Norse Mythology

by Neil Gaiman

  “I have a bad feeling about this,” said Thor.

  “Don’t speak,” said Loki in the form of a maiden. “Let me do all the talking. Can you remember that? If you speak, you may ruin everything.”

  Thor grunted.

  They landed in the courtyard. Giant-sized jet-black oxen stood impassively. Each beast was larger than a house; the tips of their horns were capped with gold, and the courtyard stank with the sharp smell of their dung.

  A booming voice could be heard from inside the huge high hall: “Move it, you fools! Spread clean straw on the benches! What do you think you’re doing? Well, pick it up or cover it with straw, don’t just leave it there to rot. This is Freya, the most beautiful creature in existence, Njord’s daughter, who comes to us. She won’t want to see something like that.”

  There was a path made of fresh straw through the courtyard, and after leaving their chariot, the disguised Thor and the serving maiden who was Loki walked across the straw, lifting their skirts so they did not drag in the muck.

  A giant woman was waiting for them. She introduced herself as Thrym’s sister, and she reached down and pinched Loki’s pretty cheek between her fingertips, and she prodded Thor with one sharp fingernail. “So this is the most beautiful woman in the world? Doesn’t look much to me. And when she picked up her skirts, it seemed to me that her ankles were as thick as small tree trunks.”

  “A trick of the light. She is the most beautiful of all the gods,” said the maiden who was Loki smoothly. “When her veil comes off, I promise you will be struck down by her beauty. Now, where is her groom? Where is the wedding feast? She is so eager for this, I have barely been able to restrain her.”

  The sun was setting as they were led into the great hall for the wedding feast.

  “What if he wants me to sit next to him?” whispered Thor to Loki.

  “You have to sit next to him. That’s where the bride sits.”

  “But he might try and put his hand on my leg,” Thor whispered urgently.

  “I’ll sit between you,” said Loki. “I’ll tell him it’s our custom.”

  Thrym sat at the head of the table, and Loki sat next to him, with Thor at the next seat on the bench.

  Thrym clapped his hands and giant serving men came in. They carried five whole roast oxen, enough to feed the giants; they brought in twenty whole baked salmon, each fish the size of a ten-year-old boy; also they carried in dozens of trays of little pastries and fancies intended for the women.

  They were followed by five more serving men, each one carrying a whole cask of mead, a barrel huge enough that each giant struggled beneath the weight of it.

  “This meal is for the beautiful Freya!” said Thrym, and he might have said something else, but Thor had already started to eat and to drink, and it would have been rude for Thrym to have talked while the bride-to-be was eating.

  A tray of pastries for the womenfolk was placed in front of Loki and Thor. Loki carefully picked out the smallest pastry. Thor just as carefully swept the rest of the pastries up, and they vanished, to the sound of munching, under the veil. The other women, who had been looking at the pastries hungrily, glared, disappointed, at the beautiful Freya.

  But the beautiful Freya had not even begun to eat.

  Thor ate a whole ox, all by himself. He ate seven entire salmon, leaving nothing but the bones. Each time a tray of pastries was brought to him, he devoured all the fancies and pastries on it, leaving all the other women hungry. Sometimes Loki would kick him under the table, but Thor ignored every kick and just kept eating.

  Thrym tapped Loki on the shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said. “But the lovely Freya has just polished off her third cask of mead.”

  “I’m sure she has,” said the maiden who was Loki.

  “Amazing. I’ve never seen any woman eat so ravenously. Never seen any woman eat so much, or drink so much mead.”

  “There is,” said Loki, “an obvious explanation.” He took a deep breath and watched Thor inhale another whole salmon and pull a salmon skeleton out from under his veil. It was like watching a magic trick. He wondered what the obvious explanation was.

  “That makes eight salmon she’s eaten,” said Thrym.

  “Eight days and eight nights!” said Loki suddenly. “She hasn’t eaten for eight days and eight nights, she was so keen to come to the land of the giants and make love to her new husband. Now she is in your presence, she is finally eating again.” The maiden turned to Thor. “It’s so good to see you eating again, my dear!” she said.

  Thor glared at Loki from beneath the veil.

  “I should kiss her,” said Thrym.

  “I wouldn’t advise it. Not yet,” said Loki, but Thrym had already leaned over and was making kissing noises. With one huge hand he reached for Thor’s veil. The maiden who was Loki put out her arm to stop him, but it was too late. Thrym had already stopped making kissing noises and had sprung back, shaken.

  Thrym tapped the maiden who was Loki on the shoulder. “Can I talk with you?” he said.

  “Of course.”

  They got up and walked across the hall.

  “Why are Freya’s eyes so . . . so terrifying?” asked Thrym. “It seemed as if there was a fire burning inside them. Those weren’t the eyes of a beautiful woman!”

  “Of course not,” said the maiden who was Loki smoothly. “You wouldn’t expect them to be. She hasn’t slept for eight days and eight nights, mighty Thrym. She was so consumed by love for you that she dared not sleep, she was so mad to taste your love. She’s burning up inside for you! That’s what you’re seeing in those eyes. Burning passion.”

  “Oh,” said Thrym. “I see.” He smiled, and licked his lips with a tongue bigger than a human pillow. “Well, then.”

  They walked back to the table. Thrym’s sister had sat down in Loki’s seat, beside Thor, and was tapping her fingernails on Thor’s hand. “If you know what‘s good for you, you‘ll give me your rings,” she was saying. “All your pretty golden rings. You’ll be a stranger in this castle. You’ll need someone looking out for you, otherwise things are going to get pretty nasty, so far from home. You’ve got so many rings. Give me some as a bridal gift. So pretty they are, all red and gold—”

  “Isn’t it time for the wedding?” asked Loki.

  “It is!” said Thrym. He boomed at the top of his voice, “Bring in the hammer to sanctify the bride! I want to see Mjollnir placed on the beautiful Freya’s lap. Let Var, the goddess of pledges between men and women, bless and consecrate our love.”

  It took four giants to carry Thor’s hammer. They brought it in from deep inside the hall. It glinted dully in the firelight. With difficulty, they placed it on Thor’s lap.

  “Now,” said Thrym. “Now, let me hear your beautiful voice, my love, my dove, my sweetness. Tell me that you love me. Tell me that you will be my bride. Tell me that you pledge yourself to me as women have pledged themselves to men, and men to women, since the beginning of time. What do you say?”

  Thor held the haft of his hammer with a hand that was covered with golden rings. He squeezed it reassuringly. It felt familiar and comfortable in his hand. He started laughing then, a deep, booming laugh.

  “What I say,” said Thor, in a voice like thunder, “is that you should not have taken my hammer.”

  He hit Thrym with his hammer, only once, but once was all it took. The ogre fell to the straw-covered floor, and did not rise again.

  All the giants and ogres fell beneath Thor’s hammer: the guests at the wedding that was never to be. Even Thrym’s sister, who received a bridal gift she had not been expecting.

  And when the hall was silent, Thor called “Loki?”

  Loki climbed out from under the table, in his original shape, and surveyed the carnage. “Well,” he said, “you appear to have dealt with the problem.”

  Thor was already taking off
his women’s skirts, with relief. He stood there wearing nothing but a shirt in a room filled with dead giants.

  “There, that wasn’t as bad as I had feared,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve got my hammer back. And I had a good dinner. Let’s go home.”

  THE MEAD OF POETS

  Do you wonder where poetry comes from? Where we get the songs we sing and the tales we tell? Do you ever ask yourself how it is that some people can dream great, wise, beautiful dreams and pass those dreams on as poetry to the world, to be sung and retold as long as the sun rises and sets, as long as the moon will wax and wane? Have you ever wondered why some people make beautiful songs and poems and tales, and some of us do not?

  It is a long story, and it does no credit to anyone: there is murder in it, and trickery, lies and foolishness, seduction and pursuit. Listen.

  It began not long after the dawn of time, in a war between the gods: the Aesir fought the Vanir. The Aesir were warlike gods of battle and conquest; the Vanir were softer, brother and sister gods and goddesses who made the soils fertile and the plants grow, but none the less powerful for that.

  The gods of the Vanir and the Aesir were too well matched. Neither side could win the war. And more than that, as they fought they realized that each side needed the other: that there is no joy in a brave battle unless you have fine fields and farms to feed you in the feasting that follows.

  They came together to negotiate a peace, and once the negotiations were concluded, they marked their truce by each of them, Aesir and Vanir alike, one by one spitting into a vat. As their spit mingled, so was their agreement made binding.

  Then they had a feast. Food was eaten, mead was drunk, and they caroused and joked and talked and boasted and laughed as the fires became glowing coals, until the sun crept up above the horizon. Then, as the Aesir and the Vanir roused themselves to leave, to wrap themselves in furs and cloth and step out into the crisp snow and the morning mist, Odin said, “It would be a shame to leave our mingled spittle behind us.”

  Frey and Freya, brother and sister, were leaders of the Vanir who would stay with the Aesir in Asgard from now on, under the terms of the truce. They nodded. “We could make something from it,” said Frey. “We should make a man,” said Freya, and she reached into the vat.

  The spittle transformed and took shape as her fingers moved, and in moments it had taken on the appearance of a man and stood naked before them.

  “You are Kvasir,” said Odin. “Do you know who I am?”

  “You are Odin all-highest,” said Kvasir. “You are Grimnir and Third. You have other names, too many to list in this place, but I know them all, and I know the poems and the chants and the kennings that go with them.”

  Kvasir, made of the joining of the Aesir and the Vanir, was the wisest of the gods: he combined head and heart. The gods jostled each other to be the next to ask him questions, and his answers to them were always wise. He observed keenly, and he interpreted what he saw correctly.

  Soon enough, Kvasir turned to the gods and said, “I am going to travel now. I am going to see the nine worlds, see Midgard. There are questions to be answered that I have not yet been asked.”

  “But you will come back to us?” they asked.

  “I will come back,” said Kvasir. “There is the mystery of the net, after all, which one day will need to be untangled.”

  “The what?” asked Thor. But Kvasir merely smiled, and he left the gods puzzling over his words, and he put on a traveling cloak, and he left Asgard and walked the rainbow bridge.

  Kvasir went from town to town, from village to village. He met people of all kinds, and he treated them well and answered their questions, and there was not a place but was the better for Kvasir’s stopping there.

  In those days there were two dark elves who lived in a fortress by the sea. They did magic there, and feats of alchemy. Like all dwarfs, they built things, wonderful, remarkable things, in their workshop and their forge. But there were things they had not yet made, and making those things obsessed them. They were brothers, and were called Fjalar and Galar.

  When they heard that Kvasir was visiting a town nearby, they set out to meet him. Fjalar and Galar found Kvasir in the great hall, answering questions for the townsfolk, amazing all who listened. He told the people how to purify water and how to make cloth from nettles. He told one woman exactly who had stolen her knife, and why. Once he was done talking and the townsfolk had fed him, the dwarfs approached.

  “We have a question to ask you that you have never been asked before,” they said. “But it must be asked in private. Will you come with us?”

  “I will come,” said Kvasir.

  They walked to the fortress. The seagulls screamed, and the brooding gray clouds were the same shade as the gray of the waves. The dwarfs led Kvasir to their workshop, deep within the walls of their fortress.

  “What are those?” asked Kvasir.

  “They are vats. They are called Son and Bodn.”

  “I see. And what is that over there?”

  “How can you be so wise when you do not know these things? It is a kettle. We call it Odrerir—ecstasy-giver.”

  “And I see over here you have buckets of honey you have gathered. It is uncapped, and liquid.”

  “Indeed we do,” said Fjalar.

  Galar looked scornful. “If you were as wise as they say you are, you would know what our question to you would be before we asked it. And you would know what these things are for.”

  Kvasir nodded in a resigned way. “It seems to me,” he said, “that if you were both intelligent and evil, you might have decided to kill your visitor and let his blood flow into the vats Son and Bodn. And then you would heat his blood gently in your kettle, Odrerir. And after that you would blend uncapped honey into the mixture and let it ferment until it became mead—the finest mead, a drink that will intoxicate anyone who drinks it but also give anyone who tastes it the gift of poetry and the gift of scholarship.”

  “We are intelligent,” admitted Galar. “And perhaps there are those who might think us evil.”

  And with that he slashed Kvasir’s throat, and they hung Kvasir by his feet above the vats until the last drop of his blood was drained. They warmed the blood and the honey in the kettle called Odrerir, and did other things to it of their own devising. They put berries into it, and stirred it with a stick. It bubbled, and then it ceased bubbling, and both of them sipped it and laughed, and each of the brothers found the verse and the poetry inside himself that he had never let out.

  The gods came the next morning. “Kvasir,” they said. “He was last seen with you.”

  “Yes,” said the dwarfs. “He came back with us, but when he realized that we are only dwarfs, and foolish and lacking in wisdom, he choked on his own knowledge. If only we had been able to ask him questions.”

  “He died, you say?”

  “Yes,” said Fjalar and Galar, and they gave the gods Kvasir’s bloodless body to take back to Asgard, for a god’s funeral and perhaps (because gods are not as others, and death is not always permanent for them) for a god’s eventual return.

  Thus it was that the dwarfs had the mead of wisdom and poetry, and any person who wished to taste it needed to beg it from the dwarfs. But Galar and Fjalar gave the mead only to those they liked, and they liked nobody but themselves.

  Still, there were those to whom they had obligations. The giant Gilling, for example, and his wife: the dwarfs invited them to come and visit their fortress, and one winter’s day they came.

  “Let us go rowing in our boat,” the dwarfs told Gilling.

  The giant’s weight made the boat ride low in the water, and the dwarfs rowed the boat onto the rocks just under the surface. Always before their boat had floated serenely above the rocks. Not this time. The boat crashed onto the rocks and overturned, throwing the giant into the sea.

  “Swim back to the
boat,” the brothers called to Gilling.

  “I cannot swim,” he said, and that was the last thing he said, for a wave filled his open mouth with salt water, and his head hit the rocks, and in a moment he was lost to view.

  Fjalar and Galar righted their boat and went home.

  Gilling’s wife was waiting for them.

  “Where is my husband?” she asked.

  “Him?” said Galar. “Oh, he’s dead.”

  “Drowned,” added Fjalar helpfully.

  At this the giant’s wife wailed and sobbed as if each cry were being ripped from her soul. She called to her dead husband and swore she would love him always, and she cried and moaned and wept.

  “Hush!” said Galar. “Your weeping and wailing hurts my ears. It’s very loud. I expect that’s because you’re a giant.”

  But the giant’s wife simply wept the louder.

  “Here,” said Fjalar. “Would it help if we showed you the place where your husband died?”

  She sniffed, and nodded, and cried and wailed and keened for her husband, who would never come back to her.

  “Stand just over there and we will point it out to you,” said Fjalar, showing her exactly where she should stand, that she should go through the great door and stand beneath the wall of the fortress. And he nodded to his brother, who scurried off up the steps to the wall above.

  As Gilling’s wife walked through the door, Galar dropped a huge stone on her head, and she fell, her skull half crushed.

  “Good job,” said Fjalar. “I was getting very tired of those dreadful noises.”

  They pushed the woman’s lifeless body off the rocks and into the sea. The fingers of the gray waves dragged her body away from them, and Gilling’s wife and Gilling were reunited in death.

  The dwarfs shrugged, and believed themselves to be extremely clever in their fortress by the sea.

  They drank the mead of poetry each night, and declaimed great and beautiful verses to each other, made mighty sagas about the death of Gilling and Gilling’s wife, which they declaimed from the rooftop of their fortress, and eventually each night they slept, insensible, and woke where they had sat down or fallen the night before.