God on the Margins- Transience in the Myths of Odhinn

God on the Margins: Dislocation and Transience in the Myths of ÓðinnAuthor(s): Kevin J. WannerReviewed work(s):Source: History of Religions, Vol. 46, No. 4 (May 2007), pp. 316-350Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/518812 .Accessed: 12/01/2012 09:50

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Kevin J. Wanner G OD O N TH E M A RGI NS : DI S LO C ATIO N A N D T R A NS I E NC E I N TH E M Y TH S O F Ó D I N N

space, time, and the history of religions

The works of Mircea Eliade are suffused by a concern with religiousconceptions of space and time, above all with the ways in which myths,rituals, and symbols serve to link the profane with the sacred, to maintainhumanity’s connection to the cosmic center and eternity. In The Myth ofthe Eternal Return, Eliade claims to demonstrate how “archaic ontology—more precisely, the conceptions of being and reality that can be read fromthe behavior of the man of the premodern societies”—seeks to groundhuman institutions and practices “in a reality that transcends them.”1

Indeed, Eliade argues, it is only to the extent that these are held to par-ticipate in transcendent reality that they are considered real at all. Interms of space, this means that significant loci “are invested with theprestige of the Center,” and regarded as an “axis mundi . . . the meetingpoint of heaven, earth, and hell.”2 In terms of time, this means that a sig-nificant event or action is associated with a “divine model, an archetype,”and “acquires effectiveness to the extent to which it exactly repeats an actperformed at the beginning of time by a god, a hero, or an ancestor.”3 In

1 Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return; or, Cosmos and History, trans. WillardR. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), 3, 4.

2 Ibid., 12.3 Ibid., 21, 22.

History of Religions 317

Eliade’s view, myth and ritual are preeminently means by which archaichumanity, or homo religiosus, erases history and the terror it generatesthrough a return to illo tempore, the pristine moment of creation. Theeffect and purpose of assimilating human and terrestrial phenomena tocosmic centers and aboriginal events are to transport them “from theephemeral and illusory to reality and eternity” and provide them with “ameaning and transhistorical justification.”4

Eliade’s preoccupations have continued to inform the interests ofscholars of religion. While some persist in using his categories and ideasabout sacred space and time uncritically, others have suggested ways inwhich they ought to be modified or replaced. The most trenchant critiqueshave been directed at his notions of sacred space, particularly his privi-leging of symbolism of the center. Leading this charge has been JonathanZ. Smith, whose first tentative challenge to Eliade was raised in his 1972essay “The Wobbling Pivot,” wherein he likens himself to “the pygmystanding on the giant’s shoulders but without the attendant claim ofhaving seen further.”5 Smith would grow more confident in works such asTo Take Place (1987), in which he contends that in the ancient Near East,the context to which he traces the roots of Eliade’s thinking about sacredspace, the “language of ‘center’ is preeminently political and only sec-ondarily cosmological. It is a vocabulary that stems, primarily, from archaicideologies of kingship and the royal function. . . . [While] it cannot beclaimed that the pattern of the ‘Center’ is a fantasy . . . the burden ofproof has shifted to those who will claim that a particular cultural con-struction represents a ‘Center’. The ‘Center’ is not a secure pattern towhich data may be brought as illustrative; it is a dubious notion that willhave to be established anew on the basis of detailed comparative en-deavors.”6 If the center cannot be considered a universal pattern, Smithsuggests that at least two models or “maps” are needed to understand howspace is conceptualized religiously: “a locative vision of the world (whichemphasizes place) and a utopian vision of the world (using the term inits strict sense: the value of being in no place).”7 Smith also labels theseorientations “cosmological conviction” versus “cosmic paranoia,” theformer referring to outlooks in which “the meaning of life is rooted in anencompassing cosmic order in which man, society and the gods all par-ticipate” and in which it is humanity’s purpose to align itself “with thegreat rhythms of cosmic destiny and order,” the latter to those in which

4 Ibid., 18, 147.5 Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1978), 90.6 Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1987), 17.7 Smith, Map Is Not Territory, 101.

God on the Margins318

“man is no longer defined by the degree to which he harmonizes himselfand his society to the cosmic patterns of order; but rather to the degreeto which he can escape the patterns.”8 Smith’s correction or extension ofEliade’s thought in this regard has been most important for drawing atten-tion to the ways in which myths can speak for those operating from or withan interest in valorizing the periphery as much as for those concerned withdefending the center, as well as locate meaning not only in the cosmos-as-it-is but in the cosmos-as-it-should-be.

While chiefly a revision of Eliade’s thinking on space, Smith’s systemof maps does not ignore the dimension of time. Among the groups thatSmith identifies as utopian in outlook are various brands of gnostics andcargo cults, the following of Jim Jones, and yogic reform movements ofancient India, all of which are marked as much by apocalyptic expec-tations or otherworldly soteriologies as by spatial or social marginality.9

In other words, such groups share a conviction that the peripheral positionthey are forced to endure in this world will be compensated for on a higherplane or rectified in a world to come. As such, Smith’s critique leavesEliade’s ideas about sacred time largely untouched: rather than challengethe locative claim that human values and institutions are anchored in anobjective order, the utopian perspective shifts such orders’ location fromthe here-and-now to the elsewhere-and-elsewhere.

In this sense, Smith’s utopian map functions very much like PeterBerger’s “self-transcending” or “messianic-millenarian” theodicies, thosethat offer “religious legitimation of anomic phenomena” (i.e., those thatthreaten a culture’s nomos, or worldview) through individual absorptioninto pantheistic reality or by interpreting present misfortune “by referenceto a future nomization.”10 What is more, while Berger’s focus in TheSacred Canopy remains assiduously anthropological as opposed to onto-logical, he is generally supportive of Eliade’s ideas about how religionfunctions to provide a sense of permanence and meaning to otherwisetransient and meaningless existence.11 The most potent form of nomizationis, for Berger, cosmization, and religion is, in turn, cosmization’s mosteffective mode, involving the equation of nomos, or meaningful order, withcosmos, the order of reality; its primary function, he writes, is to “ground

8 Ibid., 132 (here quoting Cornelius Loew, Myth, Sacred History, and Philosophy: ThePre-Christian Religious Heritage of the West [New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1967], 5),133, 139.

9 Ibid., 309; Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1982), 112–17.

10 Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion(New York: Anchor, 1967), 55, 63, 69.

11 Echoing Eliade, Berger speaks of religion and the “socially established nomos” it protectsas components of “a shield against terror” and “the danger of meaninglessness” (ibid., 22).


the socially defined reality . . . in the ultimate reality of the universe, inreality ‘as such’. The institutions are thus given a semblance of inevita-bility, firmness and durability that is analogous to these qualities asascribed to the gods themselves.”12 This vision of religion as an instru-ment of transcendentalization/eternalization par excellence that, wheneffective, cloaks historical, that is ephemeral and contingent, phenomenain a sacred, that is, enduring and absolute, aura has remained prevalent,even among some who have otherwise sought to distance themselvesfrom the Eliadean paradigm. To take a notable example, Bruce Lincolnhas described religion as “a human discourse that constructs itself asdivine and unfailing” as well as “that discourse [along with associatedpractices and institutions] whose defining characteristic is its desire tospeak of things eternal and transcendent with an authority equally tran-scendent and eternal.”13

Despite, then, their differences on many issues, all of the above theoristsmake two basic claims: the first is that religion characteristically seeks toground human or historical orders in a (or, from the typical religious per-spective, the) cosmic order; the second is that the latter order is equallycharacteristically regarded by the religious as eternal and absolute (thoughreligious systems differ as to whether this order is present or deferred,immanent in this world or located outside or above it). These theoristsposit, in short, that a defining feature of religious worldviews is theirroughly Platonic dualism, their propensity to split “reality” in two, into arealm of becoming, that is, this world or the world of matter, and a realmof being, that is, the other world or the world of spirit or mind, and toassign value and meaning intrinsically to the latter and only derivativelyto the former. For whether we are considering religious conceptions ofspace or of time, the central concern remains the assignation of meaning(Eliade and Berger) or legitimacy/authority (Smith and Lincoln) to humanphenomena and institutions, effected through their assimilation to a center,transcendent models, or eternal archetypes.

In this article, it is my aim to question whether claims to centrality,transcendence, and permanence ought to be considered essential to thecategory “religion” by focusing on a set of materials that most wouldlabel as religious, but which nevertheless seem to me to posit a worldand operate according to principles far removed from Platonic meta-physics. The materials that suggest to me the need for this reevaluationare associated with Norse paganism, the traditions of pre-Christian

12 Ibid., 36.13 Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 2003), 16, and “Theses on Method,” Method and Theory in theStudy of Religion 8 (1996): 225.


northern Europe as preserved mainly in medieval Scandinavian and,above all, Icelandic sources. In particular, I will focus on myths of thechief god ÓDinn, material that, I will show, is dominated by motifs not ofcentrality and eternality but of spatial marginality, social liminality, andephemerality. This examination will fall into four parts: first, as a foun-dation for analysis I will provide an overview of the sources for, charac-ter of, and scholarship on ÓDinn. Second, I will describe and offer somepreliminary discussion of the ways in which ÓDinn’s myths consistentlyplace the god, in spite of his paramount status in the Norse pantheon andcosmos, in situations of dislocation and peril. Third, I will do the samefor the ways in which ÓDinn is portrayed in his myths as engaged in apersistent yet ultimately—and explicitly—futile effort to combat his ownand his order’s transience. Fourth and finally, I will seek to provide somesociologically grounded responses to two major questions posed by ÓDinnand the quality of his mythos, the first of which is of primary relevancefor studies of medieval Norse culture, the second for general theory aboutreligion: First, why is the central character of Norse myth, as well as thepatron deity of such central figures of medieval Norse society as kingsand poets, so consistently placed at the center of myths that themselvescenter around themes of spatial, social, and temporal marginality? Second,given the pervasive assumption among scholars that religion aims to equatenomos with cosmos, what is one to make of a mythos that goes out of itsway to depict the gods and the world they have constructed and over whichthey rule not as absolute and eternal but, quite the contrary, as contingentand transient?

óD& inn: sources, character, and scholarship

The sources for ÓDinn are varied but can be lumped into several basiccategories.14 None, it should be noted at the outset, can be regarded aspurely pagan; since literacy advanced into the north alongside Chris-tianity, all of our sources are subject in composition and/or recording tosome degree of Christian influence and interpretation. My use of the terms“myth” and “mythology” is thus loose. Essentially, I treat any text in whichÓDinn appears or is described as contributing to his mythos, whatever

14 I do not deal with the nonliterary sources for ÒDinn, mainly rune stones and place names,in this article. Although much of this material is by its nature older than the literary sourceson which I focus and thus can be supposed to provide less mediated access to pre-ChristianNorse religion, it is of less use for reconstructing ÓDinn’s mythos, with which I am chieflyconcerned, rather than his cult. At any rate, this material tends to reinforce the portrait ofÓDinn’s followers that I present in the final section of my article, namely, that this god wasof most importance to a narrow but politically and culturally elite segment of Norse society.For a recent discussion of pre-Christian religion and cult based largely on this data, see EricChristiansen, The Norsemen in the Viking Age (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 259–68.


degree of pagan authenticity it might be judged to have. This seems tome a valid approach given how consistent ÓDinn’s major character traitsand narrative tropes remain across the sources.

Probably the most valuable type of source material for ÓDinn is poetry,both eddic and skaldic. “Eddic” refers to verse that is typically anonymous,emphasizes mythological or legendary themes, is narrative or dialogic/didactic in form, and employs simpler meters and diction; six eddic laysprominently feature ÓDinn, and he appears or is mentioned in many of theothers.15 While individual poems are notoriously hard to date, the extantcorpus of eddic verse likely falls within the ninth to thirteenth centuries,the same that produced skaldic verse.16 “Skaldic” applies to verse that istypically ascribed to a named poet or skáld, focuses on historical personsor events, and employs highly ornate meters and diction; ÓDinn most oftenfigures in these poems as an element of kennings, circumlocutions thatfrequently reference myth.17 Closely linked to the verse sources is the Ice-lander Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, an early thirteenth-century mythographicand poetic treatise in which pagan myth and cosmology are presented inprose form and within a euhemeristic frame.18

Next, there are sagas that depict something of ÓDinn’s character anddeeds; these include so-called fornaldarsögur, or sagas of ancient times,which, though many are late (thirteenth- and fourteenth-century), depictthe god as a god, most often as he intervenes in human affairs, as well asskáldasögur and konungasögur, sagas of poets and kings, which mainlydescribe how historic skalds, most of them Icelandic, and kings, most of

15 Those featuring ÓDinn are Völuspá, Hávamál, VafÂrúDnismál, Grímnismál, and Hár-barDsljóD—these five appearing in the Codex Regius, the main, mid-thirteenth century manu-script of the eddic poems—as well as Baldrs draumar. All references to eddic poems areto Gustav Neckel, ed., Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern,5th ed., rev. Hans Kuhn, 2 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1962). For translations, see Lee M.Hollander, trans., The Poetic Edda, 2nd ed., rev. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962);and Carolyne Larrington, trans., The Poetic Edda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

16 For a recent general survey of the features and history of eddic verse with references tothe more important secondary studies, see Terry Gunnell, “Eddic Poetry,” in A Companion toOld Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture, ed. Rory McTurk (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), 82–100; for skaldic, see Diana Whaley, “Skaldic Poetry,” in McTurk, Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature, 479–502.

17 For example, veDr Hárs (weather of Hárr, i.e., ÓDinn) = battle, or fengr Yggs (bounty ofYggr, i.e., ÓDinn) = poetry. The first kenning is from a verse of Eyvindr skáldaspillir Finnssonfound in Skáldskaparmál (The language of poetry; the second major section of Snorri’sEdda) 48; see Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Skáldskaparmál, ed. Anthony Faulkes, 2 vols.(London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 1998), 1:66. The second is used in verse 31of Snorri Sturluson’s Háttatal, the third major section of his treatise; see Snorri Sturluson,Edda: Háttatal, ed. Anthony Faulkes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 17.

18 Eddic poetry receives its name from Snorri’s treatise. The edition of the Edda used isAnthony Faulkes’s four-volume edition; for citations, see nn. 17 and 27. For a translation,see Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes (London: Everyman, 1987).


them Norwegian, conceived of and related to ÓDinn.19 ÓDinn and otherpagan gods are often subjected in these texts to explicit reinterpretation,either, as in sagas of missionary kings, demonization or, as in Snorri’sYnglinga saga, historicization.20 Finally, there is a limited set of Latinsources such as Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiaepontificum (ca. 1070) and Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum (early1200s) that provide information on cultic practices and/or mythologicaltraditions relating to ÓDinn.21

Alongside the many studies that focus on specific aspects of ÓDinn, hismythos, and cult, there have been a number of encyclopedic treatments thattake into account most if not all of the sources described above.22 Threecommon classifications of ÓDinn emerge from such synopses: first, he isa god of poetry, runes, spells, and other forms of knowledge arcane andpractical; second, he is a god of war or, more precisely, a god of battle-field stratagems who determines or influences the outcome of war; third,he is a god of the dead. In line with his functions, ÓDinn was a patron ofpoets, warriors, kings and nobility, and, though this is less certain in termsof the reality of cult and practice, magicians or shamans.23 As to his status

19 On classifications and dating of saga genres, see Kurt Schier, Sagaliteratur (Stuttgart:J. B. Metzlersche, 1970).

20 Ynglinga saga is the first saga in Snorri’s compilation of kings’ sagas, Heimskringla(Circle of the world), written ca. 1225–35; for an edition, see Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla,ed. Bjarni ADalbjarnarson, 3 vols. (Reykjavík: HiD íslenzka fornritafélag, 1941–51); for atranslation, see Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway, trans. LeeM. Hollander (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964).

21 For an edition of the former, see Adam von Bremen, Hamburgische Kirchengeschichte,ed. Bernard Schmeidler, 3rd ed. (Hanover: Hahnsche, 1917); for a translation, see Adam ofBremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, trans. Francis J. Tschan (New York:Columbia University Press, 1959). For an edition of the latter, see Alfred Holder, ed., SaxonisGrammatici Gesta Danorum (Strassburg: Karl J. Trübner, 1886); for a translation, see SaxoGrammaticus, The History of the Danes: Books I–IX, ed. Hilda Ellis Davidson, trans. PeterFisher, 2 vols. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996).

22 Some of the more exhaustive are found in Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsge-schichte, 2 vols. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1957), 2:27–106; the very old but still usefulH. M. Chadwick, The Cult of Othin: An Essay in the Ancient Religion of the North (London:C. J. Clay, 1899); E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion ofAncient Scandinavia (London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1964), 35–74; and H. R. EllisDavidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (London: Penguin, 1964), 25–32, 40–41,48–72, 140–58.

23 The shamanic qualities of ÓDinn’s character and mythos, particularly as they relate tohis reputation as a practitioner of seiDr, a potent but scandalous form of magic with antiso-cial and effeminate associations, has been a recurrent preoccupation of scholars (for primarysources identifying ÓDinn as seiDr practitioner, see Lokasenna 24 and Ynglinga saga 7).Many have argued for or against the view that the figure of ÓDinn reflects Norse ideas aboutFinnish, or Saami, religious practice. While ÓDinn’s association with seiDr and the nomadic,far-northern Saami no doubt contributed to his marginal character—as Thomas A. DuBoiswrites, the shaman and seiDr user are both “liminal figures . . . whose sacral powers arose inpart from their choice to assume a marginal, even pariah-like existence” (Nordic Religionsin the Viking Age [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999], 54)—I have not


among the gods, the sources identify ÓDinn as their head and father, whilealso reporting his occasional discord with other deities, especially Êórr.24

There are also duplications of function between ÓDinn and other gods(such as Êórr being also a god of war) that have been taken as evidenceof development; specifically, it has been argued that ÓDinn is an importfrom continental German into Scandinavian religion and/or that he was alesser god who rose to the top of the ranks in the ninth and tenth centuriesowing to his adoption and promotion by an emerging cultural and politicalelite.25 Finally, there is near consensus on the significance of the god’sname. Adam of Bremen writes of “Wotan, id est furor,” and scholars concurthat the root behind the deity’s name is *woÂ-, from whence comesGerman Wut, Anglo-Saxon wod, Old Norse óDr, and so on, all terms for“high mental excitement,” fury, ecstasy, or inspiration.26 ÓDinn’s name thuscalls attention to a common link between his adherents: the professionalsuccess of poets, warriors, and magicians depended, at least in principle,upon their accessing of otherworldly power and inducing states of in-spiration or frenzy.

ÓDinn’s activity in the myths is frequently framed in reference to rag-narök, the “doom of the gods” or, if one adopts Snorri’s spelling ragnarøkr,

24 This conflict is most obvious in the eddic poem HárbarDsljóD, though Gautreks saga 7is also fairly explicit about it; for an edition of the latter, see Wilhelm Ranisch, ed., Die Gau-trekssaga in zwei Fassungen (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1900); for a translation, see HermannPálsson and Paul Edwards, trans., Gautrek’s Saga and Other Medieval Tales (London: Uni-versity of London Press, 1968). Many have seen in the occasional discord between ÓDinn andÊórr a reflection of social or class tensions.

25 Both theories are very common; see, e.g., arguments presented in Chadwick, Cult ofOthin, 49–56; DuBois, Nordic Religions, 57–58; Jan de Vries, “Contributions to the Study ofOthin,” Folklore Fellows Communications 94 (1931): 43–46, and Altgermanische Religions-geschichte, 2:46–49; and Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, 64–70.

26 Adam of Bremen, Hamburgische Kïrchengeschichte 4.26r, 258. On ÓDinn’s name andrelated names and terms, see Chadwick, Cult of Othin, 66–67; de Vries, “Contributions tothe Study of Othin,” 30–31, 53; and Einar Haugen, “The Edda as Ritual: Odin and HisMasks,” in Edda: A Collection of Essays, ed. Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason(Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1983), 6.

stressed this element in this article, in part owing to considerations of space but also becauseit has been extensively discussed by others, and because I doubt whether this aspect of thegod’s mythos is reflective of his cult in the same way as his associations with kings andpoets. Major studies include Dag Strömbäck, Sejd: Textstudier i nordisk religionshistoria(Stockholm: Geber, 1935); Åke Ohlmarks, Studien zum Problem des Schamanismus (Lund:Gleerup, 1939); Peter Buchholz, “Shamanism: The Testimony of Old Icelandic LiteraryTradition,” Mediaeval Scandinavia 4 (1971): 7–20; Jere Fleck, “The ‘Knowledge-Criterion’in the Grímnismál: The Case against ‘Shamanism,’” Arkiv för nordisk filologi 86 (1971): 49–65; and John Lindow, “Myth Read as History: Odin in Snorri Sturluson’s Ynglinga Saga,” inMyth: A New Symposium, ed. Gregory Schrempp and William Hansen (Bloomington: IndianaUniversity Press, 2002), 107–23. For a recent overview of the debate as well as discussion ofideological perspectives that underlie scholarly positions, see Stefanie v. Schnurbein, “Sha-manism in the Old Norse Tradition: A Theory between Ideological Camps,” trans. BrianCurrid, History of Religions 43, no. 2 (2003): 116–38.


their “twilight.”27 He is often described by the sources and scholars alikeas attempting to gather information about and prepare for the comingassault of the jötnar (sing. jötunn), or giants, and their monstrous kinagainst the œsir and vanir (sing. áss, vanr), the two tribes of gods, andtheir allies. Another prominent theme in ÓDinn’s myths is the ambiguousnature of his relations with his closest followers, elite warriors (above allkings) and poets. As I will describe further below, ÓDinn was notoriousfor withdrawing support from his favorites, bringing about sudden anddisastrous reversals of fortune. While the sources tend to justify this habitby the god’s need to amass a phantom army in preparation for ragnarök,scholars have dwelled on its moral valences: what sorts of judgments, theyask, were passed on ÓDinn’s actions and motives, and by whom? E. O. G.Turville-Petre provides a rather extreme response to such questions, statingthat in “the sources in which he is most fully described, he was evil andsinister,”28 while Jan de Vries takes a more measured view, writing thatthe “heathen warrior, who could experience the changeable luck of warin every battle, likely scarcely brooded over ÓDinn’s unfaithfulness . . .but the poetry of the later age became indignant at the fact that a godcould act so faithlessly, and more sharply emphasized the god’s insidiouscharacter.”29 While de Vries assigns moral condemnation of ÓDinn mainlyto Christians, others have suggested that the god’s late ascension to the topof the divine ranks and displacement of other deities (and their adherents)generated resentment against him even in pagan times. As Thomas A.DuBois writes, “Tellingly, ÓDinn’s apparent rise to power in the Scandi-navian pantheon finds reflection in recurrent images of him as a crafty,usurping, duplicitous deity, lacking in many accounts the unambiguouslyadmirable qualities of Êórr.”30 (Of course, this ignores the fact that thelatter deity was often depicted as an impulsively violent near imbecile.)

While it is possible that ÓDinn’s late blooming and/or the conversionaccount for the sources’ ambivalence toward him, I will in what followssteer clear of judging or rationalizing the god’s fickle character and insteademphasize the ways in which his ethical grayness ties into a much broaderpattern of liminality. ÓDinn’s myths are marked by instances of treachery,but also by themes of travel, exile, and disguise; he plays the role of regi-cide, but also of hall guest, hostage, impostor, and rapist. Considering the

27 See the glossary entry for this term in Snorri Sturluson, Edda: Prologue and Gylfag-inning, ed. Anthony Faulkes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), 132. Snorri’s form of the term hasinfluenced modern adapters of the mythos, most notably Richard Wagner.

28 Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North, 51.29 “Der heidnische Krieger, der was wechselnde Glück des Kampfes in jeder Schlacht er-

fahren konnte, hat über Odins Untreue wohl kaum gegrübelt . . . aber die Poesie der späterenZeit hat sich darüber empört, daB ein Gott so treulos handeln konnte und den tückischenCharakter des Gottes schärfer betont” (de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 2:57).

30 DuBois, Nordic Religions, 58.

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overall character of ÓDinn’s mythic itinerary, the most pressing questionseems to me to involve not so much his adherents’ reactions as their iden-tities: why does the god especially attached to northern society’s dominantcultural and political agents, as well as to the primary consumers andproducers of our sources, so often skirt or push beyond territorial or moralboundaries? Or, to rephrase the question in terms of the issues raised atthe outset of the article: if ÓDinn is elite paganism’s central figure—andthus, according to an understanding of religion as tool of legitimation,the chief symbolic guarantor of Norse political, moral, and conceptualorders—why is he consistently made to operate from marginal positions?In considering these questions, I will concentrate on those myths that bestillustrate the themes and patterns I wish to describe. The examples onwhich I focus are, however, neither isolated nor idiosyncratic, and ref-erences are given in the notes to episodes that could be substituted for orwhich complement those discussed.

myths of spatial dislocation and social marginality

Alongside Smith, another scholar of religion who has paid a great dealof attention to religious and cultural “maps” is Michel de Certeau. InThe Practice of Everyday Life (1984), de Certeau draws a useful distinctionbetween two forms of practice, strategies versus tactics. A strategy hedescribes as “the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships thatbecomes possible as soon as a subject with will and power (a business,an army, a city, a scientific institution) can be isolated. It postulates aplace that can be delimited as its own and serve as the base from whichrelations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats (customersor competitors, enemies, the country surrounding the city, objectives andobjects of research, etc.) can be managed.” A tactic, on the other hand,de Certeau defines as

a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. No delimitationof an exteriority, then, provides it with the condition necessary for autonomy. Thespace of a tactic is the space of the other. Thus it must play on and with a terrainimposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign power. . . . It must vigilantlymake use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance ofthe proprietary powers. It poaches in them. It creates surprises in them. It can bewhere it is least expected. It is a guileful ruse.

In short, a tactic is an art of the weak.31

According to these definitions, ÓDinn emerges from the sources as moretactician than strategist. To be sure, he has places to call his own: as a god,

31 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1984), 35–37.


he is one of a divine trio who formed the cosmos out of the body of themurdered giant Ymir. He and his allies then inhabit ÁsgarDr, the garDr orenclosure of the œsir, which stands opposed to Jötunheimar, the homesof the jötnar. Within ÁsgarDr on the plain of Gladsheimr sits Valhöll, the“hall of the slain” where ÓDinn hosts the einherjar, the war dead whomhis valkyrjur (sing. valkyrja) or “choosers of the slain” collect from thebattlefield, and he is attached to other dwellings, such as Válaskjálf andSokkvabekkr.32 Finally, he is said to possess HlíDskjálf, a panoptic seat ormountain shelf from which he can view happenings in all worlds.33 As ahuman, ÓDinn is described by Snorri as having come originally from Troyin Turkey, “near the world’s middle,” and to have established realms forhimself and his sons throughout Europe, eventually settling in Sweden,while Saxo places him originally in Byzantium.34 It would seem, then, asif ÓDinn, whether imagined as god or man, controlled plenty of loci fromwhich to set and pursue a strategic agenda.

And yet, little in our sources indicates that ÓDinn is meant to occupyor symbolize a clearly defined or stable “center,” cosmic or other. Whilemy discussions will focus on the extent to which the myths place ÓDinnin areas outside of his control, the identification of this or that context asmarginal in the Norse cosmos is, it should be stressed, always relative.Kirsten Hastrup, who has written extensively on Norse conceptions ofspace, argues otherwise. In her view, the Norse possessed “a cosmo-logical model of concentric circles” in which “the cosmos was dividedinto MiDgarDr and ÚtgarDr. MiDgarDr was the central space . . . inhabitedby men (and gods), while ÚtgarDr was found ‘outside the fence’ . . . andinhabited by giants and non-humans. . . . The opposition between centreand periphery had connotations of familiar versus foreign . . . [as wellas] reflected the opposition between ‘the social’ and ‘the wild.’ ”35 This

32 Snorri provides an overview of the ordering of the cosmos and of mythic topography inGylfaginning 3–19. Many of the details mentioned derive from Grímnismál, especially fromverses 6–7 (Válaskjálf and Sokkvabekkr), 8–10, 18–19, 21–23, and 25–26 (Valhöll and theeinherjar). Some of the account of ÓDinn’s and his brothers’ use of the body of Ymir to formthe world is from VafÂrúDnismál.

33 HlíDskjálf as ÓDinn’s seat is not mentioned in eddic poetry, but it is named in the proseintroductions to Grímnismál and Skírnismál; in Gylfaginning 17, Snorri places this seat inVálaskjálf (and in Gylfaginning 9 in Troy; see next note).

34 “Nær miDri veröldunni” (Snorri Sturluson, Prologue 3, Faulkes ed., 4). Snorri placesÁsgarDr, home of the human œsir, similarly in Ynglinga saga 2. For Saxo, see GestaDanorum 1. Translations of primary sources unless otherwise noted are my own, though I haveconsulted and in many cases stuck closely to Anthony Faulkes’s translation and glossariesfor Snorri’s Edda and to Larrington’s translation of the eddic poems (for full citations ofFaulkes see nn. 17, 18, 27, and for Larrington see n. 15).

35 Kirsten Hastrup, “Cosmography,” in Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia, ed. PhillipPulsiano and Kirsten Wolf (New York: Routledge, 1993), 109, and Culture and History inMedieval Iceland: An Anthropological Analysis of Structure and Change (Oxford: Clarendon,1985), 147–48.

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division of the Norse cosmos into central and peripheral zones is, how-ever, drastically overstated. As Margaret Clunies Ross has argued, anycentrality that the gods possess is owed to “the insistently pro-god narra-torial point of view of myth rather than, as Hastrup has argued . . . anamed division into MiDgarDr, ‘Middle Enclosure’ and ÚtgarDr, ‘OuterEnclosure.’ ”36 Clunies Ross further points out that while the former termis common enough in the sources, the latter is never used by poets andexactly once by Snorri, in a story that has Êórr travel east over the sea tothe land of ÚtgarDa-Loki, less a giant than a malevolent counterpart to thealready ambiguous trickster “god” Loki.37

Aron Gurevich provides what is in my view a better description of theNorse cosmos as “an aggregate of farmsteads inhabited by people, gods,giants, and dwarfs,” wherein different sets of beings are thought of as in-habiting their own civilized zones.38 Nothing suggests, moreover, that thehalls of giants—or men, for that matter—are any less cultured or com-fortable than those of the gods. Indeed, the many myths in which godsvisit giants to secure, among other things, knowledge, a wife, a cauldron forbrewing their mead, and a venue for their feasting suggest the opposite.39

Whether, then, one is thinking in topographical or cultural terms, theNorse cosmos lacks a clear axis mundi.40

More important, however, than ÓDinn’s lack of control over a definitecosmic center is the fact that he spends so little time in those centers overwhich he exercises clear control. In Völuspá (The Völva’s prophecy) it is

36 Margaret Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval NorthernSociety, vol. 1, The Myths (Odense: Odense University Press, 1994), 51.

37 Ibid.38 Aron Ya. Gurevich, “Space and Time in the Weltmodell of the Old Scandinavian People,”

Mediaeval Scandinavia 2 (1969): 45.39 For example, ÓDinn travels to VafÂrúDnir’s hall to gain knowledge in VafÂrúDnismál,

Freyr sends his servant Skírnir to the farm of the giant Gymir to gain GerDr as a wife inSkírnismál, and Êórr and Tyr visit Hymir in HymskviDa to procure a cauldron to be used atÆgir’s feast in Lokasenna.

40 While Eliade would assign this role to Himinbjörg, according to him the “celestialmountain . . . where the rainbow (Bifrost) touches the dome of heaven” (Mircea Eliade,Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed [New York: Meridian, 1958], 100;see also Eliade, Myth of the Eternal Return, 12), such an exalted position for this site has nosupport in the sources: the name appears once in poetry as the hall of the minor áss Heimdallr,and Snorri describes it as a watchman’s perch that stendr á himins enda (“stands at heaven’send [or edge]” [Snorri Sturluson, in Gylfaginning 17, Faulkes ed., 20]). Even if one followsmany Norse scholars in regarding the tree Yggdrasill as a sort of cosmic pillar, it must beadmitted that no one class of beings can lay claim to its center. According to Snorri, “threeroots of the tree hold it up and spread extremely widely. One is among the œsir, and anotheramong the frost-giants. . . . The third stands over Niflheim [i.e., Hel]” (“Êrjár rœtr trésinshalda Âví upp ok standa afar breitt. Ein er meD Ásum, en önnur meD hrímÂursum. . . . InÂriDja stendr yfir Niflheimi” [Snorri Sturluson, in Gylfaginning 15, Faulkes ed., 17]), while inthe eddic lay Grímnismál, Snorri’s source for this account, its roots lie in the homes of Hel,the frost giants, and humans. In both sources, the œsir are described as having to ride overBifröst or wade across rivers to attend court at a well feeding the tree’s roots.


told that “war, the first in the world, began between the œsir and vanirwhen Gullveigr, a female of uncertain origin, was burned “in Hárr’s [theHigh (or Blind) One’s] hall,” and in Hávamál (Sayings of Hárr) ÓDinn issaid to declaim wisdom from his hall, and giants are said to have oncevisited him there.41 From Snorri’s Edda, there is the “master builder” tale,in which ÓDinn and the other gods unwittingly enlist a jötunn to repairÁsgarDr’s defensive wall, which had been damaged in the first war.42 Otherthan these apparently primordial events, nothing much happens involvingÓDinn in his “proper locus.” Most of the time, he is found operating in ormoving through the territory of others, whether giants, humans, or beingssuch as Hel, goddess of the underworld of the unprivileged dead. Andwhile it is true that movement, peril, and conflict are the elements of anygood story—it was not for nothing that J. R. R. Tolkien subtitled hisfirst novel of Middle-earth “There and Back Again”—it is unlikely thatdramatic considerations alone can account for the dominance of themesof dislocation in ÓDinn’s myths. The god’s character and activity are fun-damentally peripatetic. In VafÂrúDnismál (Sayings of VafÂrúDnir) ÓDinnrepeats seven times the refrain “Much have I traveled, much have Iessayed, much have I tested the powers,” and his names include manythat evoke long days on the road: Gangleri (Travel-Weary or Vagabond),VáfuDr (Wayfarer), Vegtamr (Way-Tamer), Gestr and Gestumblindi (Guest,Blind-Guest).43 In Gylfaginning (The deluding of Gylfi), the main mytho-graphic section of Snorri’s Edda, King Gylfi of Sweden, who has cometo inquire from the human œsir, or invaders from Troy, about the godswhom they worship, exclaims upon hearing a list of ÓDinn’s names, “Agreat many names you have given him. And by my faith, that would requirea great deal of learning to give the details and explanations of which eventshave given rise to which of these names.”44 One of Gylfi’s hosts confirmsthat “some events behind these names were performed in his journeys and

41 “fólcvíg fyrst í heimi . . . í höll Hárs” (Völuspá 21, in Edda, Neckel ed., 5; Hávamál 109,111, 164). Here and below, I make no attempt to indicate line divisions in citations of poetry.

42 Gylfaginning 42.43 “FiölD ec fór, fiolD ec freistaDa, fiolD ec reynda regin” (VafÂrúDnismál 3, 44, 46, 48, 50,

52, 54, in Edda, Neckel ed., 45, 66–68). Gangleri is a name for ÓDinn given in Grímnismál 46,Vegtamr in Baldrs draumar 6, VáfuDr in Grímnismál 54 (“Wayfarer” is the translation of thisname suggested by Lee M. Hollander in his The Poetic Edda, 64, while Richard Cleasby andGuDbrandur Vigfússon suggest “Waverer” in An Icelandic–English Dictionary, 2nd ed., witha supplement by William A. Craigie [Oxford: Clarendon, 1874], 684; and Beatrice La Fargeand John Tucker give “waverer” or “roamer” in their Glossary to the Poetic Edda Based onHans Kuhn’s Kurzes Wörterbuch [Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1992], 274). ÓDinn is called gestrin VafÂrúDnismál 19, and Gestumblindi in HeiDreks saga ok Hervarar 9; for edition andtranslation of the last, see Christopher Tolkien, ed. and trans., Saga HeiDreks Konungs insVitra: The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise (London: Thomas Nelson, 1960).

44 “Geysi mörg heiti hafi Âér gefit honum. Ok Âat veit trúa mín at Âetta mun vera mikillfróDleikr sá er hér kann skyn ok dœmi hverir atburDir hafa orDit sér til hvers Âessa nafns”(Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 20, in Faulkes ed., 22).

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made into stories, and you will not be able to be called a wise man if youcannot tell about those great tidings.”45

Integrally linked to the role of traveler in the medieval north was thatof hall guest. The source that best conveys the connection between theseroles and of each with ÓDinn is the eddic lay Hávamál. Punctuated byallusions to the god’s quests for knowledge, magic, and sex, much of thispoem consists of advice on travel and hall etiquette dispensed by a wisefigure, presumably though not always explicitly ÓDinn. For example, thefirst verse warns, “All entrances, before one goes forward, he should spyout, he should peer about; because one cannot know, where enemies sitahead in the hall.”46 ÓDinn is qualified to give such counsel owing to hisown experiences as hall guest: the plots of several eddic poems revolvearound the feasting of ÓDinn and the gods by the (probably) giant Ægir,and the prelude to the Völsung legend narrated in several sources hasÓDinn, Loki, and Hœnir lodge with a man named HreiDmarr.47 Thesestories are atypical, however, in that they have ÓDinn arriving at hallsopenly (if not always expectedly), sociably, and with companions. Moreoften he travels alone, in disguise, and with covert and hostile intent. Traitsof ÓDinn that obscure his identity within the stories but which would havesignaled to audiences his appearance were his hooded cloak, beard, and(though this likely never helped his disguise much) missing eye. Asidefrom the mere fact of his having so many aliases, some of his names ref-erence his propensity to travel incognito: Grímr and Grímnir (Masked,Masked One), Svipall (Changeable), Fjolnir (Concealer), SiDhöttr (Long-Hood), and (as he ironically introduces himself on one occasion) “HárbarDr[Grey-Beard] I am called, seldom do I hide my name.”48 Perhaps the para-digmatic story of a disguised ÓDinn on a hostile mission in VafÂrúDnismál,in which ÓDinn as GagnráDr (Against-Counsel) visits VafÂrúDnir’s hall

45 “sumir atburDir til Âessa heita hafa gerzk í ferDum hans ok er Âat fœrt í frásagnir, okmuntu eigi mega fróDr maDr heita ef Âú skalt eigi kunna segja frá Âeim störtíDindum” (ibid.).

46 “Gáttir allar, áDr gangi fram, um scoDaz scyli, um scygnaz scyli; Âvíat óvíst er at vita,hvar óvinir sitia á fleti fyrir” (Hávamál 1, in Edda, Neckel ed., 17). Other typical lines read:“Wits are a necessity for one who roams widely”; “When a wise and silent man comes to ahomestead seldom does shame befall the wary”; and “No better burden can a man carry onthe road than a store of common sense” (“Vitz er Âörf, Âeim er víDa ratar”; Âá er horscr ocÂögull kømr heimisgarDa til, sialdan verDr víti vorom”; “ByrDi betri berrat maDr brauto at,enn sé manvit mikit” [Hávamál 5, 6, 10/11, in Edda, Neckel ed., 17–18]). Translation ofHávamál 6 and 10/11 from Larrington, The Poetic Edda, 15.

47 Lokasenna is set at a feast in Ægir’s hall over which ÓDinn, though a guest, presides,while HymskviDa centers around Êórr’s efforts to procure a cauldron capable of brewing thedrink for this feast; Ægir’s feast for the œsir is also mentioned in Skáldskaparmál 33. Thevisit of ÓDinn, Hœnir, and Loki to HreiDmarr is narrated in Völsunga saga 14 (for editionand translation, see Völsunga saga: The Saga of the Volsungs; the Icelandic Text accordingto MS Nks 1824 b, 4o, ed. and trans. Kaaren Grimstad [Saarbrücken: AQ-Verlag, 2000]), theprose introduction and first nine verses of Reginsmál, and Skáldskaparmál 39–40.

48 “HárbarDr ec heiti, hylc um nafn sialdan” (HárbarDsljóD 10, in Edda, Neckel ed., 79).The first five names appear alongside many others in Grímnismál 46–48.


“to contend in ancient matters with that all-wise giant.”49 The contestends when the god poses the unanswerable (to any but him) question,“What did ÓDinn himself say into the ear of his son, before he was placedon the pyre?” to which the giant replies: “That is known to no man, whatyou in days of old said into your son’s ear. . . . Now I’ve bandied myword-wisdom against ÓDinn; you will always be the wisest.”50 That ÓDinnwaits until he has delivered the knowledge contest’s coup de grâce to revealhis identity underscores the tactical nature of his undertaking: his disguisepermits him entry into space controlled by another and gives him the timeneeded to maneuver into a position of strength.

The elements of antagonism and danger present in ÓDinn’s visit toVafÂrúDnir are more pronounced in other tales of his journeys, in which,rather than “traveler” and “hall guest,” ÓDinn plays the more sinister rolesof “exile” and “hostage.” The theme of exile comes forth most starkly inSaxo. In book 1 of his history, Saxo writes that ÓDinn “was believedthroughout Europe, though falsely, to be a god. He had the habit ofstaying more frequently than anywhere at Uppsala.”51 Northern kingsmade a golden effigy of ÓDinn and sent it to him, only to have his wifeFrigg seduce a craftsman into melting and recasting the statue as orna-ments. “Stung by this double embarrassment,” ÓDinn “took to exile repletewith an honest shame, thinking he would thereby obliterate the stain of hisdisgrace.”52 ÓDinn returned to power, but in book 3 of the Gesta Danorumhe is made to undergo a second, less voluntary exile. After he employeda series of disguises and ruses to rape the princess Rinda and conceive onher Bo, the fated avenger of his son Baldr, the other “gods, whose prin-cipal residence was reckoned to be at Byzantium, perceived that Odin hadtarnished the honour of his divinity by these various lapses from dignityand . . . ensured that he was ousted from his preeminence, stripped of hispersonal titles and worship, and outlawed.”53 After a decade or so, “the

49 “forvitni micla qveD ec mér á fornom stöfom viD Âann inn alsvinna iotun” (VafÂrúD-nismál 1, in Edda, Neckel ed., 45). Translation from Larrington, The Poetic Edda, 40.

50 “hvat mælti ÓDinn, áDr á bál stigi, siálfr í eyra syni?”; “Ey manni Âat veit, hvat Âú íárdaga sagDir í eyra syni. . . . Nú ec viD ÓDin deildac mína orDspeki, Êú ert æ vísaster vera”(VafÂrúDnismál 54, 55, in Edda, Neckel ed., 55).

51 “Ea tempestate cum Othinus quidam Europa tota falso diuinitatis titulo censeretur, apudVpsalam tamen crebriorem diuersandi usum habebat”; Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum 1,in Holder ed., 25. Translation from The History of the Danes, trans. Fisher, 1:25.

52 “Duplici itaque ruboris irritamento perstrictus, plenum ingenui pudoris exilium carpsit,eoque se contracti dedecoris sordes aboliturum putauit”; Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum1, in Holder ed., 25. Translation from The History of the Danes, trans. Fisher, 1:26.

53 “At dii, quibus precipua apud Bizantium sedes habebatur, Othinum uariis maiestatisdetrimentis diuinitatis gloriam maculasse cernentes, collegio suo submouendum duxerunt.Nec solum primatu eiectum, sed eciam domestico honore cultuque spoliatum proscribendumcurabant”; Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum 3, in Holder ed., 80–81. Translation fromThe History of the Danes, trans. Fisher, 1:78.


gods finally took pity on Odin’s harsh exile. Reckoning that he had com-pleted a severe enough sentence they restored him from filthy rags to hisformer splendour. . . . There were some, however, who believed he did notdeserve permission to be reinstated in his rank because, through adoptingactors’ tricks and women’s duties, he had brought the foulest of slurs ontheir reputation.”54 While it is tempting to dismiss much of Saxo’s char-acterization as so much Christian condemnation of a discredited pagandeity, the substance if not all of the detail of what he describes is con-firmed by other and older sources, and scholars generally consider thetradition of ÓDinn’s exile(s) early.55

There are two occasions when ÓDinn is taken hostage by a host. Thefirst is in the frame narrative of the eddic poem Grímnismál (Sayings ofGrímnir), in which ÓDinn visits the court of GeirrøDr to settle a disputebetween himself and Frigg over the king’s purported lack of hospitality.56

When ÓDinn arrives calling himself Grímnir, GeirrøDr, who had been

54 “tandem Othinus, diis atrocitatem exilii miserantibus, satis iam graues penas dedisseuisus, squaloris deformitatem pristino fulgoris habitu permutauit. . . . Extitere tamen, quiipsum recuperande dignitais aditu indignum censerent, quod scenicis artibus et muliebrisofficii suscepcione teterrimum diui nominis opprobrium edidisset”; Saxo Grammaticus,Gesta Danorum 3, in Holder ed., 81. Translation from The History of the Danes, trans.Fisher, 1:78.

55 See n. 43 of Davidson’s commentary to Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes,2:32. In Heimskringla, Snorri, also writing in a historical vein, describes a similar period ofabsence for ÓDinn: “ÓDinn had two brothers. One was named Vé and the other Vili. Thosebrothers of his ruled the kingdom when he was away. It happened one time, when ÓDinn hadgone far away and tarried a long while, that his return seemed to the œsir past hope. Then hisbrothers took to dividing his inheritance, but his wife Frigg they both took possession of. Alittle later ÓDinn came home. He then took back his wife” (“ÓDinn átti tvá brœDr. Hét annarrVé, en annarr Vílir. Êeir brœDr hans styrDu ríkinu, Âá er hann var í brottu. Êat var eitt sinn, Âáer ÓDinn var farinn langt í brot ok hafDi lengi dvalzk, at Ásum pótti ørvænt hans heim. Êá tókubrœDr hans at skipta arfi hans, en konu hans, Frigg, gengu Âeir báDir at eiga. En litlu síDarkom ÓDinn heim. Tók hann Âá viD konu sinni” [Snorri Sturluson, Ynglinga saga 3, in Heim-skringla, Bjarni ADalbjarnarson ed., 1:12]). That ÓDinn’s wife slept with his brothers is alsoattested in Lokasenna, where Loki proclaims: “Shut up, Frigg! . . . you have always been man-crazy, when, ViDrir’s [ÓDinn’s] wife, you allowed both Vé and Vili into your embrace”(“Êegi Âú, Frigg! . . . hefir æ vergiorn veriD er Âá Véa oc Vilia léztu Âér, ViDris qvæn, báDa íbaDm um tekit” [Lokasenna 26, in Edda, Neckel ed., 101]). There is also a perhaps relatedtradition about the goddess Freyja, who, to quote Gylfaginning, was married to that man whois named ÓDr. . . . ÓDr went away to long distances. . . . Freyja has many names, and that isbecause she gave herself various names when she went among unknown peoples to look forÓDr” (“Hon giptisk Âeim manni er ÓDr heitir. . . . ÓDr fór í braut langar leiDir. . . . Freyja ámörg nöfn, en sú er sök til Âess at hon gaf sér ymis heiti er hon fór meD ókunnum ÂjóDum atleita ÓDs” [Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 35, in Faulkes ed., 29]). Though a shadowy fig-ure, ÓDr is probably to be identified with ÓDinn (see de Vries, “Contributions to the Study ofOthin,” 33–39, and Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 2:87–88). Finally, it is worth notingthat not just ÓDinn but certain of his royal offspring suffer periods of exile and outlawry: forexample, in the first chapter of Völsunga saga, ÓDinn’s son Siggi kills a thrall and is declaredan úlfr, a “wolf ” or “outlaw.”

56 In the case of this and other eddic poems, references to prose introductions or interludesrefer to text appearing in the Codex Regius (see n. 15 above).


warned to beware a treacherous visitor, has “him tortured to make himspeak and set him between two fires, and he sat there eight nights.”57 Inpart a meditation on how not to treat a guest, in part an excuse for ÓDinnto recite cosmological and mythological names useful for constructingkennings, or circumlocutions employed in skaldic verse, the poem endswhen GeirrøDor, finally recognizing his hostage, leaps up to free him, trips,and is impaled on his own sword. The second instance of ÓDinn as captiveoccurs in the several sources that describe his visit to HreiDmarr.58 It is toldthat before ÓDinn and his companions come to HreiDmarr’s house, Lokikilled an otter, which the œsir offer to share as a meal with their host. Un-fortunately, the otter was really Otr, son of HreiDmarr, and so the aggrievedhost and his remaining sons take the gods captive, threatening to kill themif they fail to fill up as well as cover entirely their slain kinsman’s peltwith gold.

What is perhaps most striking about tales of ÓDinn’s captivity is that,as in the case of his contest against VafÂrúDnir, there is never any sensethat the peril he faces is less than real. He seems truly to be at the mercyof his captors/hosts, and his life (or at least well-being, if one takes hisforeknown date with the Fenrisúlfr at ragnarök seriously) seems genuinelyto be at stake. And yet ÓDinn is a god—and not just any áss, but the headdeity as well as chief architect of the cosmos—while those threatening himare giants or humans, beings who by most measures ought to be regardedas his inferiors. ÓDinn’s disadvantages, however, seem to have less to dowith an objective ranking of his and his opponents’ powers than with thefact that he is operating tactically, on, that is, someone else’s turf.59 Thougha god, ÓDinn is rarely in a position to accomplish or attain anything byfiat. Rather, he relies on practices that “are tactical in character . . . vic-tories of the ‘weak’ over the ‘strong’ (whether the strength be that ofpowerful people or the violence of things or of an imposed order, etc.),clever tricks, knowing how to get away with things . . . maneuvers, poly-morphic simulations, joyful discoveries, poetic as well as warlike.”60 WhileNorse myth was unlikely to have been on de Certeau’s mind when he wrotethese words, they nonetheless aptly summarize ÓDinn’s modus operandi.

57 “Konungr lét hann pína til sagna oc setia milli elda tveggia, oc sat hann Âar átta nætr”(Edda, Neckel ed., 57). Translation from Larrington, The Poetic Edda, 51.

58 See n. 47 above.59 Interestingly, however, the balance does not shift much in ÓDinn’s favor even when he

is at home. On several occasions, as when Loki crashes the feast of the gods ÓDinn is helpingto host at Ægir’s (see n. 47 above), or when jötnar such as the master builder or Hrungnir in-filtrate ÁsgarDr (Gylfaginning 42 and Skáldskaparmál 17), ÓDinn is compelled by the con-straints of hospitality to put up with unwelcome and disruptive guests. In each of these cases,it is left up to Êórr, with his seeming freedom from or utter lack of concern for social nice-ties, to expel or eliminate the intruder.

60 de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, xix.


ÓDinn is not, like the Christian god, a deity who makes one excursion fromhis heavenly sphere to place himself willingly at the mercy of his creaturesto obtain a foreseen, certain, and absolute victory; on the contrary, he isa vagrant god operating time and again on and from the margins, makingthe best tactical use of the situations that arise, and fighting a reactionarybattle against eventual but certain defeat. There is nothing “transcendent”about him.

myths of transience

ÓDinn’s myths express the motif of transience and ephemerality mainlythrough their preoccupation with the god’s own. If there is a thematicthread running through the tales of ÓDinn, it is his struggle to counteractfate, both his own and that of the world he set in order. Norse religion isnot alone, of course, in its having an eschaton. What sets it apart frommany others, however, is its comprehensiveness: as the Norse apocalypse’sname in either of its forms suggests, when the day of reckoning arrives,divine beings and realms will prove just as finite as human ones.61 Frominformants he encounters or summons, ÓDinn learns that it will be his fateat ragnarök to fall in battle against Loki’s offspring the Fenrisúlfr (the wolfFenrir). While the sources agree that a new world will emerge from thecosmic conflagration that consumes the old—though whether this rebirthis of genuine pagan origin or to be attributed to Christian influence hasbeen the subject of perennial debate—none indicates that ÓDinn has anyplace in it.62

The theme of northern “fatalism,” evident not just in the mythologybut in legendary materials such as Beowulf and versions of the Völsung/Nibelungen cycle, has been often discussed by scholars. Indeed, as PaulC. Bauschatz describes, it is “almost a cliché to refer to early Germanic

61 On the forms of this name, see n. 27 above.62 The most important sources for Norse cosmic history are Völuspá, in which a völva or

female spirit is summoned by ÓDinn to tell him of the beginning and end of things; VafÂrúD-nismál, in which ÓDinn quizzes VafÂrúDnir on this same topic; and Gylfaginning, whichsupplies a prose synopsis of information culled from both poems, here narrated by the humanœsir from Troy to King Gylfi. Major studies of ragnarök include Axel Olrik, Om Ragnarok(Copenhagen: G. C. Gad, 1914); John Stanley Martin, Ragnarök: An Investigation into OldNorse Concepts of the Fate of the Gods (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972); and John McKinnell,Both One and Many: Essays on Change and Variety in Late Norse Heathenism (Rome: IlCalamo, 1994). The survivors of ragnarök differ between Völuspá and VafÂrúDnismál. Inthe former, Baldr and his slayer HöDr, both sons of ÓDinn, are reborn, and Hœnir is mentionedas present; there is also a reference to the coming of “a powerful, strong one” (“inn ríki . . .öflugr” [Völuspá 65, in Edda, Neckel ed., 15]) in a half-stanza that has been the subject ofmuch controversy (Ursula Dronke, for example, omits it from her edition of the poem on thegrounds that it is almost certainly a later, patently Christian interpolation; see Ursula Dronke,ed. and trans., The Poetic Edda, vol. 2: Mythological Poems [Oxford: Clarendon, 1997],152–53). In the latter, ÓDinn’s sons ViDarr and Váli and Êorr’s sons Magni and MóDi survive,along with two humans, Líf and LífÂrasir.


people as gloomy, humorless, and fatalistic,” and most have come to regardtheir mythos as one in which nothing is able to “transcend the tyranny ofthe insubstantial. . . . This lack of eternality is, from a Christian pointof view, ‘gloomy’—it is peculiarly un-Christian to conceive of heavenas not permanent.”63 Such a worldview is also, of course, distinctly un-Platonic. As Augustine of Hippo, history’s foremost Neoplatonic Chris-tian spokesman, writes of God in his Confessions: “In you are the constantcauses of inconstant things. All mutable things have in you their immutableorigins. In you all irrational and temporal things have the everlasting causesof their life.”64 From the perspective of the Greek Academy or Christiantheology the notion of impermanent divinity is not just troubling or gloomy,but incoherent—the ever-shifting world of experience simply must begrounded in an unvarying realm of abstract being. Otherwise, as Plato in-sists, one is left with the possibility of opinion but never of knowledge.65

While of the theorists discussed at the outset of the article, Eliade aloneappears to share Plato’s ontological and epistemological suppositions, allseem to agree that these are distinctive of religious worldviews in general.As Lincoln writes in the third of his “Theses on Method,” it ought to bethe job of the historian of religions to discuss “the temporal, contextual,situated, interested, human, and material dimensions of those discourses,practices, and institutions that characteristically represent themselves aseternal, transcendent, spiritual, and divine.”66 But if it is indeed religion’saim to legitimize human and historical orders by anchoring these in divineand cosmic orders, then what are we to make of a religious system in whichthe latter are as subject to instability and impermanence as the former?

While distressing from a Platonic/Christian standpoint, the Germansense of doom and gloom has not always been viewed negatively; indeed,for many romantics and nationalists it has proved a point of perverse,even Promethean, pride. Condemnation and celebration aside, a numberof explanations for this fatalism have been proposed. These range fromseeing in it a reflection of the oppressive northern clime and attendantdread of nature, to a meditation on the tendency for feud to spiral out ofcontrol in a society bereft of effective executive powers, to a “real world”

63 Paul C. Bauschatz, The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), xi.

64 “et apud te rerum omnium instabilium stant causae et rerum omnium mutabilium in-mutabiles manent origines et omnium inrationalium et temporalium sempiternae vivuntrationes” (bk. 1, chap. 6, in Augustinus Confessiones, ed. M. Skutella [Stuttgart: B. G.Teubner, 1981], 6–7); translation from Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 7.

65 See, e.g., Plato’s Phaedo 65a–67b, where he has Socrates distinguish between senseperception and true, that is, timeless and abstract, knowledge.

66 Lincoln, “Theses on Method,” 225.


reaction on the part of heathen Scandinavians to the encroachment ofChristianity and impending extinction of indigenous tradition.67 Whilethere is likely no single magic bullet that could lay this question to rest,I will in this article’s final section discuss some social factors that in myview help to account for Norse religion’s air of uncertainty.

First, however, to establish that ÓDinn’s mythos is characterized bymotifs not only of spatial or social but also of temporal marginality, Iwill describe in this section the extent to which his character and storiesare marked by the themes of death, fate, and sacrifice. As mentioned, twoof ÓDinn’s main activities are his questing for knowledge and his gatheringof dead nobles and warriors in Valhöll. Both form part of the god’s prep-arations for ragnarök and thus are tied to the motif of impermanence. Asto the first activity, though the connection is not always explicit, ÓDinn’sgathering of knowledge is usually interpreted as an effort to forestall theapocalypse or mitigate its effects.68 Among his information-gathering toolsare HlíDskjálf and the ravens Huginn and Muninn (Thought and Memory)that he sends out each day to collect intelligence about happenings in theworlds.69 Above all, ÓDinn seeks wisdom from the dead, whose access tothe past grants them certain knowledge of the nonpast or future.70 What-ever one makes of attempts to link giants to the dead, certain of ÓDinn’s

67 The first possibility is suggested in McKinnell, Both One and Many, 38. The second ispresented in John Lindow, Murder and Vengeance among the Gods: Baldr in ScandinavianMythology (Helsinki: Soumalainen tiedeakatemia, 1997). The third thesis has most often beenapplied to the outlook of the composer of Völuspá, a poem in which the balance of pagan andChristian elements has been a matter of long debate (see Ursula Dronke, “Pagan Beliefs andChristian Impact: The Contribution of Eddic Studies,” in Viking Revaluations: Viking SocietyCentenary Symposium, ed. Anthony Faulkes and Richard Perkins [London: Viking Society forNorthern Research, 1993], 121–27, and The Poetic Edda, Volume II: Mythological Poems,93–98).

68 See, e.g., Clunies Ross, Prolonged Echoes, 1:219–28; de Vries, Altgermanische Re-ligionsgeschichte, 2:66–75; Haugen, “The Edda as Ritual,” 13–15; and Turville-Petre, Mythand Religion of the North, 35–50.

69 See Grímnismál 20 and Gylfaginning 38.70 Bauschatz argues for a binary temporal system among pre-Christian Germans, in which

time is not divided into past-present-future, but past versus nonpast: “The past, as collectorof events, is clearly the most dominant, controlling portion of all time. . . . The past is ex-perienced, known, laid down, accomplished, sure, realized. The present, to the contrary, is influx and confusion. . . . What we nowadays call the ‘future’ is, within the structure of thisGermanic system, just more of the nonpast, more flux, more confusion” (The Well and theTree, 139). While I do not agree with Clunies-Ross’s full-scale rejection (Prolonged Echoes,1:238) of Bauschatz’s theory of “Germanic” time, insofar as I find Bauschatz’s discussionsabout the determining power of the past upon the “nonpast” useful, it seems unwarrantedto jettison the idea of the future entirely when considering Norse myth, given that ÓDinn isdepicted in a number of sources trying to forestall events that he knows will occur but haveyet to begin. Among the dead whom ÓDinn consults are the völur (sing. völva) or femalespirits whom he raises in Völuspá and Baldrs draumar, the detached head of the wise Mímir(see Ynglinga saga 7), and hanged men (he is called HangaguD in Gylfaginning 20 andHangatyr in Skáldskaparmál 1 and 2, both meaning “God of the Hanged”).


journeys into Jötunheimar are also clearly aimed at gaining knowledge orthe means to preserve and transmit it.71 Finally, ÓDinn himself undergoesself-sacrifice and perhaps even death to attain wisdom: in Hávamál, hishanging and perhaps dying on the ash Yggdrasill allow him to take up andpossess the sacred runes, and the motif of the god’s blindness is linked tohis having deposited one of his eyes in a well—itself probably symbolicof the past—at the foot of the tree in return for prophetic insight.72

As to the second activity, while the sources do not all agree in makingÓDinn exclusively the host of those fallen in battle, descriptions of Valhöllstress this idea, and there is nearly always a class dimension to his involve-ment with the dead.73 Kennings for battle or the war dead that employÓDinn’s names are ubiquitous in skaldic poetry, and there is a subgenreof court panegyric that trumpets the arrival of slain kings in Valhöll.74 Thegod’s reception of dead warriors is frequently described in terms of sac-rifice. The sagas present accounts of kings and war leaders who dedicatethose they intend to slay to ÓDinn, often by casting a spear over anopposing force, an act that mimics that of the god in the war between theœsir and vanir.75 In so doing, a warrior ensured that, win or lose, he wouldmake a proper sacrifice to his deity. There are also instances where kingsor important men are offered up more directly to ÓDinn. The most well-known account of a royal sacrifice is in Gautreks saga, a relatively latefornaldarsaga. In it, the warrior-poet StarkaDr is a favorite companion ofthe successful Viking king Víkarr. Returning from an expedition, the kingand his men “suffered a great head wind. They turned to prophecy to geta fair wind, and it so fell out that ÓDinn wanted to receive a man by

71 VafÂrúDnismál has been interpreted as a fact-finding mission regarding ragnarök, andHávamál 104–10 and Skáldskaparmál G57 describe ÓDinn’s procurement from the jötunnSuttungr of a magical mead, “whoever drinks from which becomes a poet or scholar” (“hverrer af drekkr verDr skáld eDa frœDamaDr” [Faulkes ed., 3]; translation from Snorri Sturluson,Edda, trans. Faulkes, 62).

72 Hávamál 138–41; on ÓDinn’s forefeiture of his eye, see Völuspá 28 and Gylfaginning 15.73 In HárbarDsljóD (Song of HárbarDr), a poem in which Êórr and a disguised ÓDinn trade

insults over a river, the latter declares that “ÓDinn has the earls, those who fall in battle, andÊórr has the race of thralls” (“ÓDinn á iarla, Âá er í val falla, enn Êórr á Âræla kyn” [Hár-barDsljóD 24, in Edda, Neckel ed., 82]), while in Grímnismál it is reported of the goddessFreyja that “she chooses half the slain each day, and ÓDinn has half ” (“hálfan val hon kysshverian dag, enn hálfan ÓDinn á” [Grímnismál 14, in Edda, Neckel ed., 60]). On exceptionsto Valhöll’s door policy, see de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 2:377–78.

74 For example, we read in Eyvindr Finnsson’s Hákonarmál that “Gautatyr [ÓDinn] sentGöndull and Skögull to choose among kings, who of Yngvi’s kindred [royalty] should withÓDinn fare and in Valhöll dwell” (“Göndul ok Skögul sendi Gautatyr at kjósa um konunga,hverr Yngva ættar skyldi meD ÓDni fara ok í Valhöll at vesa” [Eyvindr Finnsson,Hákonarmál 1, in Anglo-Saxon and Norse Poems, ed. and trans. N. Kershaw (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1922), 104]).

75 See Chadwick, The Cult of Othin, 7–8, for a list of sources in which a spear is cast overan enemy host. For ÓDinn’s doing so over the vanir, see Völuspá 24.


hanging, chosen by lot from the army. . . . King Víkarr’s lot came up.”76

The king and his men decided to hold a mock hanging and stabbing toappease (or fool) ÓDinn. StarkaDr, however, is instructed by his fosterfather Hrosshársgrani, who has been revealed to him to be ÓDinn indisguise, on how to make the sacrifice real, and the king ends up beingkilled by calf ’s guts that transform into a noose and a reed that becomesa spear during the crucial moment in the ceremony. Such betrayal byÓDinn of a former favorite is far from singular. While at times such epi-sodes are accompanied, as scholars’ emphases on moral appraisal mightlead us to expect, by condemnation of the god’s actions or motivation,77

just as often no negative judgment is made; instead, the turnabout infortune is accepted or even justified. In Völsunga saga, for instance,ÓDinn appears in the midst of a battle being fought by his own scion Sig-mundr and uses his spear to break Gramr, the sword that he had earliergiven to the king. As he lies dying, Sigmundr laconically states: “Odinno longer wants me to wield a sword. . . . I fought battles as long as hewanted me to.”78

Berger has suggested that a central function of religion is its “integra-tion into a comprehensive nomos of precisely those marginal situationsin which the reality of everyday life is put in question. . . . [It] maintains

76 “fekk andviDri mikit. Êeir felldu spán til byrjar, ok fell svó at ÓDinn villdi Âiggja mannat hlutfalli at hanga ór hernum . . . kom upp hlutr Víkars konungs” (Gautrekssaga 7, inRanisch ed., 28).

77 For example, in what is likely one of the older eddic lays, the warrior Dagr declaresapropos the internecine strife in which he is embroiled, “ÓDinn alone causes all evil, becausehe bore runes of strife between kinsmen” (“einn veldr ÓDinn öllo bölvi, Âvíat meD sifiungomsacrúnar bar” [HelgakviDa Hundingsbana önnur 34, in Edda, Neckel ed., 158]); in Lokasenna,Loki says to ÓDinn that “often you gave, that which you should not give, victory to the lessworthy” (“opt Âú gaft, Âeim er Âú gefa scyldira, inom slævorom, sigr” [Lokasenna 22, in Edda,Neckel ed., 101]), and ÓDinn in replying does not disagree; and in the tenth-century skaldicencomium Eiríksmál, when rumor of King Eiríkr blóDøx’s death reaches Valhöll one amongthe einherjar asks ÓDinn, “Why did you deprive him of victory when he seemed to you to bebrave?” (“Hví namt Âu hann sigri Âá er Âér Âótti hann snjallr vera?” [Eiríksmál 6, in Anglo-Saxon and Norse Poems, Kershaw ed., 96]).

78 “Vill ÓDinn ekki at vér bregDum sverDi síDan. . . . Hefi ek haft orrostur meDan honumlíkaDi” (translation and text [spelling, capitalization, and punctuation normalized] from Völ-sunga saga, Grimstad ed., 118–19). As another example, in Eiríksmál, while some amongthe einherjar are upset that ÓDinn has betrayed such an illustrious king, they seem to accept hisexplanation that he has done so because the time of ragnarök “cannot be known . . . the greywolf peers at the gods’ abode,” and the poem ends on a triumphant note: “ ‘Hail to you, Eiríkr,’said Sigmundr, ‘You shall be welcome here! . . . Which warriors follow you from battle?‘There are five kings,’ said Eiríkr . . . ‘I am myself the sixth’ ” (“ ‘Âví at óvíst er at vita,’ sagDeÓDenn, ‘sér ulfr enn hösve á sjöt goDa.’ ‘Hæill Âú nú Æiríkr,’ kvaD Sigmundr, ‘væl scalt Âúhér kominn! . . . hvat fylgir Âér jöfra frá eggÂrymu?’ ‘Konongar eru v,’ sagÂi Eiríkr . . . ‘ec emhinn sétti sjalfr’ ” [Eiríksmál 6–8, in Anglo-Saxon and Norse Poems, Kershaw ed., 96, 98]).A similar happy ending is found in HelgakviDa Hundingsbana önnur, in which Helgi, thekinsman slain by Dagr, is made ÓDinn’s virtual coregent in the warrior’s afterlife (HelgakviDaHundingsbana önnur 39 and preceding prose interlude, in Edda, Neckel ed., 158–59).


the socially defined reality by legitimating marginal situations in terms ofan all-encompassing sacred reality.”79 Applying this insight, it might beargued that ÓDinn’s function as god of war and death was primarily the-odical, insofar as his feasting of slain warriors until world’s end recon-ciled those facing the prospect or reality of defeat and violent death to theirfate. Thus, while ÓDinn’s decision that an illustrious warrior should diein battle could on one level be seen as a stab in the back, it was also aflattering and even necessary determination. As long as a king or herowon battles and killed others, he served ÓDinn’s purpose by swelling theranks of the einherjar; eventually, however, if he were really any good,the god would wish to add him to their number. Rather, therefore, thansoft-pedal what to many observers have seemed the perfidious acts ofan im- or amoral god, the sources tend to be direct and unapologetic indescribing this dimension of his character. As Snorri perhaps sums it upbest in describing the relationship of ÓDinn and kings in Ynglinga saga:“to some he gave victory, and some he summoned to himself. Either choiceseemed good.”80 In considering, moreover, this theme in light of ÓDinn’smore general associations with death and sacrifice, moral questions seemlargely beside the point. The myths in which ÓDinn turns his back onstoried warriors—while simultaneously, of course, welcoming them intohis company—appear in their wider context less meditations on the costof shattered loyalties or the unreliability of an inferior god (though theymay be these in part) than reflections on the fleeting nature of power andall ordered systems. They are one more way in which ÓDinn symbolizestransience.

óDinn, poets, and kings

In this last section, I return to the two questions posed at the outset ofmy account of major motifs in the myths of ÓDinn. To rephrase the firstslightly: if ÓDinn was, arguably, Norse religion’s central figure and, morecertainly, god of the late pagan political and cultural elite, why does he sooften in myths produced and consumed by this elite occupy or operate frommarginal positions? Second, how might or ought the transient quality ofthe Norse cosmos and its principal guardian modify the conviction that amajor function of religion as cultural practice is to supply an eternal andtranscendent—in short, unassailable—foundation for ephemeral andhuman institutions and values? While, to repeat an earlier point, thesequestions are framed in such a way that the first is of most use for attain-ing insight into the construction and reception of ÓDinn’s mythos within its

79 Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 42, 44.80 “Gaf hann Âá sumum sigr, en sumum bauD hann til sín. Êótti hvárrtveggi kostr góDr”

(Snorri Sturluson, Ynglinga saga 9, in Heimskringla, Bjarni ADalbjarnarson ed., 1:22).


medieval Scandinavian context and the second for assessing argumentsabout the claims of religious orders to objectivity and permanence, they arenot unrelated. Above all, determining whether, for whom, and why ÓDinn’smyths held meaning is a necessary preliminary to assessing their relevanceto a consideration of general definitions and functions of religion. Further-more, while the former question applies mainly to motifs of dislocation andthus theory about religious conceptions of space and the latter to motifsof transience and thus theory about religious conceptions of time, the issuesthey address are not easily separable. For whether one is speaking of spaceand centers or of time and eternity, the essence of the standard claim re-mains that religions provide anchors to the absolute. As Eliade puts itin a phrase to which none of our scholars would likely object, religionprovides for “the legitimization of human acts through an extrahumanmodel.”81 The problem that remains, however, is just what sort of modelthis is or has to be.

Before addressing these questions, it must be admitted that in studyingNorse materials we are dealing with a “mythology” in only a very restrictedsense. While in any attempt to describe a religion or one of its dimensionsthere is the risk, to quote Lincoln, that we will “mistake the ideologicalpositions favoured and propagated by the dominant fraction for those ofthe group as a whole,” the perspective we have on Norse paganism maybe more limited than usual.82 In this case, we do not have anything like acomprehensive data set providing insight into beliefs and values at alllevels of a culture, but rather the partially fossilized remains of a traditionas it was envisaged and recorded by a narrow and elect fragment in an eraof social and religious transition. What we have, in essence, is a poet’s-eye view of Norse myth, whether accessible directly in the work of eddicand skaldic composers or at one remove, as in the poetics of Snorri or thesagas and histories that rely heavily and often explicitly on verse tra-ditions.83 Or, to consider the problem from the side of the consumer, thevast majority of these works we know to have been produced for royal,noble, or other elite patrons. Rather than argue, then, that this materialsomehow represents the common ideology or ethos of the Norse “people,”I will limit myself in what follows to suggesting ways in which the ÓDinnicmotifs described above reflect the social situation, outlook, and interests ofpoets, their patrons, and those who later preserved and adapted their work.Whether this lessens or vitiates this material’s potential for contributing

81 Eliade, Myth of the Eternal Return, 27.82 Lincoln, “Theses on Method,” 226.83 It is doubtful whether any meaningful social distinction can be drawn between eddic and

skaldic composers. See John Lindow, “Mythology and Mythography,” in Old Norse-IcelandicLiterature: A Critical Guide, ed. Carol J. Clover and John Lindow (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Uni-versity Press, 1985), 32–33.


to the formulation or critique of general theories of religion/mythology isa question I will take up at the end of the article.

It has often been assumed that elite members of a society, in additionto favoring conservative ideologies that help to preserve the status quo,will value and promote symbolism of the center. As Smith explains, how-ever, this assumption holds only for certain kinds of elites:

A locative map of the world . . . guarantees meaning and value through structuresof congruity and conformity. Students of religion have been most successful indescribing and interpreting this locative, imperial map. . . . Yet, the very successof these topographies should be a signal for caution. For they are largely based ondocuments from urban, agricultural, hierarchical cultures. The most persuasivewitnesses to a locative, imperial world-view are the production of well organized,self-conscious scribal elites who had a deep vested interest in restricting mobilityand valuing place. . . . In most cases one cannot escape the suspicion that, in thelocative map of the world, we are encountering a self-serving ideology whichought not to be generalized into the universal pattern of religious experience andexpression.84

Once one has gotten past the presumption of a universal conjunctionbetween locative maps and social elites (let alone the notion that allpeople everywhere privilege the center), the way is open to see how themyths of ÓDinn, with their radical and often overdetermined symbolismof marginality, reflect or express the social realities and interests of theirmajor producers and consumers. For insofar as they fulfilled their norma-tive roles, poets and kings were, like their god, perpetual travelers andguests.

As for poets, known skalds were after 900 almost exclusively Ice-landers.85 Iceland was intensively settled from 870 to 930 largely byNorwegians who, according to Iceland’s earliest historians, rejected andfled the centralization of royal authority being pursued by King Haraldrhárfagri (Fairhair).86 It remained a land with neither king nor court until

84 Smith, Map Is Not Territory, 292–93.85 For discussion of Icelanders’ virtual monopolization of skaldic court poetry from this

date, see, among others, Faulkes’s introduction to his Edda translation, xii–xiii; Roberta Frank,Old Norse Court Poetry: The Dröttkvœtt Stanza (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978),23; Hans Kuhn, Das Dróttkvœtt (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1983), 284–85; E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Origins of Icelandic Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1953), 43, and Myth and Religionof the North, 21.

86 The two most important sources for the period of Iceland’s settlement are Ari Êorgilsson’sÍslendingabók (ca. 1122–23); and Landnámabók (Book of settlements; early 1100s), theoriginal version of which Ari may also have had a hand in producing (see Ari Êorgilsson,The Book of the Icelanders (Íslendingabók), ed. and trans. Halldór Hermannsson (Ithaca, NY:Cornell University Press, 1930); and Finnur Jónsson, ed., Landnámabók I–III: Hauksbók.Sturlubók. Melabók (Copenhagen: Thieles Bogtrykkeri, 1900).


its acceptance of Norwegian sovereignty from 1262 to 1264. While theremay have been possibilities during these centuries for Icelandic poets toply their craft at the farmsteads of goDar (sing. goDi ), or chieftains, athome, those who aspired to the position of hirDskáld, or court poet, hadlittle choice but to travel to Norway, Denmark, or Sweden and seek outpatrons among an ever-shifting network of kings and nobles. Such am-bition is so common in the sagas that John Lindow has coined the term“poet’s travel pattern” to refer to tales in which an Icelandic protagonist“relies on verbal skill to obtain, maintain, or regain a favoured positionwith the monarch,” and there can be little doubt that the sources in this casereflected social realities.87 The poet was not the only roving partner in thisexchange, however. The first thing an aspiring hirDskáld newly arrived onthe shores of the Scandinavian mainland, or sometimes the British Isles,had to ascertain where a king and his hirD were currently at. Snorri’s Óláfssaga helga (Saint Óláfr’s saga) describes how two skalds, a father and son,entered into the service of King Óláfr Haraldsson at different times andplaces:

ÊórDr Sigvaldaskáld was the name of an Icelandic man. He had for a long timebeen with Earl Sigvaldi and later with Êorkell the Tall. . . . He met Óláfr whenthe king was raiding in the west and became his man, and followed him after-wards. . . . Sigvatr was ÊórDr’s son. . . . When he was nearly a grown man hewent abroad with merchants and came by ship in the fall to Trondheim. . . .That same winter King Óláfr came to Trondheim. . . . And when Sigvatr heardthat his father ÊórDr was there with the king, then Sigvatr went to the king, methis father ÊórDr and stayed there a while.88

More than two centuries later, Snorri, himself an aspiring court poet, wasin a situation similar to that of the skalds of his saga. During a two-yearvisit to Norway in 1218–20, he and his desired patrons King Hákon

87 John Lindow, “Skald Sagas in Their Literary Context 1: Related Icelandic Genres,”in Skaldsagas: Text, Vocation, and Desire in the Icelandic Sagas of Poets, ed. RussellPoole (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2001), 219. An interesting study that looks at itinerant andpolitically active poets in a much different context, but many of the insights of which can beapplied to that of medieval Scandinavia, is Alan Cameron, “Wandering Poets: A LiteraryMovement in Byzantine Egypt,” Historia: Zeitschrift für alte Geschichte 14 (1965):470–509.

88 “ÊórDr Sigvaldaskáld hét maDr íslenzkr. Hann hafDi verit lengi meD Sigvalda jarli oksíDan meD Êorkatli háva. . . . Hann hitti Óláf konung, er hann var í vestrvíking, ok gerDiskhans maDr og fylgDi honum síDan. . . . Sigvatr var sonr ÊórDar. . . . En er hann var náliga vaxinnmaDr, Âá fór hann útan af landi meD kaupmönnum, ok kom skip Âat um haustit til Êránd-heims. . . . Êann sama vetr kom Óláfr konungr í Êrándheim. . . . En er Sigvatr spurDi, at ÊórDr,faDir hans, var Âar meD konungi, Âá fór Sigvatr til konungs, hitti ÊórD, föDur sinn, og dvalDiskÂar um hríD” (Snorri Sturluson, Óláfs saga helga 43, in Heimskringla, Bjarni ADalbjarnarsoned., 2:54).


Hákonarson and Earl Skúli BárDarson stayed at various points and invarious combinations in Túnsberg, Trondheim, Bergen, and Gautland.89

The mobility of Scandinavia’s kings can be traced to the ancient his-tory and likely prehistory of Germanic social organization, in which thecustom of not having a fixed place of royal residence or single center ofpolitical power runs deep. The Franks, to take a notable example, onlyestablished a royal city in Aachen under Charlemagne, who mimicked inthis not his ancestors but the Roman rulers he was poised to replace in thewest: his capital was thus more of an imperial than a royal affectation.90

As Birgit and Peter Sawyer describe, this rootlessness of Germanic kingsand their followings persisted for some time in Scandinavia: “Even inthe early Middle Ages kings were not solely dependent on the land theyowned. They could claim hospitality for themselves, their retinues, andperhaps even their agents. . . . This right . . . was so abused that in the latethirteenth century attempts were made in all three kingdoms to regulateit. The general obligation to contribute food and materials needed by theroyal household as it traveled from place to place was, in effect, one ofthe earliest taxes.”91 Snorri describes Óláfr Haraldsson making such roundsin the early eleventh century:

[Óláfr] sent other men to Uppland with that message to prepare entertainment[boDa veizlur; veizla here refers to the legal obligation to provide hospitality fora king and his retinue] for himself, and that he intended that winter to make therounds [fara at veizlum] of Uppland because that had been a custom of the earlierkings to make the rounds of Uppland every third winter. He began the journey inthe fall from Borg. The king went first to Vingulmörk. He arranged the journeysuch that he received hospitality [taka veizlur] up in the neighborhood of theforest districts and he summoned to himself all of the inhabitants.92

89 These movements are reported in Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar 53 and 59, in SturlaÊórDarson, Hákonar Saga and a Fragment of Magnús Saga with Appendices, ed. GuDbrandurVigfússon (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1887), and Íslendinga saga 35 and 38, in vol. 1of Sturlunga Saga, ed. Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn, 2 vols.(Reykjavík: Sturlunguútgáfan, 1946).

90 As Judith Herrin writes: “Since Charles had inherited the tradition of an itinerant courtand had spent all his reign in movement between one palace or villa and another, the decisionto construct a more permanent residence constituted a break from Frankish tradition” (TheFormation of Christendom [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987]), 446; see alsothe literature cited by Herrin on 446–47 n. 3).

91 Birgit Sawyer and Peter Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reforma-tion, circa 800–1500 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 91.

92 “sendi hann aDra menn til Upplanda meD Âeim ørendum at boDa veizlur fyrir sér, okætlaDi hann at fara Âann vetr at veizlum yfir Upplönd, Âví at Âat hafDi verit siDr inna fyrrikonunga at fara at veizlumn hinn ÂriDja hvern vetr yfir Upplönd. Hóf hann ferDina um haustitór Borg. Fór konungr fyrst á Vingulmörk. Hann háttaDi svá ferDIinni, at hann tók veizlur uppií nánd markbyggDinni ok stefndi til sín öllum byggDarmönnum” (Snorri Sturluson, Óláfs sagahelga 73 in Heimskringla, Bjarni ADalbjarnarson ed., 2:100–101). For more on the practice


Evidence for the perdurance of perambulatory kingship in Scandinaviain the Middle Ages is archaeological as well as literary. Stefan Brink sum-marizes recent assessments of northern political and social structures inand prior to the medieval period based upon excavations of royal banquethalls situated in so-called “central place complexes”:

In the political system that can be discerned in Viking-Age Scandinavia, powerseems to have been exercised through the itineration of a political leader (king,chieftain, deputy, etc.) between different centres of power, where political, legaland maybe religious matters were dealt with. This has been called an ambulatoryor itinerant kingship. . . . This itinerant exercise of power in the prehistoric andearly medieval Scandinavian societies had as a consequence that the king neverhad any permanent control over the whole realm at the same time. The autonomyof the different provinces and settlement districts was remarkably strong . . .during the whole of the Middle Ages.93

Further, Brink states that while it has proven “possible to find the (main)sites for both a superior king and for petty-kings and chieftains of the LateIron Age in especially eastern Scandinavia . . . these individuals probablynever were geographically static. What we find are probably the sites ofthe hall-buildings of these leaders,” all of which “were most certainly neveractually lived in.”94

So long as kings presided over and poets sought entry into circum-ambulatory courts that for their settings and very materialization reliedupon the labor and hospitality of others, and which were integral to main-taining authority in a political system that was decentralized, diffuse, and

93 Stefan Brink, “Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia: A Settlement-Historical Pre-study of the Central Place,” Tor 28 (1996): 239–40.

94 Stefan Brink, “Social Order in the Early Scandinavian Landscape,” in Settlement andLandscape: Proceedings of a Conference in Århus, Denmark, May 4–7 1998, ed. CharlotteFabech and Jytte Ringtved (Moesgård: Jutland Archaeological Society, 1999), 433, and“Political and Social Structures in Early Scandinavia,” 247. Brink also supplies a good ex-ample of literary testimony to continued attention to the infrastructure for itinerant kingshipinto the mid-1200s from a near-contemporary report of the reign of Hákon Hákonarson(r. 1217–63): “hann let gera trehallina i konungsgardi i Nidarosi (he made the wooden hallat the royal estate in Nidaros), hann let gera veizluhall aa Steig (he made a banqueting-hallin Steig), hann let gera bu aa Hofi i Breidinn ok veizsluhall . . . , hann let gera veizsluhall iHusabœ i Skaun a Heidmork ok adra a Ringisakri (he made a farm and a banqueting-hall atHof in Breidinn . . . , he made a banqueting-hall in Husaby in Skaun in Heidmork and anotherone in Ringisaker)” (Brink, “Political and Social Structures,” 242–43, quoting and translatingfrom the version of Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar [here titled Saga Hakonar konungs gamla,or The Saga of King Hákon the Old] in GuDbrandr Vigfússon and C. R. Unger, eds., Flatey-jarbok: En samling af norske konge-sagaer, 3 vols. (Oslo: P. T. Mallings, 1868), 3:232–33.

and conventions governing royal processions in all of the Scandinavian kingdoms as well asof chieftains in Iceland, see the entry for “Gästning” in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordiskmiddelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1961),6:2–19.


more personal than territorial in basis, it is difficult to see how either groupcould develop, recalling Smith’s phrase, a “vested interest in restrictingmobility and valuing place.” Indeed, we first observe such valuing of placewith the arrival in Scandinavia of the type of scribal elite that Smith de-scribes as promoting locative ideology in the ancient Near East, in thiscase churchmen who not only carried with them literacy and continentalculture and connections but helped to foster an urban sensibility amongScandinavia’s monarchs. As Norwegian historian Knut Helle describes, theconversion-era reigns from 995 to 1066 of “kings such as Óláfr Trygg-vason, Óláfr Haraldsson and Harald the Hard-Ruler” were marked not onlyby “political unification,” “religious unification,” and “the introduction ofthe first elements of a Norwegian church organization” but by a growingawareness of “the importance of urban centres. The later kings’ sagasdepict them as active promoters of the first Norwegian towns” and ashaving played “an important role in giving such places full urban statusin the eyes of contemporaries.”95 Archaeologist Charlotte Fabech alsoaffirms a causal link between christianization and the privileging of uniquepolitical/religious centers in Scandinavian polities: “As long as the de-central pagan social system worked, it was difficult for a king to establisha proper royal centre. . . . The conversion to Christianity . . . legitimiseda concentration of power to fewer sites, and the towns were thus given anadvantage compared to the rural settlement of manors, church villages andmarketplaces. . . . A permanent royal residence and the thought of a capitaltown only occurred centuries later.”96

Do such facts and their interpretation suggest, however, that Scandi-navian elites prior to conversion accepted Smith’s alternative map, theutopian, that which stresses “the value of being in no place,” “which per-ceives terror and confinement in interconnection, correspondence and repe-

95 Knut Helle, “The History of the Early Viking Age in Norway,” in Ireland and Scandi-navia in the Early Viking Age, ed. Howard B. Clarke, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Raghnall ÓFloinn (Dublin: Four Courts, 1998), 258. Elsewhere, Helle describes the appearance of the“first Norwegian towns,” sites that were not just trade but also political and ideological centers,as “an indication of a certain degree of royal and ecclesiastical centralization” (“Part 1:Down to 1536,” in Norway: A History from the Vikings to Our Own Times, ed. RolfDanielsen, Ståle Dyrvik, Tore Grønlie, Knut Helle, and Edgar Hovland, trans. Michael Drake[Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995], 32). Taking a more nuanced view, but one thatextends to the Danish and Swedish kingdoms, archaeologist Johan Callmer writes that whiletalk of urban centers and urbanization should not be limited to the period after ca. 1000, itnonetheless seems that a “new type of town combining the role of centre and trading placewas introduced . . . in the second half of the 10th century” (“Urbanization in Scandinavia andthe Baltic Region c. AD 700–1100: Trading Places, Centres, and Early Urban Sites,” in De-velopments around the Baltic and the North Sea in the Viking Age: The Twelfth Viking Con-gress, ed. Björn Ambrosiani and Helen Clarke [Stockholm, 1994], 79).

96 Charlotte Fabech, “Centrality in Sites and Landscapes,” in Fabech and Ringtved, Settle-ment and Landscape, 470–71.


tition,” and through which “man turns in rebellion and flight to a new worldand a new mode of creation?”97 Again, it should be noted that Smith’smaps are temporal as much as spatial: the utopian does not so muchvalorize “no place” as relocate privileged space or conditions to a futuretime or outside of time, in eternity. Still, from either angle it seems clearthat those who produced and consumed Norse myths, and especially mythsof ÓDinn, were neither locative nor utopian mapmakers. The map of theseNorse mythmakers might best be described as “tactical,” in de Certeau’ssense of the term: rather than privilege any single, several, or even all ofthe cosmos’s multiple and competing centers, the “aggregate of farm-steads” described by Gurevich, Norse myths valorize the ability, pre-eminently embodied by ÓDinn, to move through and make use of spacescontrolled by others, with the aims of co-opting resources, defusing threats,and shifting, if only temporarily, the balance of powers in one’s favor.Rather than “terror and confinement in interconnections,” such a map’smakers perceive risk but also opportunity in movement between itsmultiple nodes. In terms of time, there is in this tactical map neither “re-bellion” against the state of things nor a pronounced desire for “flightto a new world and a new mode of creation.” ÓDinn is not a savior ormessiah who appears to lead alienated adherents out of present chaos ordisenfranchisement into eternal order and power, but a god who joins hisfollowers in an unrelenting struggle that all are aware can only end intheir own destruction. One finds in ÓDinn’s myths no expectation or hopethat the efforts of even the supreme tactician will result in his ultimateascension to the position of strategist, but rather acquiescence to the factthat he will and must continue to employ tactics until reaching his, and hisworld’s, inevitable extinction.

While it would be possible to halt my analysis with the claim thatÓDinn’s career and character reflect the shared social conditions and in-terests of poets and kings, it seems to me that his myths also provide evi-dence for competition between these groups and ambivalence in theirrelations. For while poets and kings can be treated as members of a singlestratum of medieval Norse society, they did not share equally in the dis-tribution of resources and capacities accorded value in their rarefied sphere:each group had something the other wanted owing to its dominance inone of two arenas of experience. Simply put, kings held the edge in termsof space, skalds in terms of time. Recognizing this allocation of advantageshelps us to understand the essence of their transactions: kings providedpoets with a space in which to operate and prosper, while poets suppliedkings with a means to extend their names and reputations in time. Each

97 Smith, Map Is Not Territory, 101, 309.


side’s desire for what the other had to offer is explicit in the sources.For example, the ninth-century poet Einarr Helgason recites: “The gold-sender [poet] lets the getter of land [king] enjoy Yggr’s mead [poetry];the prince gladdens the host of men, I am permitted to receive his lar-gesse.”98 And Snorri Sturluson boasts in his Háttatal (List of meters), thelongest and among the latest of skaldic panegyrics, that “the princes’ praisewill live forever unless humanity passes away, or the worlds end.”99 Whilethe proposed exchange may appear unbalanced insofar as skalds’ contri-bution is less tangible than what kings had to offer, those involved wereunlikely to have seen it this way—in what is, for good reason, among themost cited snippets of Old Norse verse, Hávamál intones: “Cattle die,kinsmen die, you yourself will die the same; but fame will never die, forhim who wins it.”100

Given that poets and kings were at liberty to supply (or not) somethingthose in the other group highly desired but could not secure for them-selves, it is worth considering whether myths of ÓDinn provided an arenawherein not only common interests and perspectives were expressed, buttensions between these groups played out. The first thing to note in thisrespect is that ÓDinn more often assumes a role typical of poets than ofkings, arriving at a hall unannounced, unknown, with something to offerhis host but almost always uncertain of his reception. There emerges,moreover, from several sources a pattern in which ÓDinn enacts whatmight be labeled motif 1 (spatial and/or social marginality) so as toactivate or realize motif 2 (ephemerality of authority). The frame story ofGrímnismál provides one of the clearer examples of this pattern. Its proseprelude introduces the princes Agnarr and GeirrøDr, who, having been lostat sea and washed ashore on an island, are fostered by Frigg and ÓDinn,disguised as a peasant couple. Though GeirrøDr is the younger brother,ÓDinn conspires to have him take his father’s place as king, while con-signing Agnarr to a fate “raising children with a giantess in a cave.”101

When ÓDinn later travels as Grímnir to GeirrøDr’s hall, Frigg arrangesmatters so that GeirrøDr will suspect his guest of sorcerous ill intent andseize him as soon as he arrives. ÓDinn’s only relief as he spends thelength of the poem suspended between two fires is provided by the king’s

98 “Gollsendir lætr grundar (glaDar Âengill her drengja), hans mæti knák hljóta, hljót YggsmjaDar njóta” (Vellekla 33, in Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning BI: Rettet tekst, ed. FinnurJónsson [Copenhagen: Gyldendal, 1912–15; repr., Rosenkilde og Bagger, 1973]), 123.

99 “Âat mun æ lifa nema öld farisk, bragnifinflga lof, eDa bili heimar” (Snorri Sturluson,Háttatal 96, in Faulkes ed., 38).

100 “Deyr fé, deyia frœndr, deyr siálfr it sama; enn orDztírr deyr aldregi, hveim er sér góDangetr” (Hávamál 76, in Edda, Neckel ed., 29).

101 “elr born viD gygi í hellinom” (in Edda, Neckel ed., 56). Translation from Larrington,The Poetic Edda, 51.


son, also named Agnarr, who according to the prose epilogue assumesthe crown after GeirrøDr falls on his sword.

While it has been doubted whether this narrative supplies the originalcontext of the poem, the relevant elements are present in the verse as wellas its frame. The motif of disguise remains, as ÓDinn provides a lengthylist of assumed names before stating his own in the final verse; he clearlyundergoes an ordeal in another’s hall; most important, owing to his (mis)-treatment as a guest, he ends the reign of a king and inaugurates that ofhis heir. As the god declares: “Eight nights I sat here between the fires, sothat no one offered me food, except Agnarr alone, who alone shall rule,GeirrøDr’s son, the land of the Goths.”102 GeirrøDr’s lack of hospitalityalso robs him of a king’s afterlife; as ÓDinn informs him near the poem’sconclusion, “you lose much when you lose my favour, and that of all theeinherjar.”103 A similar story is found in HeiDreks saga ok Hervarar,in which ÓDinn assumes the identity of Gestumblindi, a not-so-cleveradherent who wishes to reconcile with King HeiDrekr. ÓDinn as Gestum-blindi visits the king and agrees to redeem himself by winning a riddlecontest. When ÓDinn reveals his identity with the (more question than)riddle about his whispered message on Baldr’s funeral pyre, HeiDrekrshouts “You alone know that, vile creature!” and tries with his sword tostrike the god down.104 As ÓDinn flies off in falcon’s form (less some tailfeathers), he calls back, “For this, King Heidrek, that you have attackedme, and would slay me without offence, the basest slaves shall be the deathof you.”105 The curse soon comes to pass, and HeiDrekr’s son Angantyrtakes his place. The fact that HeiDrekr had earlier killed and usurped theplace of his older brother Angantyr while being fostered by the “wisestof men” Gizurr GrytingaliDi, in whom critics have seen yet anotherdouble of ÓDinn, ties this story even more closely to that which framesGrímnismál.106

A third example of this pattern is found in Völsunga saga. Here, a royalwedding feast is interrupted when “a man came into the hall alone . . .unknown to any . . . he has a spotted cloak over himself . . . and a hooddown over his head. He was hoary and old and one-eyed . . . No one

102 “Átta nætr sat ec milli elda hér, svá at mér mangi mat né bauD, nema einn Agnarr, ereinn scal ráDa, GeirroDar sonr, Gotna landi” (Grímnismál 2, in Edda, Neckel ed., 57).

103 “miclo ertu hnugginn, er Âú ert míno gengi, öllom einheriom oc ÓDins hylli” (Grím-nismál 51, in Edda, Neckel ed., 67). Translation adapted from Larrington, The PoeticEdda, 59.

104 “Êat veiztu einn, rög vættr!” (translation and text from Saga HeiDreks Konung ins Vitra,Tolkien ed., 44).

105 “Fyrir Âat, HeiDrekr konungr, er Âú rétt til mín ok vildir drepa mik saklausan, skulu Âérinir verstu Ârælar at bana verDa” (ibid.).

106 “manna vitrastr” (ibid., 21). On the parallels and possible relation of these two sourcesor stories, see Tolkien’s introduction, xvi–xviii.


welcomed that man.”107 The newcomer, who is of course ÓDinn, sinks asword into a tree growing in the midst of the hall, declaring that whoeverdraws it out will have his support. Since ÓDinn later shatters this samesword as it is wielded in battle by King Sigmundr, the weapon is clearlymeant to serve as a symbol of the god’s bestowal and removal of favor. Ifthis story is less concentrated in its presentation of motifs than the othertwo, the pattern and ideas are the same; in all three, a disguised ÓDinnappears as a less than welcome guest and, after the lord of the hall and/or his following fail a test of hospitality and/or trustworthiness, effects atransfer of royal authority.

My last example is a story that extends this combination of motifs,having ÓDinn enact motif 1 (marginality) so as to exploit motif 2(ephemerality) in a way that alleviates motif 1 for another, a warrior-poet. Örvar-Odds saga is the tale of Oddr Grímsson, nicknamed “Arrow-Oddr,” whom ÓDinn assists in various guises and situations. In the rele-vant episode, Oddr, having fallen on such hard times that he has gone intoexile in the woods, clad himself in bark, and repudiated his true name,happens upon the farm of a certain Jólfr and his wife. The couple take the“Bark-man” in, and Jólfr, who is ÓDinn, soon offers to help Oddr find aplace in the following of the local king, HerrauDr. As they near the king’shall, however, Jólfr grows hesitant: “ ‘Why are you now dragging yourfeet?’ said Oddr. ‘Because,’ said the old man, ‘I will be placed inshackles if I come inside here, and because of this I will be happiestwhen I am going away.’ ‘No,’ said the Bark-man, ‘we two shall clear theway together, and I will not allow anything other than you carryingon.’ ”108 Once they enter the hall, Jólfr is molested as predicted, but withOddr’s help comes before HerrauDr, to whom he introduces his com-panion. Though Oddr still refuses to provide his name and will not admitto having any useful skills, the king accepts him into his hirD. WhenOddr’s talents and identity are eventually made known, HerrauDr inviteshim to sit “in the high seat next to himself. . . . The king lays such greathonor on Oddr, that he valued no man more than him.”109 In time, Oddr,

107 “maDr einn gekk inn í höllina, sá maDr er mönnum úkunnr at syn . . . hann hefir hekluflekótta yfir sér . . . ok hött síDan á höfDi. Hann var hár mjök ok eldiligr ok einsynn. . . .Öllum mönnum fellust kveDjur viD Âenna mann” (Völsunga saga 3, in Grimstad ed., 82–83[with spelling, capitalization, and punctuation normalized]).

108 “ ‘Hví setr Âú nú fætr viD?’ sagDi Oddr. ‘Êví,’ sagDi karl, ‘at ek em færDr í fjötur, ef ekkem hér inn, ok verD ek Âví fegnastr, at ek komumst í burt.’ ‘Já,’ sagDi NæframaDr, ‘vit skulumryDjast at báDir saman, ok má ek ekki annat en Âú farir meD’ ” (Örvar-Odds saga 24, in For-naldarsögur NorDurlanda, ed. GuDni Jónsson, 4 vols. [Reykjavík: Íslendingasagnaútgáfan,1954], 2:301).

109 “byDr honum í hásæti hjá sér. . . . Konungr leggr svá mikla virDing á Odd, at engan mannmat hann meira en hann” (Örvar-Odds saga 27, in Fornaldarsögur NorDurlanda, ed. GuDniJónsson, 2:321).


with the aid of magical arrows given him by Jólfr, defeats HerrauDr’senemies and is wedded to his daughter, and when the king dies it is hewho succeeds him.

In considering how these stories combine and employ ÓDinnic motifs,a certain bias emerges. In each, a representative or embodiment of mar-ginality, whether this is ÓDinn or someone he aids, comes out on topover a representative or, perhaps more accurately, victim of ephemerality,namely, a king. In other words, those who lack (initially) control overspace consistently trump those who lack control over time. Of course,such victories are never absolute, since in overcoming spatial or socialmarginality one becomes ever more subject to transience—no transitionfrom tactician to strategist can be permanent. This point is demonstratedabove all by the doubled use in Grímnismál of the name Agnarr and inHeiDreks saga of Angantyr, to denote first a victim and second a bene-ficiary of ÓDinn’s tricks, and between whom in both instances are sand-wiched kings whom ÓDinn installs only later to remove.110 In addition,then, to understanding ÓDinn and his career as reflecting the social sit-uation of poets and kings, as well as a means of symbolically mitigatingthe anomic consequences of their shared condition, we may perceive inthem something of a veiled threat or assertion of superiority directed fromthe primary producers to the primary consumers of his myths.

Finally, it remains to consider our second overarching question, whetherand to what extent the above observations regarding the myths of ÓDinnchallenge the view that it is the quintessential function of religion to supplythings human, characterized by impermanence, contingency, and unreality,with meaning or authority derived from things divine, characterized byeternity, absoluteness, and reality. Though I see no reason to doubt thatpagan northerners looked to their myths as social charters, regardingmythic figures, events, and patterns as models for and of their ownpractice, I find nothing to suggest that the charter or signification thussupplied was regarded as eternally valid or utterly transcendent. Nor do Ifind much to indicate that this was a source of anxiety for the makers andconsumers of the myths. While like any god worthy of the name, ÓDinnoffered adherents an elevated image of themselves, his was a more realisticthan idealized reflection. ÓDinn was a god whose nature and experiencesclosely paralleled his followers’ own, up to and including the qualities ofitinerancy and transience. The difference, in short, separating ÓDinn fromhumans was quantitative, not qualitative.

110 The ineluctability of transience is also demonstrated by the fact that Oddr, even thoughhe has a preternaturally long life of three hundred years, eventually succumbs to a cradle-side prophecy, and by the way in which ÓDinn in the Völsung cycle does not rest until he hasclaimed virtually every last member of the tribes he has set at odds.


One way to avoid the complications this observation poses for defini-tions of religion that rest upon a Platonic-Augustinian insistence that aradical gulf separate spiritual from terrestrial modes of existence is, ofcourse, to deny that the sources for ÓDinn supply us with insight intogenuine myth or religion. This is essentially what Eliade tried to do withanother set of materials known for its anthropomorphic gods and fatalism:“Homer,” he writes, “was neither a theologian nor a mythographer. . . .He had composed his poems for a specific audience: the members of amilitary and feudal aristocracy. . . . He avoided evoking religious or myth-ological conceptions that were either foreign to his essentially patriarchaland military auditors or in which they took little interest.111 Here, Eliaderejects the authentic religiosity of the Homeric hymns because they failto speak either for or to the insights and hopes of archaic humanity. In sodoing, Eliade commits a fallacy opposite of that which Lincoln cautionsagainst—rather than mistake an elite ideology for normative religion, heseeks to disqualify it from religious status altogether. If such materials,however, are accepted as data for theory about religion, they raise un-deniably important considerations, such as the implication that religionor myth need not involve a search for eternal verities or union with un-changing Being, or that religious legitimation for human action and justi-fication for human existence are not always grounded in entities or realitiesregarded as fundamentally transcendent or Other. In short, the myths ofÓDinn suggest that, for some religions at least, the realm of becoming isquite enough to worry about.

Western Michigan University

111 Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper & Row,1963), 149.

Documents

God on the Margins- Transience in the Myths of Odhinn