946, which is wild.
AMANDA: What?
JULIA: Are you alright? Is that wild?
AMANDA: If it was like a jeopardy question, to identify the first time that the phrase disneyfied was used in print, I would guess like 1960.
JULIA: Exactly like you would think it would be post World War Two, but nope, not really.
AMANDA: Stunning.
JULIA: And he said, basically, the illustrations portraying Gandalf as, quote, a figure of vulgar fun, rather than the Odinic wanderer that I think of. I also love the phrase Odinic as a like, way of describing someone who is Odin-like.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah, I noticed actually a really good verb in poetry corner as well.
JULIA: Oh yeah.
AMANDA: The—the past tense of Thrive, throve.
JULIA: Throve, I know. He said it many times, throve—
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Throve, throve, throve. I love it.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: All in all, Amanda, Odin is placed as the figurehead of Norse mythology. At the same time, his stories are focused on the larger scale of what the world was and will be, apart from the story of how he became associated with poetry and mead, he's really not involved in the kind of minutiae and nitty-gritty lives of the other gods in the same way that someone like Zeus is, his focus was is and always will be the attempt to gain knowledge to stop the prophecy of Ragnarok. But in that regard, there is no better figure for us to start. It's Norse, of course, because he ties everything together. And that is why he's the all-father.
AMANDA: Incredible, not the fuck father, but the all-father. That's Odin for you.
JULIA: That's Odin for you. I am so excited to start this series. I hope everyone is as excited as me, and I think that there's a lot of fun and more interesting stuff to come here on It's Norse, of course.
AMANDA: Incredible Julia. Thank you and thank you, researcher, Sally, for bringing us such an incredible new series for 2023. I am so very stoked to learn more.
JULIA: Yeah, Sally was the one who got me really excited about the Richard Schiff in [55:29] We talked about it for like 20 minutes, I was like Richard Schiff. But remember listeners as you are trying to gain knowledge to stop the end of the world, stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
[theme]
AMANDA: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini, and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
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JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week.
AMANDA: Bye!