Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (1:32)

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Matt Lewis (1:33)

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Matt Lewis (1:41)

People did you know that parents rank financial literacy as the number one most difficult life skill to teach? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app for families. With Greenlight, you can set up chores, automate allowance and keep an eye on your kids spending with real time notifications. Kids learn to earn, save and spend wisely, and parents can rest easy knowing their kids are learning about money with guardrails in place. Sign up for Greenlight today@Greenlight.com podcast. Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yannicka, and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to Popes to the Crusades, we delve into the rebellions, plots and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here.

King Gylfi (2:52)

I am King Gylfi, Mightiest of Kings. I once traveled to Asgard seeking to learn from the Norse gods who lived there. There was one whom I strove most to understand, for his ways are strange and his hunger for wisdom without end. He is the All Father, Odin, the highest and oldest of the gods. Though he is known by many different names, he is the keeper of secrets, ruler of all things, and birthed war into the world. All earthly knowledge stems from him, knowledge I will share with you if you are willing to listen.

Matt Lewis (3:50)

Welcome to gone medieval. I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaunega. This month on the podcast, we've been delving into the strange and spectacular world of Norse mythology. The ancient tales of gods, giants and the nine realms. To help us tell these stories, we've been joined by King Gylfi, a legendary figure from the Icelandic sagas, who is guiding us through these myths of creation and cosmic mayhem. Matt and I, meanwhile, have been calling on leading experts to uncover the history that lies behind these legendary tales. In our first episode, we explored how the universe was said to begin with fire, ice and giants at the dawn of time. Still to come, we'll meet Thor and Loki, those tricksy gods of thunder and chaos. Explore how to reach the famed mead stained hall of Valhalla, and we'll round things off with Ragnarok, the end of the world when gods and monsters alike will perish. But today, we'll turn to the All Father himself and the celestial realm he ruled. Odin, King of Asgard, seeker of wisdom, God of battle and poetry. He's a figure both fearsome and fascinating, and perhaps the most complex of them all. In a little while, I'll be joined by Professor Carolyn Larington, expert in Old Norse literature, to help us unpick both Odin's character and the other Norse gods who bow the knee to him. But first, here is King Gylfi to tell us more about how we came to know the One Eyed God.

King Gylfi (5:43)

On my travels across the stars, I came before three heavenly kings in the glittering halls of Asgard. They told me much of the realms above and the caverns below. They said there are nine worlds, all held in the branches of a mighty ash. Yggdrasil is its name, the World Tree. Its leaves are above the sky and its roots plumb the deepest depths. From its boughs the dew falls. From its roots the rivers rise. An eagle sits upon its highest crown, while deep beneath below coils a serpent gnawing endlessly at its trunk. Down in those depths lie four shadowed realms. Nilfheim, a land of mist. Moosebell, the world of flame. Jotunheim, home to the Frost Giants. And Hel, where the dead go to die. Up the trunk lie Three more worlds. Midgard, Alfheim and Nidavellir, the land of elves, dwarves and mortals. Then, cradled up top, high among the leaves, is where the gods dwell in their splendor. But even here, the divine are divided. Two tribes exist, and two worlds they own. The tribe Vanir, wise in magic, make their keep in Vanaheim, a world abundant in crop and nature. The tribe Aesir Odinskin, meanwhile, hold fast in their golden fortress of Asgard. Above and below, flame and frost, gods and monsters all hang upon Yggdrasil's limbs. The tree draws its strength from an inky black well whose waters feed its roots and keep it ever living. In that fathomless pool dwell many of the most powerful forces in all the cosmos. Chief among them are the Norns, three wise maidens who decide the destiny of all living things. With their knives, they carve ruins into the very bark of the World Tree. And through those marks, their will is carried into every corner of the nine realms. But Odin, gazing down from his high throne in Asgard, watched them with envy. A ceaseless hunger for knowledge burned within him and it gave the All Father his purpose. He was willing to pay any price to master the mysteries of life and death. Long ago, he had torn out his own eye to drink from a Frost Giant's well of wisdom. Yet still the Norns and their ruins held power and secrets that even he, the greatest of gods, could not command. Thus Odin went in search of the power the ruins possessed. But they do not reveal their secrets to just anyone, only to those who are worthy of such knowledge and fearful insight. And so it was that Odin chained himself to the trunk of Yggdrasil and hung from its branches for nine nights, peering into the shadowy waters below. His side was pierced by the point of a spear, his body buffeted and battered by the wind as life slowly drained from his feeble limbs. No food did he eat, nor water he drank for nine days and nine nights in the dark. But as agony closed, Odin's mind awoke and the ruins revealed their heart. With their mystery unlocked, his binds did snap and he fell. Shrieking from the tree he cried, then begin I to thrive, and begin I to get. I grew and well I was Ruins that shall find and faithful signs that the ruler of gods doth right. The Allfather had gained the power of magic. The world was now his to control. Yet Odin's thirst for wisdom was not still. For in the world there walked another, a goddess whose powers rivaled even his own. Freya of the Vanir, mistress of dark magic. And dread sorcery. She wandered from hall to hall, selling her craft for hire. And wherever she went, desire and envy followed in her steps. At last she came to Asgard itself. There the Aesir, struck by wonder at her skills, pressed her for her services. Soon they found their own laws, their oats, and of kinship and their honour undone, for each sought selfish gain from her witchcraft. And when strife and discord rose among them, they cast the blame upon Freya. They named her, greedy for gold and sought to destroy her. Three times they seized her. Three times they burned her body in the hall of the gods. And three times she rose again, reborn from the ashes, unbroken and unbowed as the poets the war I remember the first in the world when the gods with spears struck down Freya. And in Odin's hall they burned her body. Three times burned and three times born oft and again, yet ever she lives. Thus the Aesir came to hate the Vanir, and the Vanir in turn despised the Aesir. And so the first war of the world began on the host. His spear did Odin hurl. And in the world did war first come. The wall that guarded the gods was broken, and the fields of the warlike Vanir were trodden. The Aesir fought with steel and storm, their war cry carried on the winds of Asgard. The Vanir answered with cunning spells and hidden power, bending fate itself to their will. Blow for blow, spell for spell, the struggle raged. Neither side prevailed, and both grew weary of endless strife. At last the gods laid down their arms and made a truce. Oaths were sworn, peace was sealed. With the ancient custom of hostage taking, Freya, Freyr, her brother, and Nord, their father, crossed into Asgard to dwell among the Aesir. And in turn, the Aesir gave to the Vanir their own. From the ashes of two people, one was made, and peace reigned in Asgard henceforth. Thus did Odin bind together, gods of war and gods of wisdom, though at great cost. For it was he who hurled the first spear and brought strife into the world. He who won the ruins through suffering, and yet set the Nine Realms aflame with war. Such is the All Father, a bringer of knowledge, but also of chaos, a seeker of truth, yet never free from envy and hunger. More I could tell you of this One Eyed God, of his bargains and betrayals, of the many names he bears. But much have you already heard of Oeden's rise. To learn more, I have once again sought out the wisest in the land to help you better understand what I have told.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (14:45)

Caroline.

Matt Lewis (14:45)

Thank you so much for being with us at Gone Medieval.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (14:49)

It's a great pleasure to be back again.

Matt Lewis (14:52)

We are talking about, really the heavy hitters today know, we're talking about the pantheon, a lot of the household names that everyone tends to know. And so I'm going to start you off with a fairly generalized question, which is, who is Odin?

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (15:08)

Yeah, who is Odin? Yeah. So he is. Well, it depends who you ask. In some ways, in the account of the gods that we have transmitted through the Poetic Edda and through other poetry, he's the All Father. He's the leader of the Norse gods. He's the God of poetry and of war and of wisdom. He's married to Frigg and his son is Thor. But Baldr is also one of his sons, and he has a few more like Hermodr and Forseti and so on who aren't quite so important. If you ask the author of the Prose Edda, however, the Icelandic scholar Snorri Sturtlesson. Very likely Snorri can't really go along with the idea that the pagan gods were really gods in the same sense as the Christian God. And so Snorri tells us that Odin, along with the rest of the Aesir, the main tribe of gods, is a refugee from Troy. And after the Trojan War was over, you can see how this works. Aesir, Asia. Right. So they all made off from Troy as fast as as they could and made their way up to Scandinavia, where because they had superior Eastern technology and a degree of magic, including shape shifting, the credulous Scandinavians began to worship them. So this is an explanation for pagan divinities that's known as Euhemerism, after the late antique philosopher Euhema, who thought it up as an explanation for how there could be pagan gods when obviously there was only one God, and that was the Christian God. And he decided this must be kind of like Roman emperors who decreed that they would be worshipped either in their lives or after their deaths. So a smart and powerful human can persuade other people that he is a God. And so you can either follow Snorri, who has got a very sort of Christian rationalizing explanation here, or you can go with what's obviously the older and more deeply rooted in Viking religion kind of explanation.

Matt Lewis (17:36)

I really love Snorri's explanation because it's just so medieval, you know, I love that there's tracing everything back to Troy. It's like how Britain is founded by Brutus who leaves Troy. They do love a connection.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (17:49)

They do. And Thor is a bit hard to explain away, but because he has a chariot, he's known as Thor, who drives and Uthor. If you say it really quickly, Ukuthor sounds a bit like Hector. So Hector wasn't killed by Achilles at all? Oh, no, no, no. He's made it to Scandinavia too.

Matt Lewis (18:11)

Oh, that's a nicer Hector. Oh, okay. I'm absolutely tickled by this. Sorry. You know, to kind of drive you into a tr Trojan direction.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (18:22)

But we can put that on one side, I think, for the rest of the conversation.

Matt Lewis (18:26)

I will never put that. I will never put that on one side. That's too good, I suppose. My next question is, what does the name Odin mean? Is this sort of like a randomly given name or is there something behind it?

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (18:37)

It seems to be connected with the adjective O, which means furious. And his equivalent in Old English, for example, is Woden, who gives us Wednesday. And there does seem to be a fairly understanding in Old Norse that the connection with fury exists. Not, I think, that Odin comes over as a particularly furious God, but we do have a Latin gloss that says, actually for the English version, woden ides furo, that is fury. But it may be that he's capable of producing a kind of battle craziness in warriors connected with his function as God of war. And so it may be that that's the furious element.

Matt Lewis (19:26)

I suppose this leads me to my next question, which is, what are the main attributes of Odin? Because it does strike me as odd considering him to be furious. I suppose I associate fury a bit more with Thor, but then again, you know, I'm not an expert.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (19:41)

No, you're right that Thor gets more furious in person, as it were, whenever he's confronted with giants who are defying him in some way, and when he needs to smash them with his hammer. And it's more, I think, as in quite a lot of aspects of the myth of Odin, it's his capacity to induce things in other people rather than necessarily performing behaviors himself. So he's normally depicted as being old and being one eyed. And the reason why he's one eyed is one that we'll come back to in a moment, I imagine. He travels around mankind much more often than any of the other gods, who mostly don't seem to be bothered about mankind. But Odin is a patron of kings, and so he likes to go recruit heroes, promote them to kingship, and then take them off finally to Valhalla when the time comes and he can be recognized. Well, of course, in the myths, humans tend not to recognize him, and it's Only a bit later on they kind of think, oh, I wonder if that old one eyed man with the hood pulled down over his brows or wearing a broad brimmed hat was Odin. Well, he seems to have behaved in quite a tricksy fashion, so he probably was. But of course, sorry, depend on your not realizing that at the time.

Matt Lewis (21:14)

Obviously. I think that this is quite interesting too, because he's got this real connection with the world and people. And part of that also is, as you mentioned, you know, he's this God of poetry. And so we have this inspiration, not just in a fury sort of way, but also he could be responsible for inspiring men to do great things with literature as well, I suppose.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (21:39)

Yes, and he's often invoked by poets. He's the God who poets mention as being the God who gives them inspiration, probably the God that they worship, though that's not always all that clear. And we have quite a complex myth about how the myth of poetry came into being. But essentially Odin got wind of the fact that the giants had this barrel full of poetry which they clearly weren't making use of, and it was squirreled away in a cavern below a mountain being guarded by a giant maiden. And in an extremely elaborate ploy, Odin manages to get access to the mountain. He bores his way in with a kind of auger like tool, changes himself into a snake because shape changing is one of his attitudes. Wriggles into the mountain, takes on some kind of form which is presumably quite attractive because he seduces the girl who's looking after the mead and she promises him that he can have three sips of the mead. But of course, and in some versions there are three barrels of the meat, and some it's just one, but with the three sips he drains the whole lot, turns into an eagle and takes a quicker way out than crawling back through the passage and flies off pursued by the girl's father, the giant Suttunggr, also in eagle form. And so Suttunggr is chasing Odin and he's getting closer and closer to Asgardr, the home of the gods. And the gods can see that this is a kind of neck and neck wraith. So they build a huge bonfire in the courtyard of Asgard and Odin whizzes over the wall. But in his haste, he, as Snorri Sturglisson tells us, ejects some of the mead backwards. So he kind of excretes the mead out. And this mead is what bad poets use for inspiration. But he flies over the bonfire and spews up all of the good mead into a huge cauldron where it can be sent off to humans and other gods. The God of poetry, for example. Meanwhile, poor Suttungr is burnt as he flies into the bonfire, and that's the end of him. So the mead of poetry, one of Odin's gifts to mankind, along with the runes, which are the wherewithal for writing down your poems. And this is a very mysterious part of Odin's life. But he tells us that he hanged himself for nine days and nine nights on Yggdrasil, the world tree, and doesn't eat or drink in that time. So it's a really grueling ordeal. And at the end of this, he says, screaming, I peered downwards and I saw the runes and I took them. And where the runes came from isn't at all clear in this story whether they rose up out of the earth, but. But Odin not only gives mankind poetry, but he also produces this writing technology which is going to turn out to be so important for. Particularly for memorializing people. Runes are most often used on memorial rune stones across Scandinavia.

Matt Lewis (25:13)

And this is a real integral part of his character, though, right, Is the seeking of knowledge or seeking of ways to express that same thing. Which this ties into the reason he lost his eye, correct?

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (25:27)

That's right. He's the God of wisdom. And so he's interested in wisdom in all its forms. And if you were being reductive, you might say that what he's most of all interested in is trying to see if anybody in the universe knows a different narrative for the future. Does anybody know of a storyline, we might say, in which Ragnarok is not going to happen, the end of the world is not going to come. And so Odin goes to speak. He enters a wisdom contest with the giant, which he wins. But the giant confirms the Ragnarok story and he speaks to various other people, seeresses and so on, to try to find out is this fate inescapable? And it looks like it is. And Mimir is one of the Aithir who, close to the beginning of the reign of the gods, another group of gods called the Vanir, and that's the group that Freyr, Freya and the sea God Njr belong to. The Aesir and the Vanir start a war which nobody can win because the Aesir have lots of great weapons, but the Vanir seem to have the gift of resurrection. So after a while they decide this isn't getting anywhere and they agree on the hostage swap. Not a hostage in the sense of taking somebody and Treating them badly, but rather just, we'll have some of your guys in our society and you can have some of ours and that will keep the peace between us. And so Mimir and somebody called Hynir the Aesir go to liver among the Vanir. But then Hoenir comes back again saying this hasn't gone terribly well on our part because the Vanir kept inviting Mimir, who is so very wise and me to our councils and Mimir would have great ideas. But Hynir just kept saying, let others decide. And so the Vanir thought Hynir was a bit useless and for possibly out of annoyance, cut off Mimir's head. I would have cut off Hynir's head myself personally. So they cut off Mimir's head and send it back to Hynir with Hynir to the gods, I imagine, with a kind of rude note attached. And Odin is quite disturbed by this head of his friend returning in this way. So he embalms it, wraps it in herbs and puts it in a well at the bottom of the the stem of the world tree. And there he can go and consult it. But in order for the first time it seems to activate this connection with the head, he has to make a sacrifice. And so he sacrifices his eye, which is to be found in the well with the head. How all of this works is not at all clear, but it looks as if it's that kind of sacrificial logic of you give up something that's very valuable to you and you'll get something valuable in return. You lose one of your eyes, but you gain insight of a kind of mystical kind into the workings of the universe. So that's why Odin only has one eye.

Matt Lewis (29:00)

So we've got one eye, a head in the well, shape shifting abilities. But he's also got a bit of a menagerie, doesn't he? He's got his ravens, he's got wolves.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (29:10)

He'S sorts of things, his very important ravens, Hugin and Munin, whose names mean something like thought and memory. And they fly out across the world every day gathering information and bringing facts or news, let's say back to Odin. And where other people might have hunting dogs, you can imagine something like Irish wolfhounds in the hall of a Norwegian king. Odin has a couple of wolves called Geri and Freki, which means something like fierce one and Ravenna. And so they sit by his side when he's at his high seat in Valhurk.

Matt Lewis (29:49)

Valhalla, yeah, it's a pretty good deal I think if I could have two ravens that came and brought me all the information I needed every day, I'd be pretty happy about that. Also, I think we should be calling more pet dogs after these wolves. I think that's.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (30:05)

Freky is a good dog name in.

Matt Lewis (30:07)

Freky's a really good dog's name. Right. I know a lot of dogs who are called Freya and not enough dogs who are called Freki. So this is a call to action. Audience. Let's go. Let's move out.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (30:17)

Freki is the ideal. It can also be used generally as an Old Norse common term for wolf. So perfect. Wonderful. If you don't want to call your dog wolf, call it Freki.

Matt Lewis (30:31)

There you go. So there is a lot. I think that it would be fair enough to say that Odin's a super enigmatic figure. You know, he's got a lot of contradictory traits about him. You know, he's the God of war, but he's the God of poetry. He is the king of the gods, but he's also really intensely interested in what's going on with humans and the most interested in kind of keeping this equilibrium going. Is this something that it's. We're supposed to be reading? Are we supposed to understand him as, I don't know, a fairly enigmatic individual?

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (31:11)

Yeah, I think that's probably true, that we would read him as enigmatic, but I think what that boils down to is he has many different functions and one of the most important aspects, and again, this is something that we find in later Christian writing about him, but it's extremely important, is that he's an ancestor. He's the ancestor of the kings of Norway. And his equivalent, Woden, turns up in the genealogies of the Anglo Saxon kings. Somewhere after Adam and Noah, but before Hengist and Hausa, you have Woden. And so Odin is seen as being an ancestor. And of course, this ties up a little bit with the whole Trojan business. He's given a role in the human world which ties into kingship and being interested in law as law, as well as being interested in magic. And this is why he turns up so often in human affairs in an enigmatic way. And if you're a young man, if you're the hero, Sugdha, for example, and you're trying to pick a. The best horse out of your uncle's stud to be your horsey companion through life, and a mysterious hooded man with one eye comes and stands beside you and says, I would take that one if I were you. Then you take that advice, because you know that this is probably someone who knows what they're talking about. And indeed, Grani is descended from Odin's horse Sleipnir, but he just has the regular number of legs, not eight legs. So Sigurda very wisely makes that choice. But Sigurd, depending on what his mother has told him, Sigurd might also reflect on the fact that he's born posthumously to his father. His father dies in battle while his mother is pregnant with Sigurdr. Precisely because Odin has appeared to Sigmundur and said, time is up. You now you're getting on in years, and we need you in Valhalla to train with the other Einherja, the other dead heroes, for the army that will fight at Ragnarok. And so Odin is very multifaceted in this relationship with kings. He will come and say, you are my chosen one and you should have this throne, but he also takes it away from you.

Matt Lewis (33:58)

I suppose that that's sort of the. The deal though, isn't it? I mean, much in the way that he has to trade his own eye for wisdom. I suppose that, you know, his blessing comes with a consummate, you know, downside.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (34:11)

Nothing lasts forever. In that case. And there is one poem in which Odin is told mischievously perhaps by his wife Frigg, the that one of his proteges, a man called Geirrr, is behaving rather badly as a king. He's extremely stingy with food when guests come to the hall, and Odin said, I need to go and investigate this. So he disguises himself and goes to Garethr's hall. But sneaky Frigg has sent Garether a message saying, watch out for this weird wizard type character who's going to come to your hall. You'll recognize him because dogs don't bark at him, have nothing to do with him. He's very dangerous. And so when this figure turns up, gay Radha asks him who he is and he won't speak. So Geirather places him between two fires and he sits there for eight days and eight nights without speaking. And he doesn't have any food, he doesn't have any drink. It's again, it's an echo of his ordeal. The World Tree to get the runes. And then Gerard the son, gives him a horn of mead and he starts to speak. And he imparts a lot of mythological information about the names of the halls of the gods and the relationships of some of the gods and so on. And then he embarks on this long list of Names, because Odin goes by many names, primarily in some ways, because he needs to have lots of names to be evoked in poetry, because poetry in Old Norse is alliterative. And so if you want to have an Odin name which will fit in any poetic line, you need a great repertoire of different names. And so he begins to recite all of these names. And you could imagine if you were filming this, that the camera will pan across to Gerard thinking, oh, no, this is Odin. This is my patron I've been torturing for a week. This can't end well. And in fact, as he comes to the end of his recital, Geirr leaps up to pull him away from the fire and welcome him into the hall. But he trips over his own sword and falls on it and dies. And Agnarr the son becomes king in his place, because Agnarr gave Odin the horn of mead. Agnarr is a. A generous and wise person. And I always feel a little bit sorry for Gerda because he's been set up basically by Frigg. Now Frigg has it in for him because there were originally two brothers, Garer and his brother, who's also called Agnarr, and they went down to the beach one day when they were young and got into a boat, or rather Geirodr persuaded Agnarr to get into a boat. Agnarr got into the boat and he pushed it away and said, go where the trolls will have you. So Agnarr sails at sea, gets lost, and is rescued by a troll. But he's now stuck with the trolls. Gera there gets to be king, and Agnarr was Frigg's particular protege, while Gerar the was Odin's. So this is Frigg having kind of long term revenge for what happened to her protege. But it's interesting in that story that Frigg takes this direct interest because we don't have a great deal of information about her. And it shows how Odin's proteges are just as sneaky as he is. If need be. They can be deceitful if they have a particular end in view. And Odinn is certainly not a God who punishes evildoers, except insofar as they're breaking kind of fundamental codes like hospitality and so on. This episode is brought to you by.

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Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (39:22)

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Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (41:11)

Snorri tells us she's the goddess of marriage and of love, but married love rather than passionate erotic sexual love, which is Freya's demesne. She's said to have a flying coat which you can use to fly between worlds. It's a kind of turns you basically into a falcon. But she's never said to use it and really we don't have very much information about her at all we see an intervention from her when Odin and Loki are talking about events in the distant past, when they seem to have both swarm blood brotherhood with one another and to have shared in the practice of the slightly disreputable magical practices known as seidr. And as they're talking about this, Frigg says, it's best if you too, don't talk about the things that happened in the bygone days. And as readers of that poem, we find ourselves going, why not? We want to know, what do they do? But Frigg is very wise and all seeing. And her most important story in Old Norse is when the God Baldr begins to have bad dreams which anticipate his death. And so after Odin has been down to the hall of Hel and said, why is Baldr having these dreams about death? And Hel says, well, because we're expecting him any day now. We're brewing the beer, we're strewing fresh rushes on the floor for him. Odin goes back and reports this, and it's Frigg who decides that the way around this is to get everything in creation to take an oath not to harm Baldr. And so she goes around asking the rocks and the trees and the stones and the weapons and everything you can think of, except for, as it turns out, the mistletoe. And then when Loki in disguise comes to have a chat with her, pretending to be an old woman, and says, did you really ask absolutely everything? And she says, oh, yes, but I didn't bother with the mistletoe. It's so slender and flexible. That's not gonna hurt anybody. And so Frigg has this foresight that allows her to make a plan to save Baldr. But she also makes this mistake of admitting that there's a tiny flaw in it. And when Baldera does die, she promises all her favor to anybody who can go down to Helen, negotiate to get him back. And one of Odin's sons goes off and comes back and says, everything will have to weep for Baldr. So it's Frigg as protective mother which is the most important aspect of her. Her story. I think that's preserved in the Norse myths.

Matt Lewis (44:18)

This is really interesting because in many ways this kind of mirrors, for example, the story of Achilles. You know, he's almost invincible, except for the heel. You know, Baldor's almost invincible. Invincible unless you get mistletoe involved, you know, and quite similarly with Frigg, we kind of see these overlaps with, you know, Hera, who's the wife of Zeus, and she's the, you know, the. She's the goddess of marriage very specifically. But is this too simplistic? I mean, do Norse gods have a similar sort of domain deity kind of thing, or are they. They seem a bit more complex in a way than the Greek ones.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (44:59)

I think it's partly because we know quite a lot less about them than we do about the Greek gods. Because what we know about the Greek gods is not only a whole huge corpus of stories about them, but we also know quite a bit about the rituals with which they were worshipped, the idea of sacrifice, what kinds of beasts you would sacrifice, which myth was connected to the origin of that ritual, and so on. So we have a much more complex picture of Greek myth. And that makes it easier to say, okay, so Demeter is the goddess of fertility and harvest, and then we have the myth of her and Persephone explaining why it is that we have the seasons. But with the Norse gods, there may have been, in fact, there surely was much more information which explained their functions. And there would have been a whole kind of raft of practices that people use in order to worship the gods. And there will be presumably particular things you would ask the gods for. And we can certainly see at least that the poets are invoking Ovin for their inspiration. Farmers and seafarers in particular are invoking Thor because he's the God of weather and therefore he has a fertility function as well as making the seas possible to cross. And presumably they also invoke the God Njr, who is the God of the sea. But it's Thor who gets mentioned most of the time. We don't have too many stories about Njr. So it's also, I think, quite likely that people in different parts of Scandinavia worship the gods, particular gods. And so Thor is immensely popular in Iceland because most of the Icelandic settlers came from western Norway way, where place name evidence suggests he was also very popular. Freyr and Freyja were popular in Sweden, but because Sweden didn't provide anything like so many immigrants to Iceland, it's clear that the people who were writing down the stories in Iceland didn't have that key Swedish information that would have allowed them to tell us much more about Freyr and Freyja, for example. So there's a regional dimension to this, which means that the functions of some of the gods are pretty obscure.

Matt Lewis (47:34)

Do you have any favorite Norse gods among the obscure pantheon?

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (47:42)

Well, I always kind of like Skaathi, who starts life as a member of the giants, and she is the goddess, so Snorri tells us, of skiing. Not that I go skiing ever. But her domain is in the mountains because she's a giant. And when her father Thiazi is killed through the machinations of the gods he has kidnapped, it has to be said, Thiazi ends up kidnapping Eden, the goddess who has the apples of eternal youth and wants those apples have passed into the power of the giants. The gods all start aging and getting very unhappy. And so Loki, who helped Ethan to get kidnapped in the first place, is charged to go and get her back. And so he goes to get her back successfully, but Thiazi is killed in the process. And when Skadi finds her father has been killed, she puts on her war gear and she marches into Asgard and says, I want compensation for my father. And the gods say, well, what would you like? And how about if you marry one of us? And Skathi, who seems to have a thing for the God Baldr, says, yeah, okay, I'll certainly accept one of you as a husband. Then the gods say, well, you can choose your own husband, but you must choose him by his feet. So all the gods go and stand behind the sheet essentially, and poke their feet out to the bottom. And Skadi looks at all these feet and decides that the cleanest and whitest must be those of Baldr. So she says, well, I'll have this guy. But these feet turn out to be the feet of the sea God Njr, because obviously if you're a seagull, you will have clean feet. And so she has to marry Neurda, and she's not very pleased about this. And so she's not going to go through with the marriage, and she's not going to settle for the death of her father, she says, unless somebody can make her laugh. And so Loki volunteers to do this, and they get a goat with a long beard, and he ties his testicles to the beard, and the goat pulls in one direction, Loki pulls in another. And so we're told nobody could decide who was screaming the most. And as this is going on, he falls into Skaadi's lap and she starts laughing too. So Nagy has to go through with this deal and marry Njrdr. But the marriage doesn't last because of irreconcilable differences, if you like. She's the goddess of the mountains. She likes to be up in the mountains. He's the God of the sea. His palace is by the seashore. And she says when she's in his palace, she can't sleep because of the noise of the seagulls. And he says when he's in her hall up in the mountains. He can't sleep because of the howling of the wolves. So they go their own separate ways eventually and she marries somebody else.

Matt Lewis (51:06)

I like this because we have these real differing domains for all of these varying gods, which I suppose brings me on, on to my next set of questions, which is about I suppose, the topography of deities. Because I was going to ask about Asgard. You know, this is kind of the place that I imagine the gods living, but the gods are everywhere. Is that right?

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (51:31)

Well, Asgard, if you like, is the whole domain of the gods. So we could think of it as a kind of country where the gods live or where the Aesir gods live. The Vane gods live in Varnaheimr, which is somewhere else on the same kind of horizontal plane we might imagine, but within our Skadara, as it might be within Norway. Each God has their own territory and so they have differing names. And within the territory the God has a principal hall, again as a Scandinavian chieftain would. So it's that kind of model of landholding. And so although Odin is the king over or the lord over all of Asgard, that is the chief God. His main hall is Valhed. Valhallad, where he entertains the dead heroes. But he also apparently goes to drink with Freya in her hall from time to time because Freya owns half of the dead with Odin. And we might imagine they sit there drinking and divvying up the dead after every day. And so you take that one, you take that one. And her hall is called Sesabekir Sunken Benches, which makes it sound like it might be underwater, but we don't know any more about that. And so the gods do have lots of different territories and some halls with quite speaking names, quite often names which are associated with light and beauty. You open the fridge, there's nothing there. So what's it gonna be? Greasy pizza? Sad drive thru burgers Dish by Blue Apron is for nights like that. These are the pre made meals of your dreams. At least 20 grams of protein. No artificial flavors or colors. No chopping, no cleanup, no guilt. Keep the flavor flavor. Ditch the subscription. Get 20% off your first two orders with code APRON20 Terms and conditions apply. Visit blueapron.com terms for more.

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Matt Lewis (54:33)

Okay, so we've got Asgard, we've got Van Hammer. How does this work? Are these separate worlds that they're separate domains?

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (54:47)

But Heimr does mean world. Gardr means more or less the same as modern English yard, or it means enclosed space. So Midgard, the word for the world of the humans in old Norse myth, is the middle yard, if you like the middle enclosed space. And so if you imagine the World Tree is a kind of huge vertical axis that runs through the worlds. And we can imagine Mithgar Ausgardr Jotunheima, the home of the giants, Faanaheima all. There's no sense to go from one to the other. You have to go up or down. Okay, up at the top of the tree we have assorted animals. There's an eagle whose wings cause the wind. There are some deer who are nibbling on the branches of the World Tree. And one of the World Tree's branches overshadows Valhur, which is quite convenient because on the roof of Valhalla is this goat, Heidrund, who eats the leaves from the World Tree, and her others give mead. So that keeps the warriors happy. So we have this sort of basic horizontal plane. But then down below, the roots of the World Tree, under the earth, possibly, but exactly what kind of earth it is isn't very clear. But down at the roots, you've got the well of Mimir, where his head is, you've got the Three Norns. The divine figures who determine fate, are also at the roots by a body of water. And then there's the world of the dead, Nippleheim Mist world, where Hell's hall is down there. Snorri Sirtelsen also tells us that the Svartalvard, the dark elves, are in this lower area too. But what they are we really don't know. He doesn't tell us anything more about them. And I slightly suspect that they're supposed they've been kind of made up on the basis of being like devils or demon in Christian ideology, and that they're malign forces that live down where hell would be in the Christian model.

Matt Lewis (57:06)

And that gives you a nice kind of way to connect all of these things that makes sense. So I wouldn't put that past Snorri. He's very good at thinking of these sort of rhetorical traps to make Christianity make sense on top of it. Yeah, it's very good. Yeah.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (57:20)

Yes. And thinking they must have had a thing like this. So With Snorri, for example, you can see how he decides that after Ragnarok, when the world comes back. There's also been a kind of last Judgment built into this. So the new world will have some lovely places where the gods are and which are full of light and which are very much like heaven. And then there are places which are horrible halls with roofs made of woven serpent spines and the serpents are spitting poison. And that's where bad people are. And you think, whoa, we don't really have this model of a heaven and a hell in that way in the Norse ideology that we know about. So he's obviously just decided to punish a lot of murderers and oath breakers and put them in this unpleasant setting after death.

Matt Lewis (58:19)

I mean, fair enough. It's nice to be able to create an idealized justice system for yourself. I can't put it past him there, but okay. So I suppose my next question is, say that I am Odin and I wish to travel to Midgard from Asgard. How do I do that?

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (58:41)

It's not very clear that Odin. How Odin would do that. Mostly he walks. He's a wanderer, I suppose he can get on his horse, sleight near the eight legged horse and canter off if he wants to. But we don't have accounts that I can think of as sleip near turning up in the human world. So mostly you're just the warrior going about your daily business, and suddenly this old man comes into your hall and does something a bit strange and you think, then you respond to it. So, for example, towards the beginning of the story of Sigmundr, the father of the great hero Sigurdr, his sister is getting married to a king called Sigur. All these people have names that begin in the same way. And Sigurd is marrying Signy. Sigmund and all his brothers are there, and his father Volsi is there as well. And the wedding feast is all going fine, though Signy's not that keen on marrying Sigurd particularly. And then an old man in a cloak, looks like he's only got one eye, comes into the hall. He's carrying a sword, and he plunges the sword into a great tree that grows up in the middle of Sigur's hall. So it's kind of a decorative feature if you like, to have this tree. And it should be symbolic of the family tree of generations to come and so on. So this old man drives the sword into the tree and says, whoever can take it out can have that sword. And so of course, the Feast sort of breaks out while all the men have a go at trying to pull the sword out. Sigger is very keen to get it. He's the lord of the hall, he's the bridegroom. But he can't pull it out, but Sigmundur can. And Sigmund whisked it out. And this is the sword that, through a few incarnations, is the one that will kill the dragon. Faulkner. So that sword is his great sword. And Sigurd says, I'll buy it off you. And Sigmund says, no, no, no, that was Odin. And he means me to have this sword. And this unleashes all kinds of disasters for Sigmundur's family, who all get killed by Sigurd one way or another. But Sigmundur survives and takes his veng vengeance. So what was Odin doing there? He was marking out Sigmundr as his chosen one. It also is no accident that Odin is at some remove, Sigmundur's ancestor. He's probably about his great, great grandfather or something. And so he, of course, he's the patron of his line. But he wants to kickstart something here for Sigmunder to show what a hero he is and also to kind of take Sigurd's line out of consideration. And Sigmundur does turn out to be a hero. He's mentioned in one poem as being in Valhalla all ready to go and greet King Eric Bloodaxe when he dies. He's Sigmund, and I think it is one of Odin's sons are told to go to the door and welcome him into Valhalla. So Sigmundur's place is assured. But the sword works as this kind of catalyst to start the strife which is going to prove the mettle of the heroes.

Matt Lewis (62:24)

I suppose that's in keeping with what we expect from Odin. You know, he seems to be back and forth all the time to the world of the humans. But I suppose also, if you're specifically attempting to cultivate an army and Valhalla, you also need to be doing that cultivation. You need to be involved with the humans on earth.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (62:47)

Yeah. So you've got to be inspecting them and checking them out. And there is one wonderful story, in fact, where there's a hero, a really unpleasant guy called Starkadr, and he is a sort of brutish fighter, but he's had a difficult childhood, to be fair. But he's attached to a king called Vikar, and they're fighting their way around Norway and Then Vikar has a kind of foster father called Horsehair Grani, which is a slightly old name. And one evening Horsehair Grani comes to Starkadr and says, I want you to come with me. And they row across a lake to an island and there, there are 12 thrones and the 12 of the Aesir gods are sitting there. And oh, look, Horsehair Grani turns out to be Odin. And the God Thor says, I really don't like Star Cadr because his grandfather fell in love with a girl that I was interested in and he took her. So I've really got an in for him. And Thor put some curses on Starkadr and Odin can't in the kind of classic fairy tale way you can't take a curse away, but you can mitigate it. So Thor says that Sarkador will behave very badly in life. And Odin says, but he'll live for 300 years. He'll live three lifetimes. And then Thor says, but he'll commit an appalling deed in each one. And so it goes on like this, but good and bad. And then Starcadr is rowed home and Horsehair Grani says, what I need you to do tomorrow is to get King Vikar to play the part of a sacrifice in order to get a wind to sail to the next place you want to go to. And what you need to do is get him to stand on the tree stump, kill a calf, wind the guts of the calf around the neck of King Vidar, take a reed and say, poke him with the reed and say, I give you to Odin. And so Sakhar explains this to Vikar who says, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, why not?

Matt Lewis (65:02)

Why not? Normal.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (65:03)

Yeah, why not? Yeah, if that's what it takes to get a wind, I'll do this. And so Vikar stands on the tree stump, but as Sarkada pokes him with the reed, the reed turns into a spear. The calf noose of guts around his neck kind of leaps up over the tree, the stump falls away and Vikar is both hanged and stabbed, which is the classic mark of no dynamic sacrifice. So the king is now quite dead and everybody's looking at Star card. They're going to, you know, what the hell? And Star Carter sort of tries to explain that this is all supposed to be a mock sacrifice, but he's driven away. And that's the first terrible deed that he does. And you can see that partly the blame is put there on Thor, but it's really Odin who wanted the king to be sacrificed, taken maybe off to Valhurt in this way. And so that's the kind of. Kind of stunt that Odin will pull on occasion. This is a slightly later story, but Starkother is an old and well attested hero.

Matt Lewis (66:14)

So we have all of these stories of gods interfering, I suppose, with humans, but it doesn't seem to go both ways. It seems as though gods can visit humans, humans can't necessarily visit the world of the gods there. And I suppose this might have something to do with the. The story of the walls around Asgard. And I was wondering if you could maybe lead us out with the story about how those are built, because I think this is a really interesting one.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (66:41)

It is an interesting one. And it goes back to that war that I talked about earlier between the Aesir and the Vanir. So assuming that Asgardr had walls in the first place, which isn't very clear now, the walls have been destroyed in this battle. And so the gods need a new wall to be built around their territory. And along comes a person who says that he's a master builder and he can build them wonderful new walls in three years. And if he can do that in that space of time, the only reward he wants is the sun and the moon and the goddess Freya. And the gods think this sounds a bit doubtful. They don't ask Freyja, as far as we know, but they say, no, no, we're not going to go with that. But if you can do it in half a season, so over a summer, all by yourself, then you can have Freyja forget the sun and the moon, because he obviously looks like he knows what he's talking about. And the builder says, can I have the help of my stallion to pull the stones along and help me gather the material I need? And the gods think this sounds quite reasonable. But when only a couple of days remain till the end of the summer, when winter is on them, they realize that the walls are going up at an incredible rate and the master builder is going to fulfill his contract and he's going to take Freyja. And so they say to Loki, loki, you need to get us out of this. It's not clear in the versions we have that Loki sort of recommended this guy, but it sounds quite possible. And Loki says, okay, leave it to me. And so that night, as the master builder is working, a rather attractive young filly appears on the edge of the forest and whinnies to the stallion, who whips around and disappears off into the forest with the filly. And the master builder realizes with the loss of his stallion, he won't be able to complete the contract. So he falls into a giant rage, the sources say, and at that point the gods go, ha, he's a giant. And Thor turns up and whacks him with the hammer. And so the master builder is killed. So on the one hand they've got a pretty well complete and very good wall without having to pay for it. And if you know your Wagner, you'll see that this is kind of the plot of Das Rheingold, the first opera in the Ring of the Nibelungen. But they've also broken the oaths that they gave to the master builder in the first place because they made a contract with him, they circumvented this contract through Loki's behavior, and now they're forsworn. And in some readings of Norse myth, it's this first act of oath breaking that kind of dooms the gods. They're now locked into this constant enmity with the giants, which is in the end going to culminate in Ragnarok. Now that might be a bit kind of too direct an idea of cause and effect in some ways. I think mythology is usually more complex than that. But the other outcome of this, of course, is that Loki comes back after a while leading this eight legged foal with him that he has apparently given birth to. And that is Odin's horse Sleipnir, who is the best of horses, we're told in some poems. And that points to Loki's extraordinary role as being the queer God, the one who is capable of switching genders, of giving birth Eden and of giving birth to an animal. And so that story about the master builder tells us quite a lot about the moral dimension of the world in which the gods of Asgard and Odin as their leader kind of exist because.

Matt Lewis (71:13)

It'S important for everyone to actually keep their oaths. I mean, I think that this is a. It tells us a lot about how society functions and what matters. As a general rule of thumb. Well, yes, it's possible to circumvent your oaths, but it even causes problems for the gods when they attempt it. So a lesson for all of us men, I suppose.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (71:37)

Yes. And of course, in an oral society where you don't have written contracts, how can you deal with any other humans in your social group if, if you can't trust them to keep their word when they say that they'll deliver you the sword on Wednesday, or they will turn up in three weeks time with 50 men to support you to do whatever it is. So that the fundamental nature of oaths in society is kind of reinforced by this delinquency on the part of the gods. We'll have that story in one poem, and we have it in Snorri Sirtlason as well. And it is that story of the Master builder who comes and makes you a brilliant offer to build something that you want is an internationally well known folk tale, though this version that we have is one of the earliest versions that we have in Europe. And usually it's okay to swindle the Master builder because he's really the devil. And so when he comes along and says, I can build you a church in a year, and usually he says to the person who's the patron of the church, and I'll take you away, you'll be my possession and I can do with you what I like, unless you can guess my name. And the Master builder's fairly sure that the patron won't be able to guess his name. And the patron starts getting very worried. But he wanders on the hillside and he hears a troll or a giant or somebody singing to her child, saying, don't worry, little baby, tomorrow your father, Finn will bring back the eyes and heart of this patron for you to play with. And he goes, ah, the Masters Builder's name is Finn. And then a bit like Rumpelskin, he can get out of this. So in most versions of this folk tale, the Master builder is so evil it's entirely illicit to deceive him. And you also, you do guess his name just by accident, and so the contract isn't broken. But in this story, there is foul play in the story of Odin, Loki and the Master builder. And that I think is problematic for the way in which the history of the gods develops.

Matt Lewis (74:07)

I suppose. It's what I find interesting, though, about pantheons and mythologies of deities, though, because they are these intensely human characters, even if they are in theory divine, you know, they have personalities that are conflicting. They don't always do the right thing morally. They are these really malleable characters. And I suppose that I always like that as a. A way of organizing the world, if that's what we're using pantheons and mythologies to do, because it kind of explains why the world is so awful. You know, if they. If what we have to look to are these deities who sometimes do the wrong thing themselves, then how can we really ask for the world to be perfectly just as well? You know, I find that that explicates the state of the world in a really useful way.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (74:59)

Yeah, the gods. The gods. Gods are made by humans in their own image. And so it's no wonder in the sense that the gods turn out to be very much like humans, to have passions, to have hates, to have loves, to be jealous, to be vengeful, to hold grudges, but also to behave nobly on occasion. And so the particularly in the kind of story systems that grow up about them just having God sitting happily and peacefully, just going, oh, I wonder if a human is going to sacrifice to us today. Oh yes, they have. Oh good. Yes, you can have luck in battle. That's not going to generate any stories for people to tell. And so you have to have, I think, this kind of very varied palette of personalities among the gods in order to generate the kinds of mythological stories that humans can not only enjoy but also learn from.

Matt Lewis (76:04)

Well, Caroline, thank you so much for coming on today to share so many of those stories with us.

Dr. Eleanor Jaenega (76:09)

It's been a great pleasure.

Matt Lewis (76:12)

Thanks once again to Caroline for joining me. And thank you for listening to Gone Medieval from History hit. If you haven't already heard our first North Mysterious episode about the creation of the world, do go back and listen to Matt's Friday episode. You won't want to miss it. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film the Medieval Apocalypse, released weekly and ad free podcasts by signing up@historyhit.com subscription. You can find Follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time. Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway. As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety with Greenlight Infinity's driving reports. Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety. Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time. Help keep your teen safe. Sign up for Greenlight infinity@Greenlight.com podcast.