The Heroes of Asgard: Tales from Scandinavian MythologyKeary, Annie
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The Heroes of Asgard: Tales from Scandinavian Mythology
Keary, Annie
Mythology, Norse -- Juvenile literature
Odin heard from Air Throne's blue deep. He brooded over the scene.
"The sweetness, and the life, and the light of the world, then," he
said, "are to satiate a giant's greediness of food and blood"--and
it was for mankind that he became Terror in the trembling Height.
Allfather feared nothing for the gods at that time: could he not
pierce into Jötunheim, and Svartheim, and Manheim alike? Suttung
heard also from the Rock.--"And what may this Odhærir be worth that
you boast of so much?" he shouted to the dwarfs. "Wisdom, and labour,
and fire, and life, and love," said the dwarfs. "Tut, tut, tut!"
answered Suttung. "Does it taste well?" "Honey and wine; like the
blood of a God and the milk of the Earth." Then Suttung got up slowly
from the rock, pressing it down with his hands into two little dells
as he rose, and strode to the island, from which he took up all the
dwarfs at a grasp--they clinging to his fists and wrists like needles
to a magnet; and, with one swoop, threw them ashore just as the
hungry waves began to lap and wash about the dwarf's-peril. So the
dwarfs jumped, and leaped, and laughed, and sang, and chattered
again, and ran on before Suttung, to fetch him the golden mead,
Odhærir. Three big stone jars, all full. The Spirit-mover, the
Peace-offer, the Peace-kiss. Suttung lifted the lids, and looked into
the jars. "It doesn't look much," he said; "and, after all, I don't
know that I shall care to taste it; but I'll take the jars home to my
daughter Gunnlöd, and they will make a pretty treasure for her to
keep."
Odin brooded over the scene. It was a grey winter's morning in
Jötunheim--ice over all the rivers, snow upon the mountains,
rime-writing across the woods, weird hoar letters straggling over the
bare branches of the trees, writing such as giants and gods can read,
but men see it only as pearl-drops of the cold. Suttung could read it
well enough as he trudged along to his Mountain Home--better than he
had ever read it before; for was he not bearing upon his shoulders
the wondrous Kvasir's life-giving blood, Odhærir. Odin read it, "This
is ominous, Odin; this is dark. Shall the gold mead be made captive
in frozen halls?" For behold, the life-tear becomes dark in the dark
land, as Suttung's huge door opened to let him in, him and his
treasure, and then closed upon them both, Suttung gave the mead to
his daughter Gunnlöd to keep, to guard it well, and--the heart of
Manheim trembled, it was empty and cold. Then Odin looked north and
south and east and west, over the whole world. "Come to me," he said,
and two swift-winged ravens flew towards him. It seemed as if they
came out of nothing; for in a moment they were not there and they
were there. Their names were Hugin and Munin, and they came from the
ends of the earth, where Odin sent them every morning. Every evening
he was wont to say of them,--
"I fear me for Hugin,
Lest he come not back,
But much more for Munin."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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