The Mead of Poetry
The mead of poetry had a history, and like most histories involving dwarves it was unpleasant. Kvasir, the wisest being ever to walk the earth, he who had been created from the gods' collective spit at the peace settlement, travelled around answering questions. There was no question he could not answer, no riddle he could not solve, and people came from all nine worlds to hear him speak.
Two dwarves, Fjalar and Galar, invited Kvasir to their home. They said they wanted to speak with him in private, that they had questions requiring seclusion, and Kvasir went with them, because the wise seldom suspect that wisdom can be the reason you get murdered. They cut his throat the way you slaughter a pig. The blood ran into two vessels and a kettle: Són, Boðn, and Óðrerir. They mixed honey into the blood, and it became mead, and whoever drank it could compose poetry or speak wisdom. From one man's blood, murdered by greed.
The dwarves told the gods that Kvasir had choked on his own cleverness, that there simply was no one gifted enough to ask him questions. The gods accepted this explanation, or pretended to. It is sometimes hard to tell, with gods.
But the dwarves were the sort of dwarves who do not know when to stop. They invited the giant Gilling on a fishing trip and capsized the boat on purpose. Gilling could not swim. He drowned, and the dwarves rowed home and told his wife, and she wept so loudly the dwarves could not stand it. Fjalar asked her to go out through the door and look toward the sea, for that was where her husband had disappeared. When she leaned through the door he dropped a millstone straight on her skull. The bone shattered and the brains sprayed and she fell silent mid-scream, and Fjalar said the weeping was worse to hear than the thud of the stone. That is the sort of dwarves they were.
Gilling's son Suttungr found out what had happened. He grabbed the dwarves by their throats, carried them out to a skerry that would be covered at high tide, and told them they could die there unless they handed over the mead. They begged and wept and promised everything they owned. Suttungr wanted the mead. They handed it over, every drop, and Suttungr took it to his mountain Hnitbjörg and set his daughter Gunnlöð to guard it alone in the dark.
Odin wanted it. Of course he did. He had given his eye, hung on his tree, won Vafþrúðnir's head, and it was still not enough. The mead was the last piece, and he meant to take it.
He disguised himself as a man called Bölverkr and wandered down to Suttungr's brother Baugi, who had nine thralls cutting hay in a meadow. Odin walked past them, stopped, and took a whetstone from under his cloak. He offered to sharpen their scythes. The blades became so keen the thralls rubbed their thumbs along the edge and grinned and wanted to buy the stone. Odin threw it into the air, high, and all nine reached for it with scythes in hand, and all nine cut each other's throats with their newly sharpened blades. The blood sprayed and the bodies fell and Odin stood there with nine vacant positions and a face that showed nothing.
He offered Baugi to do all the work himself, alone, the whole summer, in exchange for one thing: a sip of the mead. Baugi said it was Suttungr's mead and not his to give, but that he could try. Odin worked the whole summer, nine men's labour, without complaint, without stopping, and when autumn came and he demanded his payment they went together to Suttungr.
Suttungr said no. He said it with the sort of calm that leaves no room for negotiation. Not a drop. Odin nodded, as though he had expected it, and produced a drill called Rati. "Bore into the mountain," he told Baugi. Baugi drilled, puffing and sweating, and said he was through. Odin blew into the hole. The chips flew back in his face. "You are lying," said Odin. "Keep drilling." Baugi drilled. Odin blew again. This time the chip flew straight through. Odin turned himself into a serpent, thin as a thumb, and crawled into the hole. Baugi stabbed after him with the drill but missed, and Odin was inside.
Inside the mountain Gunnlöð sat alone. She had been keeping watch a long time, in darkness, without company, with three vessels that contained everything worth having in the world and no one to share it with. Odin came to her in the shape of a man, and he was charming in the way you can only be when you want something. He talked to her. He listened. He was the first company she had had since her father had posted her as guard and walked away.
He fucked her for three nights. Three nights in the darkness inside the mountain, and each night he was allowed a sip from each vessel. Three sips per night, one from Són, one from Boðn, one from Óðrerir. And each sip was so large the vessel was emptied completely. Gunnlöð noticed, or did not notice, or chose not to see. There is no way to know for certain, and the sagas do not bother to tell. She gave him the mead with her hands, and he took it with his mouth, and then everything was empty.
With all the mead in his belly he turned into an eagle and flew toward Asgard. Suttungr discovered the theft, turned into an eagle himself, and the chase went across the sky like two shadows against the sun. The gods stood on Asgard's walls and watched them coming: Odin with wings beating and Suttungr right behind, closer with every second. They set out vessels on the inside of the wall, every one they had.
Odin shot over the wall and spat the mead into the vessels at the last possible moment. Suttungr was going too fast and veered off, and the gods cheered. But it was tight, and Odin was hard pressed, and some mead escaped out the back end. That part rained down over Midgard, and it is the one that mediocre poets drink from. Rhymesters and versifiers and people who write songs no one remembers. The real poets, the ones who make your throat swell and your eyes burn, they drink from what Odin spat into the vessels. You can tell the difference.
Gunnlöð sat alone in the mountain with empty vessels and empty arms, and the sagas say nothing more about her. That was the price of Odin's poetry: a woman who gave everything to a man who never intended to come back.
Odin now had wisdom, runes, charms, and the mead of poetry. Asgard had walls and he had Sleipnir. The world was young and the gods felt invulnerable, and there is nothing more dangerous than gods who feel invulnerable. For Loki had other children, and those children were nothing you sing lullabies about.