Thor went back home, stopping by the farm to get his two goats, but keeping Thjalfi and Roskva as servants. He was a greedy god; mercy meant nothing to him.
A huge eagle ate the gods’ meal. When Loki speared him, he found his hand was magically stuck to the weapon. In exchange for his freedom, Loki promised the eagle what he demanded: Idunn and her precious apples.
IDUNN’S APPLES
No one was guaranteed eternal life to their bodies. Death could claim anyone. But the gods, at least—unlike the humans, the giants, and the dwarfs—could go on living with youthful vitality unless something came along to cut them down. How the gods managed not to age and wither was no secret; it was because of the goddess Idunn.
Idunn had apples. And they were not ordinary. Anyone who had a bite became rejuvenated. How Idunn came to own those apples nobody knew, but she was a magician, for sure, and she fed her apples to the gods, and no one else. Everyone in the cosmos knew about Idunn and those apples.
Now one summer morning, Odin, Loki, and Hoenir went exploring a part of Midgard that was new to them. Odin was his usual bold self; Loki was his usual cunning self; and Hoenir—well, he was his usual taciturn self. Remember, he was the Aesir god, brother of Odin, who had been sent to live among the Vanir after the war between the two tribes of gods. It was Hoenir who made good judgments for the Vanir, but only with Mimir’s help. On his own, he kept his mouth shut.
The three gods tramped all day long. They followed a pebble-ridden glacier stream down into a valley and came across a herd of oxen—lucky for them, since they were famished. Loki killed an ox and Odin and Hoenir built a fire to roast it. The aroma was mouthwatering. But somehow the meat simply wasn’t getting cooked.
Wise Odin guessed the problem. “Someone’s working against us.”
“Me,” came the screech from an oak branch above them. The gods looked up at an enormous eagle. “Let me eat first. Then what’s left will cook to perfection for you.”
Since they had no choice, the gods agreed.
The eagle swooped down and set to eating a shoulder. Then a second. Then half the rump. Then the other half. What would be left? In a fury, Loki rammed his staff through the bird.
The bird screeched again and flew off, with the staff still piercing it and with Loki hanging on, for the god found that his hand was stuck to the staff. The eagle flew low to the ground and Loki banged along. Rocks and thorns scratched his legs and feet till they bled.
Nourishing Apples
Apples play a part in myths from many cultures.
The apple tree originated in central Asia and may have been the first tree to be cultivated. Apples have been grown in Asia and Europe for thousands of years. They were brought to North America by European colonists in the 17th century. The old saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” turns out to be right: Apples and apple products are important to child nutrition. So the appearance of apples in these old Norse tales, and their association to continued strength and vitality, is no surprise.
“Mercy!” called Loki.
The eagle flew close beside a glacier till Loki bled everywhere.
“Mercy!” cried Loki.
“Only if you swear …”
“What? I’ll swear to anything!”
“… to bring me Idunn and her apples.” The eagle smashed Loki against boulders now.
“I swear!”
“One week,” screeched the eagle. And he dropped Loki like a sack of broken bones.
The next week, as Idunn walked along with her basket full of golden apples, Loki ran up to her. “You won’t believe what I’ve seen,” he said.
And well she shouldn’t have, for Loki was about to lie, as usual. But Idunn paused and listened.
“A tree with golden apples that look just like yours,” said Loki. “Maybe they, too, are magical. The tree’s in the forest, on the other side of the bridge Bifrost. Come with me. Bring your apples to compare, and if those other apples really are the same, we’ll gather them for the gods.”
So Idunn crossed Bifrost with Loki. The instant she stepped off the flaming bridge, the eagle swooped down and carried Idunn and her basket of apples away, over the sea, straight to Jotunheim.
Loki met Idunn as she walked along holding her basket full of the golden apples that the gods nibbled on. Those apples kept the gods young and strong. He convinced her to cross Bifrost with him.
Loki wasn’t surprised at all. Jotunheim was the land of the giants, and Loki was already convinced that the eagle was in truth a giant. He was right: It was the giant Thjazi, who now locked Idunn in his home high in the mountains.
Soon enough the gods noticed Idunn’s absence. The alarming consequences made them shudder. They grew thin and weak. Their bones became birdlike. Their skin fell in soft folds. The eyes of some turned milky, their sight dim. The hands of some trembled. That one over there went bald. That one turned yellow with constipation, and that other one, red with the runs. They were tired, irritable, fragile. Now some spoke nonsense, while others couldn’t find the words they’d always known, and others had no voice even if the words danced in their head. Old age was no picnic.
Odin drew on what little energy remained within him and called a meeting in the hall Gladsheim. Everyone came except Idunn and Loki.
It didn’t take much to put two and two together and realize that Loki had stayed away because all of this was his fault. They had to find the trickster and force him to tell them where Idunn had gone.
While Idunn was locked in the home of the giant Thjazi, the gods suffered without her apples. They grew old and weak.
The decrepit gods shuffled along till they found Loki asleep in a field. They bound him and dragged him back to Odin. Weakened and helpless, Loki told all. He’d had no choice; the eagle, who was really the giant Thjazi, would have killed him if he hadn’t promised to bring him Idunn and her apples.
“Yes, you had to promise. But did you have to keep your promise?” asked Odin. It was a good question. For a liar like Loki, not keeping the promise should have been natural. So he’d kept that promise just to cause all this misery among the gods. “We’ll split your ribs,” said Odin. “They’ll spread like wings—like those of the eagle you befriended.”
“No!” screamed Loki. “I’ll bring back Idunn and her apples, if Freyja will lend me her falcon-feather cloak.”
Freyja handed the cloak to Loki, and wiped the few remaining fallen hairs from her shoulders. She was now completely bald, ravaged by old age.
Sneaky Loki had been responsible for Idunn’s being locked up by the giant. So he turned into a falcon and rescued her. Once the giant was dead, Idunn held out her hands, full of the apples of life.
“You’re not so beautiful anymore,” said Loki.
Freyja just wept those red-gold tears.
Enclosed in the feather cloak, Loki became a falcon. He flew to Thrymheim, high in the mountains of Jotunheim.
There Idunn huddled in a drafty room, waiting in fear for Thjazi to return from wherever he had gone. Loki turned Idunn into a nut and carried her in his claws back toward Asgard. Meanwhile, Thjazi came home with his daughter Skadi, saw that Idunn was missing, shape-shifted into an eagle, and flew after her. He was stronger than Loki—he gained on that falcon.
But Odin saw it all from his high seat, Hlidskjalf. He had all the gods gather wood shavings and set an enormous fire. Those teetering gods shook as they picked up a piece of kindling here, another there, but they did it. The fire was tremendous. Loki flew over it, but by the time Thjazi reached there, the flames were so high, they burned him up.
Loki chanted magic words to the nut.
Idunn stood among them again, young and fresh, and holding out apples.
Skadi, the giantess daughter of Thjazi, figured out that her missing father must have been slayed. Here she wears a helmet and coat of mail and carries her father’s shield and spear. She is ready for revenge against the Aesir.
SKADI & NJORD
High in
Thrymheim, Skadi watched her father, the giant Thjazi, shape-shift into an eagle and chase after Loki. An eagle is stronger than a falcon. And Thjazi was accustomed to flying as a bird, while Loki was new to it. Thjazi would catch the wily Loki and bring back Idunn and her apples, and Skadi and her father would be forever young.
All Skadi had to do was wait. But she wasn’t good at waiting. So she wandered the mountain. The scree moved underfoot with a crunch, crunch, as broken rock does. The brightness of the sheets of snow made her squint. The damp seeped through her skin and deep into her bones. What a dreary wasteland this part of Jotunheim was. Skadi smiled. It made her giantess heart throb with love. Nothing was better than sharing a bleak day in Thrymheim with her father.
Only something was wrong. The hours passed, the night grew old, and still Thjazi didn’t come back. Skadi picked at her elbows, at her knees, at the bumps on her toes, as she imagined the gods of Asgard playing some rotten trick on Thjazi. They were a bloody bunch; nothing was beneath them. By the time dawn came, a rocklike certainty had lodged in her stomach: Her father was dead.
Skadi put on a coat of chain mail. She put on a helmet. She touched each red beak and looked into all the shining eyes of the bird heads inlaid on the hide of her father’s tough shield. She closed her fingers tight around the white ash shaft of his battle spear.
Winter Travel
Skiing is an important part of Norse culture.
Skadi zoomed across snow on skis; that’s how she hunted. The ski goes back in history farther than the wheel, perhaps more than 20,000 years. A cave drawing in Lyon, France, from Paleolithic times suggests that Cro-Magnon man hunted reindeer during the last ice age on snowshoes, skis, and sleds. Skiing spread from Europe to Asia and then into North America. After many years, the entire Northern Hemisphere used skis. Our word “ski” comes from the Old Norse skí, stick.
Finally, she hung at her hip her father’s sword. The giant Surt had a flaming sword that he would swing against the Aesir at the terrible final battle, Ragnarok. The god Heimdall had the sword Hofud that knew everything in his head and thus slashed with intelligence. The god Frey had a sword that fought all on its own. But Skadi’s father’s sword was even better. It was incised with a serpent that struck terror into an enemy heart just as surely as venom.
Well armed, Skadi headed for Asgard, her lips puckered for the sweet kiss of vengeance.
Heimdall saw her coming, of course; he did his job of guard well. He blew Gjallarhorn to call the gods together. When Skadi arrived at the foot of the bridge Bifrost, the gods had already assembled. They had no wish to see more bloodshed, so they offered Skadi gold in recompense for her father’s death.
Skadi shrugged. What good could gold do her? She owned a mountain of gold. But she looked across at those gods and noticed that some of them weren’t hard on the eyes. One, in fact, was like eye candy—a certain Balder (for this was before the fair Balder had been slain). Skadi was a hot-blooded giantess. Yes, she grieved for her father’s companionship. But that Balder—ooh—he would sure add a spark to the dank nights in Thrymheim. So she said, instead of making off with a sack of gold, she’d pick a husband. “Gentle. Wise. And I won’t leave until I’ve had a bellyful of laughter.”
Now Skadi was not bad-looking herself. And the gods had often taken giantesses as wives. So Skadi’s demand was not unthinkable. Still, Odin couldn’t help but see that Skadi’s eye had rested a little too long on Balder, and Balder was his favorite—it wouldn’t do to let Skadi make decisions that affected Balder’s life. So Odin agreed. “On one condition,” he said. “You must choose your husband by his feet. All the rest of him will be covered.”
That didn’t sound off to Skadi. After all, a man as meltingly gorgeous as Balder surely had caressable feet. So the gods covered themselves but for their feet, and Skadi chose easily.
The giantess Skadi wanted revenge for the death of her father, Thjazi. So Odin let her choose a husband as her repayment—but she had to choose him by looking only at his feet.
Only it turned out she had chosen Njord. Njord was a rather rough-and-tumble god. He was one of the Vanir originally and had been traded after the war, so now he lived among the Aesir with his son Frey and his daughter Freyja. He was the god of seafaring folk and he looked the part: weathered cheeks, sea blue eyes, sea salt in his hair. He wasn’t what Skadi wanted. No, not at all.
But before Skadi could protest, Njord held up a warning hand. “Harsh words have no place at the beginning of a marriage.”
“I’ve been tricked,” said Skadi.
“Better me than Loki, no?” answered Njord.
Odin nodded. “Gentle and wise. You’ve got your husband, Skadi.”
The giantess Skadi demanded that she be made to laugh before she would agree to marry Njord. So Loki told a joke so funny that Skadi couldn’t keep herself from laughing.
“But the bellyful of laughter? Where is that?” Skadi shook her head. “I’ll never laugh again.”
So Loki took over. The trickster liked to think of himself as a problem solver, after all. He told a bawdy story about a goat accompanying him to market and a tug-of-war that involved a lot of noise and no small amount of pain to Loki’s private parts, and in the confusion of telling it all, he fell back into Skadi’s arms. The giantess laughed in spite of herself.
And so Skadi had all that she had required. There was no way she could back out of the bargain now.
But Odin decided to sweeten the deal further. He took from his pouch two wet marbles. Skadi gasped as the eyes of her father stared at her. Odin flung them high so they clung to the sky, twin stars to gleam down on Skadi.
The god Njord loved his shipyard, and the giantess Skadi loved her snowy mountains. Though they were husband and wife, they couldn’t find any place to live that made them both happy.
Njord held out his hand, inviting his new wife to come live with him at his beloved shipyard, Noatun. Then began the first struggle of many between the newlyweds, for Skadi said she’d never live anywhere but Thrymheim. At last they agreed to spend nine nights in one home and then nine nights in the other. They began with Thrymheim, for Njord had a gentlemanly streak. But the god soon learned he hated those frozen mountains; they felt like death to him. The howling of the wolves kept him awake. After nine nights they went to Noatun. But the giantess soon learned she hated the sight of the boats rocking on the sea endlessly, endlessly. Worse was the whooping of the swans and the mewing of the gulls. She got no sleep, not even when Njord sang stories to her.
It wasn’t long before husband and wife parted, each to live in their own realm. Njord heard about Skadi often, and every now and then he saw her—a fleet figure skiing across the snowscapes, determined in her desolation.
Some marriages just aren’t meant to be.
Frey did the unthinkable: He sat on Odin’s throne. From there, he saw the gorgeous young giantess Gerd. The sun shone down on her and made her sparkle. Frey fell instantly in love—a desperate situation for him, since he had always hated giants.
FREY & GERD
Frey was Njord’s son. He was a Vanir by origin, but when his father was traded to the Aesir after the great war, he and his sister Freyja accompanied the old man. That was fine with Frey; the gods were good to him. As a babe, when he cut his first tooth, the gods held the usual teething celebration and gave him rule over all Alfheim as a gift. The light elves of that land loved him, and why not? Frey was god of sunshine and sweet breezes. He rode around in a wagon pulled by the boar Gullinbursti, whose gold mane lit the way, and he strewed flowers and fruits to onlookers. Or he sailed in his ship Skidbladnir, the ship that always found winds to drive it in the direction the captain wished. Humans loved this god, too, for he brought the season when plants grew. He was responsible for the fertility of the cosmos. The only ones who didn’t love Frey, in fact, were the giants. They had little tolerance for sunshine and sweet breezes, after all. They liked Jotunheim icy. And Frey returned their hostility with his own. Frost gi
ants were a scourge upon the cosmos as far as he was concerned.
So, while Frey lived in Alfheim, he felt entirely at home in Asgard. In fact, he felt so at home that one day he did something he had no right to do, something only Odin and his goddess wife, Frigg, did: He sat on the high seat Hlidskjalf and looked out over the nine worlds. That’s when his troubles began.
He looked north toward Jotunheim. One of the biggest halls there belonged to the giant Gymir. And Gymir had a daughter. A lovely daughter. Oh, what a smashingly lovely daughter. This daughter, glorious Gerd, came out of her father’s fine hall just as Frey was looking her way. As she turned to shut the hall doors behind her, the light of all nine worlds glistened on her arms. She sparkled brighter than gold, brighter than stars, brighter even than sun on snow.
Frey stared. He couldn’t take his eyes off Gerd.
When the girl closed herself inside her own hall, Frey finally shut his eyes. But the image of her burned in his brain. He could see nothing else. He stumbled from Odin’s hall aching with longing. He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t eat. He pined for Gerd. Frey was lovesick—afflicted.
Midnight Sun
Aurora borealis in Norway
All the lands north of the Arctic Circle have long days in summer—so much so that on some days the sun shines continually—and short days in winter—so much so that on some days the sun never shines. For Norway the darkness of winter is combined with steep mountains and deep, cold fjords. Winds can make it nearly impossible to walk outside. All these facts make winter exceptionally lonely for people who do not live with others. So when Skirnir threatens Gerd in this story with never having a husband, he is relying on her fear of torturous isolation.
Treasury of Norse Mythology Page 6
