Norse Mythology

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.

One day they woke as usual, but they did not wake in their fortress.

They woke on the floor of their boat, and a giant whom they did not recognize was rowing it into the waves. The sky was dark with storm clouds and the sea was black. The waves were high and rough, and the salt water splashed over the side of the dwarfs’ boat, soaking them.

“Who are you?” asked the dwarfs.

“I am Suttung,” said the giant. “I heard you were bragging to the wind and the waves and the world about having killed my father and mother.”

“Ah,” said Galar. “Does that explain why you have tied us up?”

“It does,” said Suttung.

“Perhaps you are taking us to a glorious place,” said Fjalar hopefully, “where you will untie us, and there we will feast and drink and laugh and become the best of friends.”

“I do not believe so,” said Suttung.

It was low tide. There were rocks jutting out above the water. They were the same rocks upon which at high tide the dwarfs’ boat had overturned, on which Gilling had drowned. Suttung picked up each of the dwarfs, took him from the bottom of the boat, and placed him on the rocks.

“These rocks will be covered by the sea at high tide,” said Fjalar. “Our hands are tied behind our backs. We cannot swim. If you leave us here, we will undoubtedly drown.”

“That is certainly the intention,” said Suttung. He smiled then, for the first time. “And as you drown I shall sit in this, your boat, and I shall watch the sea take you both. Then I shall return home to Jotunheim, and I will tell my brother, Baugi, and my daughter, Gunnlod, how you died, and we will be satisfied that my mother and my father were appropriately avenged.”

The sea began to rise. It covered the dwarfs’ feet, and then it came up to their navels. Soon enough the dwarfs’ beards were floating in the foam and there was panic in their eyes.

“Mercy!” they called.

“Like the mercy you gave my mother and my father?”

“We will compensate you for their deaths! We will make it up to you! We will pay you.”

“I do not believe that you dwarfs possess anything that could compensate me for my parents’ deaths. I am a wealthy giant. I have many servants in my mountain fastness, and all the riches I could dream of. Gold I have, and precious stones, and iron enough to make a thousand swords. I am the master of mighty magics. What could you give me that I do not already have?” asked Suttung.

The dwarfs said nothing at all.

The waves continued to rise.

“We have mead, the mead of poetry,” sputtered Galar as the water brushed his lips.

“Made of Kvasir’s blood, wisest of all the gods!” shouted Fjalar. “Two vats and a kettle, all filled with it! No one has it but us, no one in the whole world!”

Suttung scratched his head. “I must think about this. I must ponder. I must reflect.”

“Do not stop and think! If you think, we will drown!” shouted Fjalar over the roar of the waves.

The tide rose. Waves were splashing over the dwarfs’ heads, and they were gulping air, and their eyes were round with fear when Suttung the giant reached out and plucked first Fjalar and then Galar from the waves.

“The mead of poetry will be adequate compensation. It is a fair price, if you throw in a few other things, and I am sure you dwarfs have a few other things. I shall spare your lives.”

He tossed them, still bound and soaking, into the bottom of the boat, where they wriggled uncomfortably, like a couple of bearded lobsters, and he rowed back to shore.

Suttung took the mead the dwarfs had made from Kvasir’s blood. He took other things from them as well, and he left that place and he left those dwarfs, who were, all things considered, happy enough to have gotten away with their lives.

Fjalar and Galar told people who passed their fortress the story of how ill-used they had been by Suttung. They told it in the market when next they went to trade. They told it when ravens were near.

In Asgard, at his high seat, Odin sat, and his ravens, Huginn and Muninn, whispered to him of the things they had seen and heard as they had wandered the world. Odin’s one eye flashed when he heard the tale of Suttung’s mead.

The people who heard the story called the mead of poetry “the ship of the dwarfs” since it had floated Fjalar and Galar off the rocks and taken them safely home; they called it Suttung’s mead; they called it the liquid of Odrerir or Bodn or Son.

Odin listened to his ravens’ words. He called for his cloak and his hat. He sent for the gods and told them to prepare three enormous wooden vats, the largest vats that they could build, and to have them waiting by the gates of Asgard. He told the gods he would be leaving them to walk the world, and might be some time.

“I will take two things with me,” said Odin. “I need a whetstone, to sharpen a blade with. The finest we have here. And I wish to have the auger, the drill, called Rati.” Rati means “drill,” and Rati was the finest drill the gods possessed. It could drill deeply, and drill through the hardest rock.

Odin tossed the whetstone into the air and caught it again and put it into his pouch beside the auger. Then he walked away.

“I wonder what he’s going to do,” said Thor.

“Kvasir would have known,” said Frigg. “He knew everything.”

“Kvasir is dead,” said Loki. “As for me, I do not care where the all-father is going, or why.”

“I am off to help build the wooden vats that the all-father requested,” said Thor.

Suttung had given the precious mead to his daughter, Gunnlod, to watch over inside the mountain called Hnitbjorg, in the heart of giant country. Odin did not go to the mountain. Instead he went directly to the farmland owned by Suttung’s brother, Baugi.

It was spring, and the fields were high with grasses to be cut for hay. Baugi had nine slaves, giants like himself, and they were cutting the grass for hay with huge scythes, each scythe the size of a small tree.

Odin watched them. When they stopped work, when the sun was at its highest, to eat their provisions, Odin sauntered over to them and said, “I have been watching you all work. Tell me, why does your master let you cut grass with such blunt scythes?”

“Our blades are not blunt,” said one of the workers.

“Why would you say that?” asked another. “Our blades are the sharpest.”

“Let me show you what a well-sharpened blade can do,” said Odin. He took the whetstone from his pouch and drew it along first one scythe blade, then another, until each blade glimmered in the sun. The giants stood around him awkwardly, watching him as he worked. “Now,” said Odin, “try them out.”

The giant slaves swept their scythes through the meadow grass and gasped and exclaimed with pleasure. The blades were so sharp they made cutting the grass effortless. The blades swept through the thickest stalks and met with no resistance.

“This is wonderful!” they told Odin. “Can we buy your whetstone?”

“Buy it?” said the all-father. “Absolutely not. Let us do something more fair and more fun. All of you, come here. Stand in a group, each man holding his scythe tightly. Stand closer.”

“We can stand no closer,” said one of the giant slaves. “For the scythes are very sharp.”

“You are wise,” said Odin. He held up the whetstone. “I tell you this. The one of you who catches it, he alone shall have it!” and so saying, he tossed the whetstone into the air.

Nine giants jumped at the whetstone as it descended, each reaching with his free hand, paying no attention to the scythe he held (each scythe with a blade sharpened by the all-father at his whetstone, whetted to a perfect sharpness).

They jumped and they reached and the blades glinted in the sun.

There was a spray and a spurt of crimson in the sunlight, and the bodies of the slaves crumpled and twitched and one by one fell to the freshly cut grass. Odin stepped over the bodies of the giants, retrieved the whetstone of the gods, and placed it back in his pouch.

Each of the nine slaves had died with his throat cut by his fellow’s blade.

Odin walked to the hall of Baugi, Suttung’s brother, and asked for lodging for the night. “I am called Bolverkr,” said Odin.

“Bolverkr,” said Baugi. “A dismal name. It means ‘worker of terrible things.’”

“Only to my enemies,” said the person who called himself Bolverkr. “My friends appreciate the things I do. I can do the work of nine men, and I will work tirelessly and without complaint.”

“Lodging for the night is yours,” said Baugi, sighing. “But you have come to me on a dark day. Yesterday I was a rich man, with many fields and with nine slaves to plant and to harvest, to labor and to build. Tonight I still own my fields and my animals, but all my servants are dead. They slew each other. I do not know why.”

“A dark day indeed,” said Bolverkr, who was Odin. “Can you not get other workmen?”

“Not this year,” sighed Baugi. “It is already spring. The good workers are already working for my brother Suttung, and few enough people come here in the way of things. You are the first traveler who has asked me for lodging and hospitality in many a year.”

“And lucky you are that I did. For I can do the work of nine men.”

“You are not a giant,” said Baugi. “You are a little shrimp of a thing. How could you do the work of one of my servants, let alone nine of them?”

“If I cannot do the work of your nine men,” said Bolverkr, “then you need not pay me. But if I do . . .”

“Yes?”

“Even in distant parts we have heard tales about your brother Suttung’s extraordinary mead. They say it bestows the gift of poetry on anyone who drinks it.”

“This is true. Suttung was never a poet when we were young. I was the poet in the family. But since he has returned with the dwarfs’ mead, he has become a poet and a dreamer.”

“If I work for you, and plant and build and harvest for you, and do the work of your dead servants, I would like to taste your brother Suttung’s mead.”

“But . . .” Baugi’s forehead creased. “But that is not mine to give. It is Suttung’s.”

“A pity,” said Bolverkr. “Then I wish you luck in getting the harvest in this year.”

“Wait! It is not mine, true. But if you can do what you say, I will go with you to see my brother Suttung. And I will do all I can to help you taste his mead.”

“Then,” said Bolverkr, “we have a deal.”

Never was there a harder worker than Bolverkr. He worked the land harder than twenty men, let alone nine. Single-handed he looked after the animals. Single-handed he harvested the crops. He worked the land, and the land repaid him a thousandfold.

“Bolverkr,” said Baugi as the first mists of winter rolled down the mountain, “you are misnamed. For you have worked nothing but good.”

“Have I done the work of nine men?”

“You have, and nine again.”

“Then will you help me to get a taste of Suttung’s mead?”

“I shall!”

The next morning they rose early and walked and walked and walked, and by evening they had left Baugi’s land and reached Suttung’s, on the edge of the mountains. By nightfall they reached Suttung’s huge hall.

“Greetings, brother Suttung,” said Baugi. “This is Bolverkr, my servant for the summer and my friend.” And he told Suttung of his agreement with Bolverkr. “So you see,” he concluded, “I must ask you to give him a taste of the mead of poetry.”

Suttung’s eyes were like chips of ice. “No,” he said flatly.

“No?” said Baugi.

“No, I will not give away a single drop of that mead. Not one drop. I have it safe in its vats, in Bodn and Son and the kettle Odrerir. Those vats are deep inside the mountain of Hnitbjorg, which opens only to my command. My daughter, Gunnlod, guards it. This servant of yours cannot taste it. You cannot taste it.”

“But,” said Baugi, “it was blood compensation for our parents’ deaths. Don’t I deserve the smallest measure of it, to show Bolverkr here that I am an honorable giant?”

“No,” said Suttung. “You don’t.”

They left his hall.

Baugi was disconsolate. He walked with his shoulders hunched high and his mouth drooping down. Every few paces, Baugi would apologize to Bolverkr. “I did not think my brother would be so unreasonable,” he would say.

“He is indeed unreasonable,” said Bolverkr, who was Odin in disguise. “But you and I could play a little trick or two on him, so that he would not be so high and mighty in future. So that next time he will listen to his brother.”

“We could do that,” said the giant Baugi, and he stood straighter, and the corners of his mouth tightened into something that almost resembled a smile. “What are we going to do?”

“First,” said Bolverkr, “we will climb Hnitbjorg, the beating mountain.”

They climbed Hnitbjorg together, the giant going first, and Bolverkr, doll-sized in comparison, never falling behind. They clambered up the paths that the mountain sheep and goats made, and then they scrambled up rocks until they were high in the mountain. The first snows of winter had fallen on the ice that had not melted from the winter before. They heard the wind as it whistled about the mountain. They heard the cries of birds far below them. And there was something else they could hear.

It was a noise like a human voice. It seemed to be coming from the rocks of the mountain, but it was always distant, as if it were coming from inside the mountain itself.

“What noise is that?” asked Bolverkr.

Baugi frowned. “It sounds like my niece Gunnlod, singing.”

“Then we will stop here.”

From his leather pouch Bolverkr produced the auger called Rati. “Here,” he said. “You are a giant, and big and strong. Why don’t you use this auger to drill into the side of the mountain?”

Baugi took the auger. He pushed it against the mountainside and began to twist. The tip of the auger drilled into the mountainside like a screw into soft cork. Baugi turned it and turned it, again and again.

“Done it,” said Baugi. He pulled out the auger.

Bolverkr leaned over the hole made by the drill and blew into it. Chips and the dust of rocks blew back at him. “I have just learned two things,” said Bolverkr.

“What two things are these?” asked Baugi.

“That we are not yet through the mountain,” said Bolverkr. “You must keep drilling.”

“That is only one thing,” said Baugi. But Bolverkr said nothing more on that high mountainside, where the icy winds clawed and clutched at them. Baugi pushed the drill Rati back into its hole and began to turn it once more.

It was getting dark when Baugi pulled the auger from the hole again. “It broke through into the inside of the mountain,” he said.

Bolverkr said nothing, but he blew gently into the hole, and this time he saw the chips of rock blow inward.

As he blew, he was aware that something was coming toward him from behind. Bolverkr transformed himself then: he turned himself into a snake, and the sharp auger plunged into the place where his head had been.

“The second thing I learned when you lied to me,” hissed the snake to Baugi, who stood, astonished, holding the auger like a weapon, “was that you would betray me.” And with a flick of its tail, the snake vanished into the hole in the mountainside.

Baugi struck again with the auger, but the snake was gone, and he flung the drill from him angrily and heard it clatter on the rocks below. He thought about going back to Suttung’s hall and once he was there telling his brother that he had helped bring a powerful magician up Hnitbjorg, had even helped him to get inside the mountain. He imagined Suttung’s reaction to this news.

And then, his shoulders slumping and his mouth drooping, Baugi climbed down the mountain and trudged off home, to his own hearth and his own hall. Whatever happened in the future to his brother or to his brother’s precious mead, why, it was nothing to do with him.

Bolverkr slid in snake shape through the hole in the mountain until the hole ended and he found himself in a huge cavern.

The cavern was lit by crystals, with a cold light. Odin transformed himself from snake shape into man shape once more, and not just a man but a huge man, giant-sized, and well formed. Then he walked forward, following the sound of song.

Gunnlod, the daughter of Suttung, stood in the cavern in front of a locked door, behind which were the vats called Son and Bodn and the kettle Odrerir. She held a sharp sword in her hands, and she sang to herself as she stood.

“Well met, brave maiden!” said Odin.

Gunnlod stared at him. “I do not know who you are,” she said. “Name yourself, stranger, and tell me why I should let you live. I am Gunnlod, guardian of this place.”

“I am Bolverkr,” said Odin, “and I deserve death, I know, for daring to come to this place. But stay your hand, and let me look upon you.”

Gunnlod said, “My father, Suttung, set me on guard here, to protect the mead of poetry.”

Bolverkr shrugged. “Why would I care for the mead of poetry? I came here only because I had heard of the beauty and the courage and the virtue of Gunnlod, Suttung’s daughter. I told myself, ‘If she just lets you look at her, it will be worth it. If, of course, she is as beautiful as they say in the tales.’ That was what I thought.”

Gunnlod stared at the handsome giant in front of her. “And was it worth it, Bolverkr-who-is-about-to-die?”

“More than worth it,” he told her. “For you are more beautiful than any tale I have ever heard or any song that any bard could compose. More beautiful than a mountain peak, more beautiful than a glacier, more beautiful than a field of fresh-fallen snow at dawn.”

Gunnlod looked down, and her cheeks reddened.

“Can I sit beside you?” asked Bolverkr.

Gunnlod nodded, saying nothing.

She had food there in the mountain, and drink, and they ate and they drank.

After they ate, they kissed gently in the darkness.

After their lovemaking, Bolverkr said sadly, “I wish I could taste one sip of the mead from the vat called Son. Then I could make a true song about your eyes, and all men would sing it when they wanted to sing of beauty.”

“One sip?” she asked.

“A sip so small nobody would ever know,” he said. “But I am in no hurry. You are more important than that. Let me show you how important to me you are.”

And he pulled her to him.

They made love in the darkness. When they had finished and were curled up together, naked skin touching skin, whispering endearments, then Bolverkr sighed mournfully.

“What is wrong?” asked Gunnlod.

“I wish I had the skill to sing of your lips, how soft they are, how much better they are than the lips of any other girl. I think that would be an excellent song.”

“That is indeed unfortunate,” agreed Gunnlod. “For my lips are very attractive. I often think they are my best feature.”

“Perhaps, but you have so many perfect features, picking the best is so difficult. But if I were to take the tiniest taste from the vat called Bodn, the poetry would enter my soul and I would be able to make a poem about your lips that would last until the sun is eaten by a wolf.”

“Only the tiniest sip, though,” she said. “Because Father would get quite irritable if he thought I was giving away his mead to every good-looking stranger who penetrated this mountain fastness.”

They walked the caverns, holding hands and occasionally brushing lips. Gunnlod showed Bolverkr the doors and the windows that she could open from inside the mountain, through which Suttung sent her food and drink, and Bolverkr appeared to pay no attention; he explained that he was not interested in anything that was not about Gunnlod, or her eyes or her lips or her fingers or her hair. Gunnlod laughed and told him that he did not mean any of his fine words and he obviously could not want to make love with her again.

He hushed her lips with his lips, and once again they made love.

When they were both perfectly satisfied, Bolverkr began to weep in the darkness.

“What’s wrong, my love?” asked Gunnlod.

“Kill me,” sobbed Bolverkr. “Kill me now! For I will never be able to make a poem about the perfection of your hair and your skin, of the sound of your voice, of the feel of your fingers. The beauty of Gunnlod is impossible to describe.”

“Well,” she said, “I suppose it can’t be easy to make such a poem. But I doubt it’s impossible.”

“Perhaps . . .”

“Yes?”

“Perhaps the smallest sip from the kettle Odrerir would give me the lyrical skills to conjure your beauty for generations still to come,” he suggested, his sobs ceasing.

“Yes, perhaps it would. But it would have to be the smallest of smallest sips . . .”

“Show me the kettle, and I will show you just how small a sip I can take.”

Gunnlod unlocked the door, and in moments she and Bolverkr were standing in front of the kettle and the two vats. The smell of the mead of poetry was heady on the air.

“Just the tiniest of sips,” she told him. “For three poems about me that will echo down through the ages.”

“Of course, my darling.” Bolverkr grinned in the darkness. If she had been looking at him then, she would have known something was wrong.

With his first drink he drank every drop of the kettle Odrerir.

With his second, he drained the vat called Bodn.

With his third, he emptied the vat called Son.

Gunnlod was no fool. She realized that she had been betrayed, and she attacked him. She was strong and fast, but Odin did not stay to fight. He ran from there. He pulled the door closed and locked her inside.

In the blink of an eye he became a huge eagle. Odin screeched as he flapped his wings, and the mountain doors opened, and he rose into the skies.

Gunnlod’s screams pierced the dawn.

In his hall, Suttung woke and ran outside. He looked up and saw the eagle and knew what must have happened. Suttung too transformed himself into eagle shape.

The two eagles flew so high that from the ground they were the tiniest of pinpricks in the sky. They flew so fast that their flight sounded like the roar of a hurricane.

In Asgard, Thor said, “It is time.”

He hauled the three huge wooden vats into the courtyard.

The gods of Asgard watched the eagles screaming through the sky toward them. It was a close thing. Suttung was fast, and close behind Odin, his beak almost touching Odin’s tailfeathers as they reached Asgard.

When Odin approached the hall, he began to spit: a fountain of mead spurted from his beak into the vats, one after another, like a father bird bringing food for his children.

Ever since then, we know that those people who can make magic with their words, who can make poems and sagas and weave tales, have tasted the mead of poetry. When we hear a fine poet, we say that they have tasted Odin’s gift.

There. That is the story of the mead of poetry and how it was given to the world. It is a story filled with dishonor and deceit, with murder and trickery. But it is not quite the whole story. There is one more thing to tell you. The delicate among you should stop your ears, or read no further.

Here is the last thing, and a shameful admission it is. When the all-father in eagle form had almost reached the vats, with Suttung immediately behind him, Odin blew some of the mead out of his behind, a splattery wet fart of foul-smelling mead right in Suttung’s face, blinding the giant and throwing him off Odin’s trail.

No one, then or now, wanted to drink the mead that came out of Odin’s ass. But whenever you hear bad poets declaiming their bad poetry, filled with foolish similes and ugly rhymes, you will know which of the meads they have tasted.