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The Forging of Mjǫllnir · Norse Mythology Sleep Story · 3 Hours · The Sleeping Almanac: Sleep Stories for Adults from Myth and Fairy Tale

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Good evening.
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Or perhaps good night, if you've made your
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way here in the long hours after midnight
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the difference may already have stopped mattering.
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You've come back, perhaps, because the last two episodes
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helped you sleep.
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Or you've come for the first time.
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And the third episode happened to be the one
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the algorithm offered.
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Either is fine.
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The almanac is patient.
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Tonight stands on its own.
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If you are listening in bed, I'd ask you
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to do very little.
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Close your eyes.
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Let your jaw loosen.
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Let your shoulders drop, even a little
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even if you didn't know they were tight.
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The story does not need your attention.
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It will keep moving whether you follow it or
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not.
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If you drift, that is the point.
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If you wake briefly to catch a single sentence
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and then sink again, that is good.
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In the first episode, we walked the shape of
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the world, nine realms joined by one great
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tree.
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In the second, we met the wanderer, the Allfather
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the hanged god.
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Tonight we meet the figure who stood between the
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world of men and the great old powers at
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its edges.
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The god of thunder.
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The red-bearded one.
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The one who carried, at his belt
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a hammer that had been forged in the underground
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halls of the dwarves, under conditions so strange they
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have been told and retold for a thousand years.
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This is the story of how that hammer came
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to be.
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And of the small cruelty.
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And the long descent.
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And the bet that nearly cost a god's head
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that lay behind it.
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Now, let us begin.
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Chapter One.
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Thor, the God of the Hammer.
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Before we go to the dwarves.
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And before we go to the forge
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we should sit, for a while, with the figure
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of the god whose hammer this story is about.
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Thor.
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If you have come to Norse mythology through the
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surface of modern culture, through comic books
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through summer blockbuster films, through the cheerful merchandise that
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fills airport shops near Reykjavík, you may carry
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in your mind, a particular picture of him.
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A tall blond figure.
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A square jaw.
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A red cape.
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A hammer with a short handle held aloft as
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lightning strikes around him.
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A face that smiles easily.
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The Thor of the old Norse sources is
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in some ways, that figure .
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And in other ways, not quite that figure at
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all.
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He is described, in the surviving texts, as red-bearded.
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Rauðskeggr.
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The redbeard.
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A man, or a god.
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But the texts often use the language of men
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for him, of enormous appetite and enormous strength.
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He eats more than any other being in Asgard.
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He drinks more.
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He sleeps deeply.
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He is, by every account, the strongest of the
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gods, and one of the few who openly enjoys
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his own strength.
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He laughs easily.
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He grieves easily.
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He is, in the long view of the surviving
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stories, the most directly accessible of the Norse gods
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the one whose feelings, when he has them
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are not hidden behind cunning or grief or many
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names.
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He shows you what he feels.
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The redbeard.
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Rauðskeggr.
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The word in Old Norse means exactly what it
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looks like.
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The color was, in the old Scandinavian world
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not common, fewer than one in fifteen people
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were born with it .
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And a red beard, on a god
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was the sort of detail the poets did not
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include by accident.
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Red was the color of fire.
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Of the smithy.
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Of the moment when iron came out of the
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coals and could be shaped.
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It was the color, too, of the lightning that
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the old farmers in Norway and Sweden saw flicker
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across summer skies and named for him.
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The skies in the north were his work.
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The thunder, the storms that broke open the long
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midsummer afternoons, the rain that came after
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all of it carried his name.
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Þórsdagr.
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Thor's day.
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The fifth day of the week, in the old
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Norse calendar, was named for him.
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It still is, in every Germanic language that survives.
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In English we say Thursday and most of us
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no longer remember why.
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But the name has been carried, across a thousand
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years, by the simple weight of repetition.
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Children learn it without knowing it is a name.
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The god of thunder, in this small daily way
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has outlived nearly every temple and every ceremony that
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was ever raised to him.
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And there is more to him than the lightning.
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His father, the sources tell us, was Odin.
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Whom we met last episode.
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The Allfather.
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The wanderer.
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And, in this single particular, the two could not
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be less alike.
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The father is the god of hidden things
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of long roads, of self-imposed ordeals, of wisdom paid
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for in body.
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The son is the god of openness, of feasts
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of direct collision with whatever stands in his way.
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The father goes alone.
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The son arrives at the gallop, on his goat-drawn
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chariot, with the sky cracking behind him.
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His mother, in the surviving accounts, was Jǫrð.
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The Earth.
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Sometimes called Hlóðyn or Fjǫrgyn in the older Eddic
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poems.
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Thor is, by this lineage, the son of the
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wanderer-god and of the earth itself.
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Sky and ground, joined in a single body.
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The figure who, in the old Norse worldview
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was meant to stand exactly at the place where
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Asgard met Midgard, where the high world of
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the gods reached down to the world of human
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farms and human halls.
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He had a hall of his own.
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The texts call it Bilskírnir.
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Lightning-Bright.
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The hall is said to have had five hundred
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and forty rooms, which is the largest hall in
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Asgard, larger even than Odin's Valhǫll.
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The figure comes to us from Grímnismál
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one of the older Eddic poems, and Snorri Sturluson
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who liked numbers, preserved it in his
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Prose Edda.
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Whether it is literal or simply a poet's way
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of saying immeasurably large is a matter for the
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listener to decide.
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He had a wife.
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Her name was Sif.
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We will meet her, in earnest, in the next
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chapter.
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Because she is essential to the story we are
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walking toward tonight.
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He had children.
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The principal ones in the surviving sources were two
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sons, Magni and Móði, whose names mean, roughly
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Strength and Courage.
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There is also a daughter, Þrúðr, whose name means
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Strength in a different sense, closer to Might.
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The children are mentioned in the sources but rarely
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take center stage.
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Thor's stories are, with very few exceptions, Thor's stories.
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And he had two goats.
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This is the detail that, more than any other
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separates the Norse Thor from the modern Thor of
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popular culture.
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The Norse Thor did not fly.
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The Norse Thor did not, in the surviving texts
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hover above the ground or call down lightning at
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will from the sky.
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The Norse Thor moved across the worlds the way
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most beings moved, on a vehicle.
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And his vehicle was a chariot, pulled by two
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goats.
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Their names were Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr.
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Which translate, in the rough English the names allow
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as Tooth-Barer and Tooth-Grinder.
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The surviving sources do not, by and large
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describe the goats themselves, only their function.
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They are the animals that pull Thor's chariot.
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Their names suggest, in the Norse imagination
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the kind of bared-teeth countenance one might still meet
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today, in the highlands of Iceland or the Faroe
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Islands, on a path one would not particularly want
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to share.
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The goats had a remarkable quality, which I cannot
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in good conscience leave out of an episode about
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Thor.
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They could be eaten, and then resurrected.
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In the Eddic story of Thor's journey to the
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giant Útgarða-Loki, which we will not visit in
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full tonight, since it deserves its own episode in
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a later season, Thor and his companions
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traveling across the long roads of the world
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stop at a peasant's farm for a meal.
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Thor slaughters his own goats, butchers them
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and shares the meat with the family.
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After eating, he gathers the bones in the goatskins
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blesses the hides with his hammer.
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And the goats stand up alive in the morning.
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There is no explanation.
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The text simply records what happened.
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This image is, in some ways, more telling about
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Thor than any description of his appearance.
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The hammer was not only a weapon.
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The hammer was also, in the Norse imagination
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a tool of consecration.
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A thing one used to bless.
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A thing that could, when laid on the right
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thing, restore what had been broken.
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We will come back to this.
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What you should keep, from this short tour of
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the god, is the shape of the being we
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are following tonight.
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He is the son of the wanderer and the
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earth.
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He is red-bearded, easily moved, openly strong.
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He has a hall larger than his father's.
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He has a wife with golden hair
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whom we will meet in the next chapter.
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He has two goats, who pull his chariot across
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the worlds, and who can be killed and brought
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back to life.
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And he has, by the time the surviving
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stories were written
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a hammer.
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A short-handled hammer.
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Mjǫllnir.
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The crusher.
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The lightning-tool.
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The defense of the gods.
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The weapon that, in the old Norse imagination
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stood between everything that mattered and everything that wanted
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to break it.
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Tonight is the story of how that hammer came
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to be.
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And before we go down into the dwarven forges
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where the hammer was made, we should first meet
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the figure whose suffering set the whole story in
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motion.
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Because the hammer was made by accident.
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The hammer was made because Loki, the trickster
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had done something cruel to Thor's wife.
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We meet her now.
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Chapter Two.
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Sif and the Golden Hair.
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The wife of Thor was called Sif.
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This is, on first encounter, a remarkably short name.
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Two syllables.
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Almost a sound.
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In Old Norse, the word sif means, roughly, kinship.
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Relation by marriage.
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In-law.
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In its broadest sense, it is the word for
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the bonds between people who are not bound by
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blood but who are bound, nonetheless, by the structures
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of family.
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To be in sif with someone is to be
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tied to them by something other than birth.
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This is, scholars have long noted, an unusual sort
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of name.
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Most Norse god-names are descriptions, Allfather, Thunder
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The Just, The Bright One.
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Sif's name is, by contrast, almost an abstraction.
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She is named after the very idea of being-in-relation.
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She is, in her name itself, the one who
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is tied.
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We know remarkably little about her, in the surviving
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sources.
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The Norse poets, who lavished long stanzas on the
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deeds of the male gods, were briefer when they
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came to the goddesses.
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Sif appears in the Eddic poems mostly as Thor's
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wife, the woman waiting in Bilskírnir when he
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is away on his long journeys.
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She is not given speeches of her own in
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the major poems.
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She is mentioned, briefly, in genealogies.
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She is, in the old word, sif.
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The relation.
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The tie.
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But what is consistent, across every surviving reference to
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her, is the description of her hair.
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It was gold.
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Not gold as a color, not blonde
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not honey, not flax.
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Gold.
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The metal.
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The substance.
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The hair of Sif was, in the Norse imagination
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literal gold.
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It fell from her head the way real hair
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falls.
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It was warm.
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And it grew.
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And it moved in the wind.
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But it was, by every account, made of gold.
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This is the kind of detail that the Norse
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poets allowed to stand without explanation.
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They did not feel the need to tell us
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how such a thing was possible.
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They simply told us it was so.
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The wife of Thor had hair of gold.
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It is the principal thing the surviving texts want
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us to know about her.
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Why does this matter?
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In the Norse cultural imagination, hair was not
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as it sometimes is in our own age
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a casual or decorative thing.
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Hair was a marker of identity.
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A marker of social standing.
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A marker, in particular, of the relationship between a
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woman and her household.
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A wife's hair, in the old Norse world
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was bound up tightly during the workday and let
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down only in private, only with her husband.
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To touch a married woman's hair was
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in the legal codes that survive from the Icelandic
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settlement, an offense that could be punished.
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To cut a woman's hair against her will was
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an offense graver still, close, in the old
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legal language, to the offense of cutting off a
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part of her body.
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And the wife of Thor had hair that was
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itself, a treasure.
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Gold.
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The most precious substance the Norse imagination knew.
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The hair on her head was, in literal weight
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and value, the wealth of a kingdom.
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Hair, in the old Norse world, was not a
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small thing.
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It was not, as it sometimes is in
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our world, simply a matter of style.
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A woman's hair, in particular, carried meaning.
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It was, in the surviving texts, a sign of
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her honor, of her standing in the household
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of her unbroken connection to the family line.
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A married woman bound her hair, often
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beneath a cloth headcovering, a symbol of her
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vows.
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An unmarried woman wore her hair loose.
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To cut a woman's hair without her consent
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in the old Scandinavian law codes that have survived
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from later centuries, was an act of grievous insult
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a crime that carried a fine roughly equal
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to the wounding of her father, or her husband
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or her brother.
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To cut a goddess's hair was something the old
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poets had no measure for at all.
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And Sif's hair, in the surviving accounts
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was not only hers.
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It was, the poets tell us, gold.
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Real gold.
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Or something the eye could not tell from gold.
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When she stood in the firelight of her hall
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with her hair loose around her shoulders
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the light moved through it the way light moves
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through a fall of wheat at evening
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before the harvest.
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Some of the old commentators have suggested that her
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hair was the wheat, that Sif was
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in the old farmer's understanding, the field itself
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ripening.
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And Thor was the rain that came down upon
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her.
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I want you to hold this image
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for a moment, before we move on.
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A woman sleeping.
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The wife of the strongest god in the pantheon.
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In her own hall.
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Her hair, spread on the pillow around her
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glinting in the low light of the banked hearth-fire.
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Gold.
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The whole of it.
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The Norse poets do not tell us
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in the surviving texts, much about her inner life.
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They do not tell us what she thought
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or what she did during the days when Thor
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was away.
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They do not give her a voice in the
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major poems.
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She is named, Sif .
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And she is described, gold-haired
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and that is, for the most part
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what the texts give us.
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What they do tell us, in clear and lingering
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detail, is what happened to her one night.
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While she slept, in the deep middle of the
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night, in her own hall, in the long quiet
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of Asgard, someone came to her.
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The someone, a figure we will meet properly
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in the next chapter, moved very quietly.
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The figure approached the bed where she lay.
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The figure leaned over her, in the dark
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while she went on breathing in the rhythm of
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sleep.
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And the figure cut.
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He cut her hair.
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All of it.
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The Old Norse verb the surviving sources use
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skera, means to cut or to shave.
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And the texts say he shaved off all of
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it.
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The gold fell in long heavy strands
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in the dark, onto the floor of the hall.
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What is consistent across every surviving telling is the
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central act.
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Sif, the wife of Thor, woke in the morning
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to find her hair gone.
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The Norse poets do not, in the surviving texts
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give us her reaction in dialogue.
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They do not let her speak the words anyone
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in such a moment might speak.
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They simply tell us, in the careful, restrained
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almost formal language the Norse used for the most
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painful moments, that she woke.
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And she found.
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And she was, in their phrase, unconsoled.
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She was a goddess.
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She was the wife of the strongest god in
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the pantheon.
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She was, by the standards of the old Norse
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world, untouchable.
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And someone had, in the night, come to her
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and taken from her the one thing the texts
19:55
repeatedly tell us defined her.
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She did not speak, in the surviving texts.
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She wept.
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And when Thor came home, which he did
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eventually, as the texts always have him do
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returning from one of his long journeys
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and found his wife in her hall
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with her head bare, weeping, the response of the
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strongest god in the Norse pantheon was
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in its own way, exactly what one would expect.
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He went to find the figure who had done
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it.
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He had, the texts tell us, a fairly good
20:34
idea of who that figure was.
20:37
Because in the surviving Norse imagination, this kind of
20:40
cruelty, this kind of small inexplicable malice
20:43
this kind of cutting in the dark while someone
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slept, this was the work of one specific
20:50
god.
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And every other god in Asgard knew it.
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In the next chapter, we meet him.
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We meet Loki.
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Chapter Three.
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Loki, the Trickster.
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I want to spend some time, in this chapter
21:04
sitting with the figure of Loki
21:07
because Loki is, more than almost any other figure
21:11
in Norse mythology, a being who resists the simple
21:14
descriptions one might want to apply to him.
21:16
The modern English word for what Loki is is
21:20
trickster.
21:20
This is a useful word.
21:22
And a true one, as far as it goes.
21:27
Loki is a trickster.
21:29
He plays tricks.
21:31
He moves things around.
21:32
He hides things.
21:34
He pretends to be other than what he is.
21:37
He lies, when lying serves him.
21:40
He shape-shifts.
21:42
He laughs when no one else is laughing.
21:45
He upends, again and again, what the gods of
21:48
Asgard would have otherwise been able to settle into.
21:52
But trickster is, in the modern English ear
21:55
often a softer word than the Norse texts mean.
21:58
The trickster of the modern imagination
22:01
the figure in fables, the prankster, the funny uncle
22:05
of a pantheon, is a figure of mostly
22:08
harmless mischief.
22:09
The trickster in the modern sense is someone you
22:12
can, in the end, laugh along with.
22:15
Loki is, sometimes, that figure.
22:18
The Norse texts certainly let him be that figure
22:23
when they want him to be.
22:25
There are stories in the corpus in which Loki's
22:29
tricks save the gods, or at least save them
22:32
money, or rescue them from situations they could not
22:37
have escaped on their own.
22:38
In one of the more famous of these stories
22:41
which we will arrive at, in its own
22:44
time, in a later season, Loki turns himself
22:48
into a mare in order to distract the great
22:51
work-horse of a giant builder.
22:53
And the gods escape the giant's bargain because of
22:56
it.
22:56
The trick costs Asgard nothing.
22:57
The trick produces, as a side effect
23:00
the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, which we met last episode.
23:03
The trick, in the end, was good for the
23:07
gods.
23:07
But Loki is also, sometimes, something else.
23:11
He is the figure who, in the surviving end-of-the-world
23:14
poetry of the Norse, the Vǫluspá
23:18
leads the army of the dead against Asgard
23:21
on the last day.
23:23
He is the figure who, by the end of
23:27
the surviving cycle of stories, has been chained to
23:30
a stone in a cave, with a venomous serpent
23:34
dripping poison onto his face, in punishment for crimes
23:38
the gods could no longer overlook.
23:39
He is the figure whose children, in the surviving
23:43
genealogies, are the wolf that swallows Odin
23:45
the serpent that fights Thor.
23:48
And the half-rotted woman who keeps the underworld of
23:52
the dead.
23:52
Loki is not, in the long view
23:56
a harmless prankster.
23:56
Loki is, in the long view, the agent of
24:00
the gods' ending.
24:01
This is the problem of Loki.
24:05
He is both at once.
24:07
He is the helpful trickster and the eventual enemy.
24:12
The same being.
24:13
The Norse texts do not, I think
24:16
fully resolve this.
24:18
They simply allow both to be true.
24:21
Loki is one of the strangest figures in any
24:25
mythology that has ever survived.
24:26
The other gods of the north, Odin, Thor
24:30
Freyr, Freyja, Týr, sit, more or less
24:32
in the seats that mythologies usually have.
24:36
The wise one.
24:38
The strong one.
24:41
The fertile one.
24:41
The brave one.
24:42
Loki sits in none of them.
24:45
He is, in the surviving sources, not a god
24:51
of anything in particular.
24:53
He has no temples that we know of.
24:56
He has no day of the week.
25:00
He has no festival, no ritual, no farmer's prayer
25:03
raised to him at the turning of the season.
25:06
And yet he is everywhere in the stories.
25:09
Every great story of the Norse gods
25:13
the building of Asgard's walls, the death of Baldur
25:17
the binding of Fenrir, the recovery of Thor's hammer
25:21
when it was later stolen, the very ending of
25:24
the world at Ragnarǫk, has Loki at its
25:28
center.
25:28
He is the figure, the old commentators have suggested
25:32
who makes the stories move.
25:34
Without him, the gods would sit in their halls
25:38
and feast forever.
25:39
Nothing would happen.
25:40
With him, every door is opened that the gods
25:45
did not mean to open.
25:47
Every wager is offered that the gods did not
25:50
mean to take.
25:51
Every crime is committed that the gods did not
25:54
until then, know was possible.
25:56
And he was, in the old sources
25:59
blood-brother to Odin.
26:02
A blood-brother.
26:02
Sworn.
26:02
Bound by oath.
26:05
Who is he, in his nature?
26:09
The surviving sources give us several pieces.
26:12
They tell us he is not, properly speaking
26:15
a god of the Æsir.
26:18
He was born among the giants.
26:21
His father was Fárbauti, Cruel-Striker
26:24
and his mother was Laufey, sometimes called Nál
26:28
who may or may not have been a goddess.
26:31
He was brought into Asgard, the texts tell us
26:35
through a blood-brotherhood with Odin.
26:38
The two gods, in a moment not preserved in
26:41
detail in the surviving sources, swore brotherhood by mingling
26:45
their blood.
26:45
From that moment, Loki was of the Æsir
26:49
in the legal sense of the old Norse world.
26:52
He could not be expelled.
26:55
He could not be killed by the gods.
26:58
He had the same standing among them as any
27:01
born god.
27:01
But he was not, ever, quite one of them.
27:07
The texts return to this, again and again.
27:10
Loki is in Asgard but not of it.
27:14
Loki sits at the gods' tables but is not
27:17
in some deeper sense, at the gods' table.
27:21
Loki is a guest who never quite leaves.
27:25
And he is.
27:27
The texts are clear, a being of changing shape.
27:30
This is one of the most consistent features of
27:34
his character.
27:35
He becomes a mare, as we mentioned.
27:39
He becomes, in another story, a falcon
27:41
borrowing the feather-cloak of the goddess Freyja
27:45
to fly between the worlds.
27:47
He becomes, in still another story, a salmon
27:52
trying to hide from the gods in a river
27:56
after a particularly bad piece of work.
28:00
He becomes, the texts tell us, a fly
28:02
when he needs to be small enough to get
28:06
into places he could not otherwise reach.
28:09
He becomes an old woman, when he needs to
28:12
weep beside a goddess's coffin and refuse to grant
28:18
the tear that would release her from the underworld.
28:21
The shapes are many.
28:22
There is no surviving source that tells us
28:26
in clear language, what Loki is in his most
28:29
basic form.
28:31
The texts do not give us a definitive description.
28:35
He is described, when he is described at all
28:41
as fair-faced.
28:41
Quick.
28:42
Slim.
28:42
With a slightly cruel mouth.
28:45
Beyond that, the sources let his appearance shift with
28:49
his moods.
28:49
And he is, and this is the part
28:54
of his character that matters most for tonight's episode
28:57
moved, often, by a kind of malice that
29:00
does not have an obvious source.
29:03
The Norse texts are honest about this
29:05
in a way the surviving Greek and Roman texts
29:10
about their own gods sometimes are not.
29:13
The Greek gods, when they are cruel
29:17
are cruel for reasons.
29:19
They want something.
29:20
They are punishing someone.
29:22
They are settling a score.
29:24
Loki is not always like that.
29:26
Loki, sometimes, does cruel things for no reason the
29:30
text can fully explain.
29:32
He does them, the surviving phrase often suggests.
29:35
Because the chance presented itself.
29:36
Because he saw a way to disturb something that
29:41
was otherwise still.
29:42
Because the cruelty was, in the moment, available.
29:45
This is the Loki who, the surviving texts tell
29:49
us, came to Sif's bed in the middle of
29:53
the night.
29:53
The texts do not give him a motive.
29:56
The texts do not tell us he was angry
30:00
at Sif.
30:01
The texts do not tell us he had quarreled
30:04
with Thor.
30:05
The texts do not tell us he was acting
30:08
on behalf of anyone else.
30:09
The surviving phrase in Snorri's Prose Edda is
30:13
in its bare Old Norse: Loki Laufeyjarson hafði þat
30:18
gjört til lævísi at skera hár alt af Sif.
30:21
In Anthony Faulkes's standard modern translation: Loki Laufey's son
30:24
had done this out of mischief
30:27
had cut off all of Sif's hair.
30:30
Out of mischief.
30:32
Til lævísi.
30:33
Out of cunning malice.
30:35
The Norse word lævísi carries a darker weight than
30:38
the modern English mischief.
30:39
It is closer to intentional harm done because one
30:42
is the kind of being who does intentional harm.
30:45
It is the malice of a creature who recognizes
30:49
that another creature is sleeping safely, and who chooses
30:52
in that moment, to do something to break the
30:56
safety.
30:57
This is the Loki we are dealing with tonight.
31:01
He is not, in this story, the trickster who
31:04
saves Asgard from a costly bargain.
31:06
He is the trickster who, for no reason the
31:10
surviving texts can fully explain, came in the night
31:13
to the wife of his blood-brother's son
31:16
and cut from her head the gold hair she
31:19
had been known by for as long as anyone
31:22
in Asgard could remember.
31:24
And then, when he was caught
31:27
he had to set right what he had done.
31:31
We turn now to the cutting itself.
31:34
And to what followed.
31:38
Chapter Four.
31:38
The Cutting.
31:40
I want to begin this chapter by telling you
31:45
what the surviving sources do not give us.
31:47
They do not give us, in any version of
31:51
the story I have been able to find
31:53
the scene of the cutting itself.
31:56
Snorri Sturluson, who is by far our most detailed
31:59
source for this story, gives us only the bare
32:02
fact.
32:02
Loki had done this out of malice
32:06
had cut off all of Sif's hair.
32:09
The act is named.
32:10
And the chapter moves on.
32:13
This is, in the way of Norse literature
32:16
the customary restraint.
32:18
The Norse poets did not, by and large
32:21
linger in their most painful moments.
32:24
They told you what had been done.
32:27
And they trusted you, the listener, to do the
32:33
rest of the imagining.
32:34
The work of the imagination was understood to be
32:36
the work of the audience.
32:39
The poet's job was to give the bone.
32:42
The audience's job was to put the flesh on
32:47
it.
32:47
So I will not, tonight, give you an invented
32:51
scene of the cutting.
32:52
I will not give you Loki's face in the
32:56
dark, or Sif's breathing in the bed
32:57
or the weight of the gold strands in his
33:02
hand.
33:03
The sources do not give them to me.
33:05
And to invent them feels like a betrayal of
33:09
the texts' chosen restraint.
33:12
The story does not tell us why he did
33:15
it.
33:15
This is, we should pause here for a
33:18
moment, one of the marks of these old
33:22
stories that the modern reader sometimes finds difficult.
33:26
We are used, in our novels and our films
33:30
to motivation being supplied.
33:31
A character does a thing.
33:33
And the writer tells us why.
33:36
The Norse poets did not work that way.
33:39
They told us, often, what was done.
33:42
They told us, often, what the consequences were.
33:45
They very rarely told us what the person inside
33:49
the act was thinking.
33:50
The story is the act and the consequence.
33:53
The interior is for the listener to fill in
33:57
or to leave empty, as they prefer.
34:00
So we are not told whether Loki cut Sif's
34:03
hair out of envy, or out of malice
34:07
or out of some quarrel with Thor that has
34:09
not survived in the texts.
34:11
Some of the old commentators have read it as
34:13
a grudge against Thor specifically, Thor being the
34:17
god most directly opposed to Loki's tricksterism
34:19
the one most likely to threaten violence when Loki
34:23
crossed a line.
34:25
Others have read it as something more shapeless
34:28
as the sort of small cruelty that some figures
34:32
in some old stories, simply perform because the performing
34:36
of it is its own kind of pleasure.
34:39
We are not told.
34:40
We may rest in that.
34:43
What the sources do give us
34:47
and what we can sit with
34:51
is what happened next.
34:52
Thor came home.
34:53
He had been away.
34:55
The surviving accounts do not specify where he had
34:59
been, in this particular story.
35:01
Thor was often away.
35:03
The work of being Thor was, in large part
35:07
the work of going out, of taking the
35:10
chariot of goats and the hammer-not-yet-his and crossing the
35:13
long roads between the worlds, dealing with whatever needed
35:16
to be dealt with along the way.
35:19
The defense of Asgard, in the old Norse imagination
35:23
was not a passive thing.
35:24
It was the work of the strongest god to
35:28
go, again and again, out into the dark places.
35:33
And to come back.
35:34
He came back, the surviving sources tell us.
35:38
And he found his wife in her hall.
35:41
Her hair was gone.
35:44
She was, in the Norse phrase, unconsoled.
35:46
The word in the original is something close to
35:50
that, óhuggat, uncomforted, not yet able to be
35:55
settled.
35:55
She was, in her own hall, in her own
35:59
life, in a state from which the ordinary rhythms
36:02
of being-her had been broken.
36:04
The wife of the strongest god in the pantheon
36:08
sitting in her own hall, with her head bare
36:11
was a sight that, the surviving texts make
36:15
very clear, none of the gods of Asgard
36:20
had seen before.
36:21
Thor asked her what had happened.
36:23
She told him.
36:24
The sources are spare on her dialogue.
36:28
We do not have her exact words preserved.
36:30
What we have, in the structure of the narrative
36:34
is the shape of her telling.
36:36
She told him what she could tell him.
36:41
She told him that someone had come to her
36:45
in the night.
36:47
She told him what they had done.
36:50
She named, by all surviving indications, the figure she
36:52
suspected.
36:53
She would not have had to look hard.
36:59
Every god in Asgard.
37:00
By every surviving account, would have known.
37:02
It was Loki.
37:04
And Thor, the texts tell us in plain
37:08
and unguarded language, went to find him.
37:10
This is the moment in the story I want
37:13
to slow down on, because it is one of
37:16
the more affecting moments in all of Norse mythology.
37:21
And the surviving Norse sources do something with it
37:25
that I find, even at a thousand years' distance
37:28
very moving.
37:30
Thor caught Loki.
37:31
The catching itself is not described in detail.
37:36
The texts give us the bare fact.
37:38
Thor went, Thor found him, Thor caught him.
37:41
The implication, in the way the sources tell it
37:46
is that Loki did not run very hard.
37:50
He may have tried to talk his way out
37:54
in his customary fashion.
37:55
He may have offered explanations.
37:56
He may have laughed, the way he often did
38:02
when caught doing what he had done.
38:03
The surviving phrase suggests that whatever Loki tried
38:06
it did not work for very long.
38:09
Thor, and here I will paraphrase Snorri carefully
38:13
because the passage matters, Thor would have broken
38:15
every bone in Loki's body, then and there
38:19
if Loki had not been very quick about offering
38:23
an alternative.
38:23
The phrase Snorri uses is, in Faulkes's standard translation:
38:26
Thor caught Loki.
38:28
And he would have broken every bone in his
38:33
body, except that he swore an oath.
38:36
Read the sentence again.
38:37
He would have broken every bone in his body
38:42
except that he swore an oath.
38:43
This is, in the Norse imagination, the very edge
38:47
of what Thor was capable of.
38:49
The strongest god, in the moment of finding the
38:53
figure who had cut his wife's hair, was
38:56
by the sources' explicit testimony, about to dismember
39:02
him, in his own body, slowly and completely.
39:05
Not kill him.
39:06
Killing would have been easier.
39:08
Thor was, in this moment, in the kind of
39:12
fury that would have made him take Loki apart
39:15
bone by bone, while Loki was still alive to
39:20
feel it.
39:20
The oath stopped him.
39:21
Loki swore, quickly, urgently, in the way one
39:24
swears when one is about to be unmade
39:29
that he would set right what he had done.
39:32
He would not, by any of his own arts
39:37
be able to give Sif her hair back;
39:39
the hair was gone.
39:40
And the gold of it lay on the floor
39:45
of her hall.
39:46
And even Loki could not make a goddess's own
39:50
hair grow back overnight.
39:51
But he swore, and this is the central
39:55
pivot of the story, that he would get
39:58
the dwarves, the great metal-workers of Svartalfheim
40:02
the most skilled smiths in the nine worlds
40:05
to make her a new head of hair
40:09
of true gold, that would grow on her head
40:14
as if it had always been there.
40:17
Thor accepted the oath.
40:19
He did not, the sources tell us
40:22
let Loki out of his sight until the work
40:25
was done.
40:26
He did not break his bones.
40:28
He did not unmake him.
40:31
He stood, the surviving accounts suggest, and watched Loki
40:36
gather himself, and watched him prepare to descend to
40:40
the underground country where the dwarves worked.
40:44
And let him go on the condition that he
40:47
would return with what he had promised.
40:50
This is the cutting, and what came after.
40:52
A small cruelty.
40:53
A great wrath.
40:54
An oath.
40:55
And the beginning of a long journey down
41:00
into the dark places of the world
41:04
where the substances that became the great treasures of
41:07
Asgard were waiting to be made.
41:10
We follow Loki, now, down into Svartalfheim.
41:13
Chapter Five.
41:14
Down to Svartalfheim.
41:15
The dwarves, in the Norse imagination, lived underground.
41:17
This is, on first encounter, a familiar enough idea.
41:20
Most cultures that knew metal-working knew that the substances
41:24
metal-workers worked with came from underground.
41:27
Iron from the iron-mines.
41:29
Copper from the copper-mines.
41:30
Gold, often, from the deep beds of rivers or
41:34
from the seams of certain mountains.
41:37
To work metal was.
41:39
In some sense, to bring up what had been
41:42
buried.
41:43
The Norse, like many of their neighbors
41:46
put this into mythological form.
41:48
They imagined a people whose entire life took place
41:52
underground.
41:52
A people who had been born in the dark
41:56
who lived in the dark, who worked in the
42:00
dark.
42:00
A people who had become, by long habit and
42:04
by the patience of generations, the greatest metal-workers any
42:08
of the worlds knew.
42:09
These were the dwarves.
42:12
The name in Old Norse is dvergar.
42:15
Singular dvergr.
42:16
The word is related, distantly, to the modern English
42:19
dwarf, and carries roughly the same meaning.
42:22
The dwarves were, in the Norse imagination
42:26
short of stature, broad of shoulder, long of beard
42:30
and, most consistently, very
42:33
very skilled.
42:34
Their realm was called Svartalfheim.
42:37
We mentioned it briefly, in the first episode of
42:40
this season.
42:41
Svart-alf-heim.
42:42
Black-elf-home.
42:42
The home of the dark elves.
42:46
The Norse, in some of their sources
42:49
conflated dwarves with the dark elves
42:52
a related group of underground beings, often referred to
42:55
in the same breath, sometimes as if they were
42:59
the same people.
43:01
The scholarly consensus, today, is that the Norse themselves
43:04
were not always clear on the distinction.
43:06
Sometimes dwarves and dark elves were two different peoples.
43:09
Sometimes they were one.
43:10
The sources are, on this point, comfortable with the
43:15
ambiguity.
43:15
What is consistent is the geography.
43:17
Svartalfheim was beneath the worlds of the surface.
43:20
To go there, one descended.
43:23
Svartalfheim, sometimes called Niðavellir in the older Eddic
43:27
poems, sometimes called simply "the dwarf-realm"
43:31
sits in the Norse cosmology beneath Midgard.
43:33
Below the world of men.
43:35
Beneath the roots of the world-tree.
43:39
It is one of the nine worlds.
43:42
Though the old sources do not always agree on
43:45
its exact placement among them.
43:47
Some texts treat it as part of the same
43:50
vast underground that contains Helheim, the realm of the
43:55
dead.
43:55
Some treat it as a separate underground entirely.
43:57
The poets did not, in this matter
44:00
take great pains to be consistent.
44:03
The image they meant to convey was simpler than
44:07
a map.
44:07
Down.
44:07
Beneath the surface.
44:09
In the dark.
44:10
Where the things that the gods used were made.
44:13
The dwarves themselves, in the surviving accounts
44:16
are an old people.
44:18
The Prose Edda, in Snorri Sturluson's telling
44:21
says they were born, or, in some readings
44:25
that they grew, from the body of Ymir
44:30
the first giant, after the gods slew him at
44:33
the beginning of the world.
44:36
From his flesh, the maggots.
44:39
And from those maggots, the dwarves.
44:41
The texts give the impression of a people who
44:44
had been in the world from very nearly its
44:49
beginning.
44:50
Older than the gods, perhaps, in a certain sense
44:54
or at least as old.
44:56
Old, in any case, in the way that very
45:00
old craftsmen are old.
45:02
They had been making things, in their underground halls
45:08
for as long as anyone could remember.
45:09
And what they made, no one else could make.
45:13
Loki, the surviving sources tell us, went to Svartalfheim.
45:17
The journey is not described in detail.
45:21
The Norse poets, again, gave us the bare structure.
45:24
Loki went down.
45:26
He went to the dwarves.
45:27
He found, in particular, a group of dwarves called
45:31
the Sons of Ivaldi, Ívalda synir in the
45:36
Old Norse.
45:37
They were.
45:37
By every surviving account, among the finest of the
45:41
dwarven smiths.
45:42
Their forge was old.
45:45
Their craft was the kind that had been passed
45:48
from father to son and son to son for
45:51
as long as any of them could remember.
45:54
To go to them was to go to the
45:57
experts.
45:59
I want to spend a moment, before we follow
46:02
Loki into their forge, sitting with the picture of
46:06
Svartalfheim as the Norse imagined it.
46:08
Because the picture is, in its way
46:11
one of the most affecting in all of Norse
46:14
cosmology.
46:15
Imagine a vast underground country.
46:17
There is no sky.
46:18
Where the sky should be, there is rock.
46:22
The rock is dark.
46:23
And it is high.
46:26
And it forms the ceiling of the world.
46:29
In some places the rock is broken
46:32
and small openings let in, far above
46:35
the faintest glimpse of starlight from the world above.
46:38
But these are rare.
46:40
For the most part, the country is lit by
46:43
its own light, by the amber glow of
46:48
forges, by the orange flicker of furnaces
46:51
by the patient steady light of metal being worked.
46:54
The country is full of sound.
46:57
Hammering.
46:57
The slow steady wheeze of bellows.
47:00
The hiss of metal being quenched in water.
47:04
The voices of dwarves, calling to each other across
47:07
the great halls, in a language the surface peoples
47:10
did not always understand.
47:12
The country has a rhythm.
47:15
It works.
47:15
There are no women in the surviving accounts.
47:17
The dwarves of Svartalfheim are described, in every Norse
47:21
source I have been able to find
47:24
as men.
47:24
The texts do not tell us how this is
47:29
possible.
47:30
They do not tell us how the dwarves reproduce.
47:32
They simply tell us that the dwarves are who
47:36
they are.
47:38
And that they are very many.
47:39
And that they have been working their craft for
47:44
as long as anyone in the worlds above has
47:48
been able to remember.
47:49
It is a country, in some ways
47:52
of nothing but work.
47:54
This is the world Loki entered.
47:57
He came, the surviving sources tell us
47:59
with a request.
48:01
He came with the memory of his blood-brother's son
48:05
standing over him, ready to take him apart.
48:09
He came with the gold of Sif's hair, perhaps
48:13
gathered in some fold of his cloak .
48:17
Though the sources do not specify whether he brought
48:22
the original hair or simply came with the need.
48:25
He came with what he had to offer the
48:28
dwarves in exchange.
48:30
He came, in particular, with his own cunning.
48:32
Because Loki, by the time he reached the Sons
48:36
of Ivaldi, had already had time to think.
48:40
Whatever bargain he struck with them
48:42
whatever the dwarves asked for, whatever Loki gave them
48:47
or promised them, the surviving sources do not
48:50
specify.
48:50
Snorri does not tell us what Loki paid.
48:53
The Sons of Ivaldi, the texts simply say
48:56
made the things Loki asked for.
48:58
They made them well.
49:00
They made, in particular, three things.
49:03
They made a head of hair for Sif.
49:07
Real gold, fine as silk, that would attach itself
49:10
to her head and grow there as if it
49:15
had always been there.
49:16
It would, the dwarves said, look like ordinary hair.
49:19
It would behave like ordinary hair.
49:22
The only thing about it that would be unordinary
49:25
was that it would be, in its substance
49:29
gold.
49:29
They made a ship.
49:32
Not an ordinary ship, a ship called Skíðblaðnir.
49:37
We will come to it in the next chapter.
49:41
And they made a spear.
49:42
The spear was called Gungnir.
49:46
We met it, in passing, last episode.
49:48
We will come to it too.
49:51
But before we look at the three gifts of
49:55
the Sons of Ivaldi, we should look at what
49:58
happened next.
50:00
Because Loki, having gotten what he came for
50:03
did not simply leave Svartalfheim and go home.
50:06
Loki, having gotten what he came for
50:09
did something else.
50:11
He decided to make a bet.
50:15
Chapter Six.
50:15
The Sons of Ivaldi.
50:17
Before we follow Loki into his bet
50:20
we should sit, for the length of this chapter
50:24
with the three gifts the Sons of Ivaldi made.
50:28
Because they are, individually, among the great treasures of
50:31
Norse mythology.
50:32
And they will each return, in this episode
50:36
in later episodes.
50:38
And in the long arc of the season
50:41
in ways that matter.
50:43
The first gift was the hair for Sif.
50:47
I have already described it, briefly, in the last
50:51
chapter.
50:51
It was made of true gold.
50:53
It was fine as silk, finer, perhaps
50:59
than any actual hair could be.
51:01
It was the kind of object that
51:03
in the Norse imagination, could only have come from
51:06
the patient skill of beings who had spent generations
51:09
learning to draw metal into impossibly thin strands.
51:12
The Sons of Ivaldi.
51:13
By every surviving account, knew how to do this.
51:17
But the hair had a quality beyond its substance.
51:22
When it was placed on Sif's head
51:25
the surviving sources tell us, it took root.
51:27
It attached itself to her scalp the way real
51:31
hair did.
51:32
It grew.
51:33
It moved in the wind.
51:36
It would, the dwarves promised, behave in every way
51:40
as her own hair had behaved
51:43
except that it would be, by its substance
51:47
gold.
51:47
She would, in time, be unable to tell the
51:52
difference.
51:52
The people who loved her would be unable to
51:56
tell the difference.
51:57
The hair would, by the time it was settled
52:01
on her head and had grown for a season
52:05
simply be her hair.
52:07
This is, I think, the most quietly remarkable of
52:10
the gifts.
52:12
The dwarves had not made a wig.
52:15
They had not made an ornament.
52:17
They had made a kind of replacement that
52:21
by some craft the Norse imagination did not fully
52:24
explain, had become indistinguishable from the original.
52:26
The cruelty Loki had done to Sif could not
52:30
in the strict sense, be undone
52:34
what is done in time cannot be unmade.
52:38
But the cruelty could be, in a way the
52:41
texts allow themselves to believe in
52:43
covered over.
52:44
The gold hair would grow.
52:46
Sif would have her hair again.
52:50
The wound, while it would always have happened
52:54
would not, after this, be a visible wound.
52:58
The second gift was a ship.
53:00
The ship was called Skíðblaðnir.
53:03
The name, in Old Norse, means roughly board-bladed or
53:06
thin-planked.
53:07
It comes from skíð, meaning a thin board or
53:11
wooden strip.
53:11
And from blað, meaning a blade or a leaf.
53:16
The name is descriptive: the ship was
53:19
the sources tell us, made of many thin pieces
53:22
of wood, fitted together with a skill so precise
53:25
that the seams were nearly invisible.
53:27
The ship had three remarkable qualities, all of which
53:31
the surviving sources preserve in some detail.
53:34
The first was its size.
53:35
Skíðblaðnir was, when fully extended, the largest ship in
53:40
the worlds.
53:41
It could carry, the sources say, all the gods
53:44
of Asgard, with all their gear, all their weapons
53:48
all their horses, all at once.
53:51
There was room for everyone.
53:53
The second was its winds.
53:55
Skíðblaðnir, the sources tell us, sailed always with a
53:59
favorable wind.
54:00
Whenever the ship's sails were raised, a wind would
54:04
come to fill them, from the right direction
54:08
at the right strength.
54:09
The ship did not, in the ordinary sense
54:13
need to wait for weather.
54:15
The weather came when the ship needed it.
54:19
The third was its most remarkable quality.
54:21
Skíðblaðnir could be folded.
54:22
Not folded as in collapsed.
54:25
Folded as in taken apart, into its many thin
54:28
pieces of wood, and folded together, as one might
54:32
fold a cloth, into a small bundle that could
54:35
be carried in a pouch.
54:37
The Sons of Ivaldi.
54:39
By every surviving account, had made a ship the
54:42
size of a great hall that, when not needed
54:46
could be carried in a man's hand.
54:49
This is the kind of detail at which modern
54:53
readers sometimes pause.
54:54
Snorri Sturluson did not.
54:56
He simply told us what the dwarves had made.
55:00
And let the audience marvel at it as they
55:03
would.
55:03
The ship was given, in the eventual distribution of
55:07
these gifts, to the god Freyr.
55:10
We will not meet Freyr in detail until later
55:13
in the season, he is the god of
55:17
the Vanir, the older order.
55:20
And he deserves his own episode.
55:22
Tonight it is enough to know that Skíðblaðnir went
55:26
to him.
55:27
And that he was, in the surviving accounts
55:29
much pleased.
55:30
The third gift was a spear.
55:32
The spear was called Gungnir.
55:36
We met Gungnir in the last episode.
55:38
It is Odin's spear.
55:40
The spear that never misses.
55:41
We will not repeat the description here in full
55:46
you can return to the last episode if
55:49
you'd like to sit with that gift again.
55:52
What is worth noting, in the context of tonight's
55:56
episode, is that all three of these things
55:59
the hair, the ship, the spear
56:03
were made by the same dwarves, in the same
56:08
forge, in what the surviving sources suggest was a
56:12
single visit.
56:12
The Sons of Ivaldi had, in the time Loki
56:17
was there, made three things of such craft that
56:20
any one of them would have been the achievement
56:23
of a lifetime.
56:24
They had made them, by all surviving indications, easily.
56:28
The forge was old.
56:29
The skill was deep.
56:31
The work, when it was their work
56:35
came out fine.
56:37
The first gift, the new hair of Sif
56:41
was, by some readings of the old text
56:46
not exactly hair at all.
56:48
The Prose Edda, in Snorri's account, calls it gold
56:53
drawn into threads so fine that they would grow
56:57
upon a head the way hair grew
56:59
and would settle when the head moved
57:03
and could not be told from real hair by
57:06
anyone who looked.
57:08
This is one of the small details that the
57:11
old sources tend to slip past quickly.
57:14
But that rewards a listener's attention.
57:16
Gold that grows.
57:17
Living gold.
57:19
The dwarves' work was not merely metal
57:22
it was metal that had been given, somehow
57:26
in their underground forges, a small portion of life.
57:29
The dwarves' three works, the hair, the ship
57:33
the spear, would each, in time
57:38
be given to a different god, and each god
57:40
would find that the gift suited him so precisely
57:43
it could only have been made for him alone.
57:47
The hair to Sif, by way of Thor.
57:52
The ship to Freyr, the god of fruitfulness
57:55
who needed the largest of all vessels and yet
57:58
could fold it like a cloth into a pocket.
58:03
The spear to Odin, of which there are stranger
58:06
things still to say.
58:08
The Sons of Ivaldi, in their underground country
58:11
had done in one sitting what most smiths of
58:14
any kind would not do in a lifetime.
58:18
Loki took the three gifts.
58:20
He thanked the dwarves, presumably, in whatever way Loki
58:24
thanked anyone.
58:24
He prepared, presumably, to leave Svartalfheim and return to
58:28
the upper world, where his blood-brother's son was waiting
58:31
to see what he had brought.
58:33
But Loki, and this is the moment that
58:38
turns the whole story, did not
58:41
after receiving the three gifts
58:42
simply leave.
58:43
He went, instead, to another forge.
58:47
There were, in Svartalfheim, many dwarves.
58:49
The Sons of Ivaldi were not, by any means
58:53
the only smiths in the underground country.
58:56
There were others.
58:57
There were, in particular, two dwarves who were brothers
59:01
who had their own forge, who were known
59:05
among the dwarves who knew the trade
59:09
as smiths whose work was, by some accounts
59:12
the rival of the Sons of Ivaldi's.
59:15
Their names were Sindri, sometimes called Eitri.
59:18
And Brokkr.
59:19
Loki, with the three gifts of the Sons of
59:24
Ivaldi already in his keeping, went to find them.
59:27
The reason he went is the substance of the
59:31
next chapter.
59:32
The reason he went is, though Loki himself
59:35
may not have known it at the time
59:38
the reason this entire episode exists.
59:41
We meet the brothers now.
59:44
Chapter Seven.
59:45
The Wager, Loki Bets His Head.
59:48
Sindri and Brokkr.
59:50
These are the two names that, by the end
59:54
of the Norse mythological corpus, are bound up forever
59:57
with the hammer of Thor.
59:59
Without them, without the strange brothers
1:00:02
working in their forge somewhere in the deep underground
1:00:06
of Svartalfheim, there would be no Mjǫllnir.
1:00:08
The hammer that defended Asgard against the giants
1:00:11
that called down lightning in the surviving stories
1:00:14
that returned to the thrower's hand, that was the
1:00:18
great weapon of the Norse cosmos, would not
1:00:21
in the Norse imagination
1:00:23
exist.
1:00:23
Sindri and Brokkr are the reason it does.
1:00:27
A brief note on the names, before we go
1:00:30
further.
1:00:31
Snorri Sturluson, in chapter 35 of his Skáldskaparmál
1:00:34
the chapter that is our principal source for this
1:00:39
whole story, gives the brother's name as Eitri.
1:00:41
Eit-ri.
1:00:43
The word in Old Norse means, roughly
1:00:44
poison-worker or the venomous one.
1:00:47
Though the meaning is debated.
1:00:48
Other sources in the surviving Norse corpus
1:00:52
including the Eddic poem Hyndluljóð and certain references in
1:00:57
the Vǫluspá, give the same figure as Sindri.
1:01:00
Sin-dri.
1:01:00
A name that may relate to cinder or spark.
1:01:04
The scholarly consensus today is that Sindri and Eitri
1:01:07
are two names for the same dwarf.
1:01:10
And that the Norse tradition itself did not always
1:01:14
settle which name was canonical.
1:01:17
I will, for clarity, use Sindri in tonight's narration
1:01:19
but you should know, if you read the
1:01:23
original sources, that Eitri is the same dwarf
1:01:27
working at the same forge, on the same gifts.
1:01:30
Brokkr, by all surviving accounts, is the second brother.
1:01:34
The bellows-man.
1:01:36
The one who does, in the story to come
1:01:39
most of the physical work.
1:01:41
The name in Old Norse means, roughly, badger.
1:01:46
Whether this is meant as a description of his
1:01:50
appearance, or his temperament, or his way of moving
1:01:54
the sources do not specify.
1:01:56
Loki came to their forge.
1:01:58
The surviving accounts do not describe the forge in
1:02:02
detail.
1:02:02
We are left to imagine it.
1:02:05
A stone room, probably.
1:02:07
A hearth at one end, glowing amber.
1:02:10
A long iron anvil.
1:02:11
Bellows worked by hand.
1:02:14
Heaps of raw metal, gold, iron, silver
1:02:17
stacked along the walls.
1:02:19
The two brothers, working in the close concentration that
1:02:23
all skilled craft requires, in the long low light.
1:02:27
Loki entered, the texts tell us.
1:02:32
He praised, in passing, the things the Sons of
1:02:36
Ivaldi had just made for him.
1:02:39
He may have shown the brothers the gifts.
1:02:41
The accounts are not specific.
1:02:45
What is consistent is the central act.
1:02:48
Loki, having received three treasures from one group of
1:02:51
dwarves, came to a second group of dwarves
1:02:54
and proposed a contest.
1:02:56
He said, and I am paraphrasing
1:02:59
because Snorri does not give us the exact dialogue
1:03:03
I do not believe you brothers can make
1:03:06
three gifts as fine as the gifts I have
1:03:10
just received from the Sons of Ivaldi.
1:03:14
He said this knowing, perhaps, that the brothers had
1:03:18
a reputation.
1:03:18
He said this, perhaps, because he wanted to see
1:03:21
what would happen.
1:03:22
He said this, perhaps, because Loki was Loki.
1:03:25
And the chance to set one set of dwarves
1:03:30
against another set of dwarves was the kind of
1:03:34
thing he found, in his nature
1:03:37
irresistible.
1:03:37
The brothers, as Loki may or may not have
1:03:41
predicted, took the bait.
1:03:42
Brokkr, the surviving sources tell us, replied immediately.
1:03:45
He said, in essence, We can do better.
1:03:48
My brother can do better.
1:03:49
We can make three gifts that will make the
1:03:54
Sons of Ivaldi look like apprentices.
1:03:57
Loki said, Very well.
1:03:58
I will bet you that you cannot.
1:04:02
Brokkr asked what he was willing to wager.
1:04:06
This is the moment that, more than any other
1:04:09
in the story, marks Loki as the figure he
1:04:13
is.
1:04:15
Because a more cautious being, and almost every
1:04:18
being in the Norse mythological corpus was a more
1:04:22
cautious being than Loki, would have wagered something
1:04:26
small.
1:04:26
Something concrete.
1:04:28
Some piece of gold he could afford to lose.
1:04:32
Some object whose loss would not, by any reasonable
1:04:35
measure, be ruinous.
1:04:35
Loki, instead, wagered his head.
1:04:38
The surviving phrase, in Old Norse, is unambiguous.
1:04:42
Loki veðjaði höfði sínu.
1:04:43
Loki wagered his head.
1:04:45
If the brothers could not make three gifts finer
1:04:48
than the gifts of the Sons of Ivaldi
1:04:53
Loki said, he would keep his head.
1:04:56
If they could, if the brothers' work was
1:05:00
judged by the gods of Asgard to be greater
1:05:05
than the Sons of Ivaldi's, then the brothers
1:05:07
could have Loki's head, to do with as they
1:05:11
pleased.
1:05:11
We should sit, here, for a moment
1:05:14
with the strangeness of what Loki has just done.
1:05:17
He has wagered his head.
1:05:19
Not, as we sometimes hear the phrase used
1:05:22
today, as a manner of speaking.
1:05:26
He has actually, in the literal terms of the
1:05:30
surviving story, said: if these brothers make a better
1:05:33
thing than the sons of Ivaldi, you may take
1:05:37
my head from my shoulders.
1:05:40
And the brothers have accepted.
1:05:43
The work will be done.
1:05:44
And at the end of it, three gifts will
1:05:48
be judged against three gifts, and one wager will
1:05:51
be lost, and one head will be taken.
1:05:54
This is the kind of thing that
1:05:59
in the Norse stories, happens often enough that we
1:06:02
should pay attention to it.
1:06:04
The wager that is too high.
1:06:07
The bet that should not have been offered.
1:06:10
The oath that, once spoken, cannot be unspoken.
1:06:13
The Norse gods, in the surviving sources
1:06:15
are again and again caught by these
1:06:19
by promises they regret, by terms they did not
1:06:22
think through, by a single careless word that locks
1:06:27
the world into a path it cannot leave.
1:06:30
The old poets seem to have felt
1:06:33
on this matter, that the world ran on these
1:06:36
moments.
1:06:36
That every great story turned on a single ill-considered
1:06:40
yes.
1:06:40
Why?
1:06:41
The surviving sources do not give us a clear
1:06:44
answer.
1:06:45
Loki had no obvious need to make such an
1:06:48
extreme bet.
1:06:48
He could have wagered a piece of gold
1:06:53
or a season's worth of work, or any one
1:06:56
of a thousand smaller things.
1:06:57
He wagered his head.
1:06:59
Some scholars have read this as evidence of Loki's
1:07:03
deep confidence in the Sons of Ivaldi.
1:07:05
He had just seen their work.
1:07:08
He had carried their three gifts in his arms.
1:07:11
He could not, in his own assessment
1:07:13
imagine that any other dwarves could surpass them.
1:07:16
The wager, in this reading, was the wager of
1:07:21
a man who believed he could not lose.
1:07:24
Others have read it differently.
1:07:25
Some have suggested that Loki, in his nature
1:07:29
was simply drawn to extremity.
1:07:31
That the chance to wager nothing of importance would
1:07:35
have bored him.
1:07:35
That only by wagering his head could he make
1:07:39
the contest feel real.
1:07:41
Still others, and this is the reading I
1:07:45
find most affecting, have suggested that Loki
1:07:48
on some level, was always a being who wanted
1:07:51
to be punished.
1:07:52
That across the long arc of the surviving Norse
1:07:56
stories, Loki kept doing things that would, eventually
1:08:00
lead to his own undoing.
1:08:02
That the wager of his head was
1:08:04
in some submerged way, an early instance of the
1:08:07
pattern.
1:08:07
Loki was, in this reading, always heading toward the
1:08:11
cave.
1:08:12
The cave was.
1:08:12
In some sense, what he was for.
1:08:16
The wagers, the cruelties, the descents
1:08:19
they were the steps along the road.
1:08:22
You may choose whichever reading you prefer.
1:08:26
The Norse texts, as ever, let several be true
1:08:30
at once.
1:08:31
What the texts do agree on, in full clarity
1:08:35
is what the brothers did.
1:08:37
Brokkr accepted the wager.
1:08:39
The brothers.
1:08:39
By every surviving account, began to work immediately.
1:08:43
They piled fuel into the forge.
1:08:46
They worked the bellows.
1:08:48
They drew out the raw metal they would be
1:08:51
using for the first of their three gifts.
1:08:56
They moved, in the practiced rhythm of long craft
1:08:59
to their stations.
1:09:00
And Loki, having staked his head on what
1:09:04
was about to be made, settled down to
1:09:06
watch.
1:09:07
Or so he pretended.
1:09:09
In the next chapter, we will see what Loki
1:09:13
actually did.
1:09:15
Chapter Eight.
1:09:15
The Fly at the Bellows.
1:09:17
I want to read you, slowly, the central passage
1:09:21
of the story.
1:09:22
Because what happens in this chapter is
1:09:25
in some ways, the heart of the whole Norse
1:09:29
tradition's account of how Mjǫllnir was made .
1:09:34
And the surviving Old Norse text is unusually direct
1:09:37
in its telling.
1:09:39
Loki, having wagered his head, sat down in the
1:09:42
brothers' forge.
1:09:43
Sindri began the work.
1:09:44
He placed, on the fire, a pigskin
1:09:47
the source-material for the first of his three gifts.
1:09:51
He turned to his brother Brokkr and said
1:09:54
in the surviving paraphrase, Pump the bellows.
1:09:57
Do not stop pumping the bellows.
1:10:01
Whatever happens, do not stop.
1:10:03
If you stop, all the work is lost.
1:10:07
Brokkr began to pump.
1:10:08
Sindri left the forge briefly, to fetch something.
1:10:11
Whether he was gone for long, the texts do
1:10:15
not specify.
1:10:16
While he was away, the work continued.
1:10:20
Brokkr at the bellows, in the rhythm of long
1:10:25
craft.
1:10:25
The pigskin in the fire.
1:10:27
The amber heat building.
1:10:28
And then, and here Snorri's text is
1:10:32
in the surviving original, unusually direct
1:10:35
Then a fly flew onto Brokkr's hand and stung
1:10:39
him.
1:10:39
The fly was Loki.
1:10:41
That is the text.
1:10:43
Sú var Loki.
1:10:45
The fly was Loki.
1:10:47
Snorri does not allow the reader any ambiguity.
1:10:51
He does not write some say the fly was
1:10:53
Loki or it was rumored that Loki had taken
1:10:58
the form of a fly.
1:11:00
He simply tells us, in the bare voice of
1:11:04
his prose, that this was what Loki had done.
1:11:08
Loki, who had wagered his own head on
1:11:11
the contest, had taken the form of a
1:11:15
fly, and entered the forge.
1:11:17
And was now actively trying to sabotage the work.
1:11:21
This is, I think, one of the strangest moments
1:11:24
in all of Norse mythology.
1:11:26
The figure who has bet his own head is
1:11:29
the same figure who is trying to make sure
1:11:32
he loses the bet.
1:11:34
The being who, by every rational calculus
1:11:36
should be wanting the brothers to fail
1:11:39
should be doing nothing, should be sitting on his
1:11:43
hands, should be hoping that the brothers' work crack
1:11:46
apart in the flames, is the one taking
1:11:50
active measures to ensure the brothers cannot succeed.
1:11:53
The texts do not explain this contradiction directly.
1:11:56
They simply let it stand.
1:11:58
Loki is Loki.
1:12:00
And Loki, in his nature, does not always act
1:12:03
in the way his interests would dictate.
1:12:05
Loki, sometimes, simply acts in the way that produces
1:12:08
the most interesting story.
1:12:10
The Prose Edda's telling of this moment is one
1:12:14
of the small comic masterpieces in the whole of
1:12:17
Norse literature.
1:12:18
The trickster, with his head wagered, with his life
1:12:22
literally on the line, with the work going against
1:12:24
him, and his only weapon, in the underground
1:12:27
forge of the dwarves, is to become an insect.
1:12:30
To become small enough that Brokkr cannot easily kill
1:12:33
him.
1:12:34
To bite, and bite, and bite again
1:12:37
in the hope that one of the bites will
1:12:40
land in the wrong place at the wrong moment.
1:12:44
And the work will go wrong.
1:12:46
The image, Loki as a fly
1:12:49
circling the head of a sweating dwarf at the
1:12:53
bellows of a fire that is making the most
1:12:58
powerful object ever to exist in the Norse cosmos
1:13:00
is the sort of image that the modern
1:13:04
reader sometimes laughs at.
1:13:06
And the laughter is, I think, intended.
1:13:09
The Norse poets had a sense of humor about
1:13:12
their own gods that the modern reader sometimes underestimates.
1:13:15
The trickster, brought low.
1:13:16
The cosmic stakes, balanced on the head of an
1:13:20
insect.
1:13:20
The dwarf, who has been forging for hours
1:13:24
finally pausing for one moment to wave away the
1:13:28
irritation .
1:13:28
And in that single pause, in that single moment
1:13:31
of distraction, the hammer's handle came out shorter than
1:13:35
it should have.
1:13:36
The whole long history of Mjǫllnir's short handle begins
1:13:40
with that fly bite.
1:13:42
The fly stung Brokkr's hand.
1:13:45
Brokkr did not, the texts tell us, stop pumping.
1:13:48
The sting was painful.
1:13:49
The pain went through his hand, up his arm
1:13:54
into the muscle of his shoulder.
1:13:56
But he had been told, by his brother
1:13:58
that whatever happened, he should not stop.
1:14:01
So he did not stop.
1:14:02
Sindri returned to the forge.
1:14:04
He looked at the work.
1:14:07
He took, from the fire, the first of the
1:14:10
three gifts.
1:14:12
It was, the texts tell us, a boar.
1:14:16
A boar made entirely of gold.
1:14:18
Bristles, hide, tusks, eyes, every part of it
1:14:22
gold.
1:14:23
The boar was called Gullinbursti.
1:14:25
Gold-Bristled.
1:14:25
Gull-in-burst-i.
1:14:26
We will come to it, in detail
1:14:29
in the next chapter.
1:14:31
Sindri then turned to his brother again.
1:14:35
Now we make the second gift, he said.
1:14:38
He placed, on the fire, gold itself.
1:14:42
Raw gold.
1:14:44
He told Brokkr again, in the same words:
1:14:49
Pump the bellows.
1:14:52
Do not stop, whatever happens.
1:14:54
If you stop, all the work is lost.
1:14:58
Brokkr began again.
1:15:00
The fly came back.
1:15:01
This time the fly stung Brokkr's neck.
1:15:05
The sting was, by Snorri's own phrase
1:15:08
half-again as hard as the first
1:15:11
hálfu fastari in the Old Norse, the kind of
1:15:16
careful comparative ratio the Norse texts liked to put
1:15:21
on physical pain.
1:15:23
The pain went down into Brokkr's shoulder
1:15:24
into his back, into the muscle between his shoulder-blades.
1:15:28
But Brokkr did not stop pumping.
1:15:30
He had been told.
1:15:33
He kept the rhythm.
1:15:35
Sindri returned.
1:15:36
He looked at the work.
1:15:37
He took, from the fire, the second of the
1:15:40
three gifts.
1:15:41
It was a ring.
1:15:42
A great gold arm-ring, with, though Brokkr did
1:15:46
not know it yet, a quality that would
1:15:49
make it one of the most coveted objects in
1:15:53
Asgard.
1:15:55
The ring was called Draupnir.
1:15:57
The Dripper.
1:15:58
We met it last episode.
1:16:01
We will come back to it in the next
1:16:05
chapter.
1:16:05
Sindri then turned to his brother for the third
1:16:09
time.
1:16:09
The third gift would be the most demanding
1:16:12
he said.
1:16:12
The third gift would be the one that
1:16:15
if completed, would win them the wager.
1:16:19
He placed, on the fire, iron.
1:16:22
A great mass of iron.
1:16:23
He told Brokkr, this time more urgently than before:
1:16:26
Pump the bellows.
1:16:28
Do not stop.
1:16:29
Above all, on this one, do not stop.
1:16:33
If you stop, even for an instant
1:16:35
the gift will be ruined.
1:16:38
Brokkr began.
1:16:38
The fly came back.
1:16:40
This time the fly stung Brokkr's eyelid.
1:16:43
The bite, the surviving texts tell us
1:16:47
was the hardest of all.
1:16:49
The blood came immediately.
1:16:51
It ran down from Brokkr's eyelid, into his eye
1:16:55
blinding it.
1:16:57
He could not see.
1:16:59
Blood was pouring into his vision.
1:17:00
The fly was still on his eyelid, biting again.
1:17:04
Brokkr, who had been told, again and again
1:17:08
that he must not stop, let go of
1:17:12
the bellows for an instant.
1:17:14
Only an instant.
1:17:16
Long enough to lift his hand to his face
1:17:20
and wipe the blood from his eye.
1:17:24
Then he returned to the bellows.
1:17:27
He kept pumping.
1:17:29
But Sindri, when he came back to take the
1:17:33
third gift from the fire, looked at it and
1:17:36
frowned.
1:17:37
The third gift was a hammer.
1:17:40
The head of the hammer was.
1:17:44
By every surviving account, perfect.
1:17:45
The metal was the finest dark iron the dwarves
1:17:49
knew how to work.
1:17:50
The shape was the perfect shape for what the
1:17:54
hammer would need to do.
1:17:57
The weight was the correct weight.
1:17:58
The balance was the correct balance.
1:18:00
But the handle of the hammer was short.
1:18:03
Shorter than Sindri had intended.
1:18:06
Shorter, the surviving accounts tell us, than any normal
1:18:09
hammer's handle would have been.
1:18:11
The handle was short.
1:18:13
The sources are explicit about why, because of that
1:18:17
one brief moment when Brokkr had stopped pumping the
1:18:20
bellows.
1:18:20
The instant when the metal had cooled, just slightly.
1:18:25
The instant when, in the patient long heat of
1:18:28
forging, the metal had not been quite hot enough
1:18:31
to take the full length of the handle.
1:18:34
The handle was short.
1:18:36
Sindri was, the surviving accounts tell us
1:18:39
deeply unhappy about this.
1:18:40
He looked at his brother.
1:18:43
He saw the blood.
1:18:44
He understood, in the way two long-working craftsmen come
1:18:47
to understand each other without speaking, that something had
1:18:51
happened.
1:18:51
He did not, in the surviving texts
1:18:55
blame Brokkr directly.
1:18:56
He simply observed that the hammer's handle was shorter
1:19:01
than he had wanted.
1:19:02
And .
1:19:02
Though he could not have known it then
1:19:06
that the imperfection would, in the end
1:19:09
become part of the legend.
1:19:11
The hammer was called Mjǫllnir.
1:19:13
We will come to it, in detail
1:19:15
in the next chapter.
1:19:16
We will come to its qualities, its weight
1:19:20
its return, its small concealability, in the chapter
1:19:24
after that.
1:19:25
But for now, let me leave you with the
1:19:29
image.
1:19:30
The forge in the deep.
1:19:32
The amber light.
1:19:32
The brothers, one with blood on his cheek
1:19:38
the other looking down at the three gifts laid
1:19:42
on the cooling-stone.
1:19:44
And, somewhere, perhaps still in the forge
1:19:48
perhaps already gone, a fly, on whose head
1:19:54
in some way the dwarves did not yet know
1:19:57
the entire wager would now turn.
1:19:59
Loki, who had bet his head
1:20:02
and who had spent the bet itself trying to
1:20:07
lose it, slipped back to his own form
1:20:10
somewhere in the dark.
1:20:12
He gathered his things.
1:20:13
He prepared to go up.
1:20:16
He took the three gifts of the Sons of
1:20:19
Ivaldi.
1:20:19
He took the three gifts of Sindri and Brokkr.
1:20:23
And he made his way, the surviving accounts suggest
1:20:28
back up the long roads of Svartalfheim
1:20:30
toward the surface, toward Asgard, toward the judgment that
1:20:34
he knew was waiting.
1:20:35
He had, by his own assessment, won the bet.
1:20:40
The brothers' work was good, but the hammer
1:20:43
had a short handle.
1:20:44
The hair, the ship, the spear of the Sons
1:20:47
of Ivaldi were each perfect in their own way.
1:20:53
The brothers' work, while striking, had a visible flaw.
1:20:57
He may have been smiling as he climbed.
1:21:01
He did not yet know what the gods would
1:21:04
decide.
1:21:05
Chapter Nine.
1:21:06
Gullinbursti and Draupnir.
1:21:07
I want to slow down, in this chapter
1:21:11
and sit with the first two of the brothers'
1:21:15
three gifts.
1:21:15
Because they are, in their own right
1:21:20
two of the more remarkable objects in Norse mythology
1:21:24
.
1:21:25
And they have, in the surviving stories
1:21:27
lives of their own that extend far past the
1:21:31
moment of their making.
1:21:32
The first is the golden boar.
1:21:35
Gullinbursti.
1:21:36
The name in Old Norse means, literally, gold-bristled.
1:21:40
Gull, gold.
1:21:40
Bursti, bristle.
1:21:41
The boar's distinguishing feature is that every bristle of
1:21:44
its coat, every hair on its body
1:21:49
is made of true gold.
1:21:51
The whole animal, in the surviving accounts, shines.
1:21:57
This shining is not, in the Norse imagination, ornamental.
1:22:00
The shining is functional.
1:22:02
The boar, the surviving sources tell us
1:22:05
gives off its own light.
1:22:07
Wherever it goes, the gold of its bristles glows
1:22:11
the way burning coals glow.
1:22:12
And the darkness around it lifts.
1:22:16
The boar can run through the deepest of nights
1:22:20
and create, around itself, a small moving zone of
1:22:24
illumination.
1:22:24
A traveler riding the boar would never
1:22:27
in the surviving Norse imagination, lack for light.
1:22:31
The boar has other qualities.
1:22:32
It can run, the texts tell us
1:22:36
faster than any horse.
1:22:37
It can run through air.
1:22:39
It can run on water, the surface
1:22:42
not under.
1:22:43
It is, in the long view, a creature whose
1:22:47
nature is to move at speed, in any element
1:22:51
in any condition, with its own light.
1:22:55
Gullinbursti was given, in the eventual distribution of the
1:23:01
gifts, to the god Freyr.
1:23:03
We mentioned him briefly in the last chapter;
1:23:05
he is the god of the Vanir
1:23:09
the other order of gods.
1:23:11
And we will meet him in proper detail later
1:23:14
in this season.
1:23:16
For now it is enough to know that the
1:23:19
boar went to Freyr.
1:23:21
And that Freyr, who was, in the surviving
1:23:24
accounts, much pleased, kept it as one of
1:23:28
his principal companions.
1:23:28
Whenever Freyr traveled, the boar traveled with him.
1:23:33
Whenever Freyr needed light, the boar gave it.
1:23:36
The boar appears, in the surviving Norse poems
1:23:39
in scenes you may not yet have read
1:23:44
but if you continue with this season
1:23:47
you will encounter it again.
1:23:48
There is a famous funeral scene, late in the
1:23:53
season's arc, in which Freyr arrives at the pyre
1:23:57
of a fallen god in a wagon drawn by
1:24:00
Gullinbursti, the boar's own light moving across the
1:24:04
dark gathering of mourners.
1:24:06
The boar is, in the surviving corpus
1:24:08
one of the small recurring figures whose presence the
1:24:11
poets liked to note.
1:24:13
Gullinbursti was there.
1:24:14
The light moved with him.
1:24:15
The second gift is the ring.
1:24:18
Draupnir.
1:24:19
We met it last episode.
1:24:21
I will not, here, repeat the description in full.
1:24:24
What is worth noting, in the context of tonight's
1:24:30
episode, is the surrounding circumstance.
1:24:32
The ring was made by Sindri and Brokkr
1:24:36
in the same forge, in the same single sitting
1:24:40
in which they made the boar and the hammer.
1:24:44
The ring was the second of the three.
1:24:46
The fly, Loki, stung Brokkr's neck during
1:24:50
the working of it.
1:24:52
And Brokkr did not stop pumping the bellows.
1:24:55
The ring came out, the surviving sources tell us
1:24:59
perfect.
1:24:59
Draupnir, you may recall, was a great gold arm-ring
1:25:04
of the kind a chieftain would wear on his
1:25:07
upper arm.
1:25:07
Its distinguishing quality was that, every ninth night
1:25:11
eight identical gold arm-rings dripped from it.
1:25:15
The wealth of the ring was, in principle, inexhaustible.
1:25:19
A king who wore Draupnir could give and give
1:25:21
and never empty his hoard.
1:25:23
The ring was given, in the eventual distribution of
1:25:26
the gifts, to Odin.
1:25:27
The Allfather.
1:25:28
The wanderer.
1:25:29
The figure who, in the surviving stories
1:25:31
was the principal ring-giver of the gods
1:25:36
the patron of every chieftain in the human world
1:25:39
who held an open hand.
1:25:41
Draupnir, in Odin's keeping, became a kind of emblem
1:25:45
of the office of leadership itself.
1:25:48
To be a true leader, in the old Norse
1:25:53
imagination, was to be the kind of being from
1:25:56
whom gold could be expected to flow.
1:25:59
Odin kept Draupnir.
1:26:00
The ring appears, in the surviving stories
1:26:04
on several occasions, including, with particular weight
1:26:07
in a funeral scene we will arrive at much
1:26:11
later in the season, in which Odin lays the
1:26:15
ring on a fallen god's pyre.
1:26:16
And the ring is sent down with the body
1:26:20
and is, the texts tell us, given back to
1:26:24
Odin some time later by means I will not
1:26:29
spoil here.
1:26:30
The ring is a recurring object.
1:26:32
It has a life.
1:26:33
I want to note something about the pattern of
1:26:36
the gifts, before we move on to the hammer
1:26:40
in the next chapter.
1:26:41
The two gifts we have just discussed
1:26:45
Gullinbursti and Draupnir, were given, eventually
1:26:47
to two different gods.
1:26:50
The boar went to Freyr.
1:26:52
The ring went to Odin.
1:26:54
The third gift, the hammer, would go to Thor.
1:26:58
Three gifts.
1:26:58
Three gods.
1:26:59
One for each of the three principal male powers
1:27:03
of the surviving Norse pantheon, the god of
1:27:07
fertility, the god of wisdom, the god of thunder.
1:27:11
This is, scholars have long noted, not an accident.
1:27:18
The surviving sources, in their structure, were arranging the
1:27:21
gifts in such a way that the three great
1:27:25
male gods of Asgard each received an object suited
1:27:29
to their particular nature.
1:27:32
Freyr, the god of harvest, of fertility
1:27:36
of golden things growing in fields
1:27:38
received the golden boar that ran through the air
1:27:41
and gave its own light.
1:27:43
Odin, the god of wisdom, of long roads
1:27:46
of the open hand, received the ring that
1:27:51
gave and gave.
1:27:52
Thor, the god of thunder, of direct force
1:27:56
of the defense of Asgard, received
1:28:00
in due time, the hammer.
1:28:03
Each god got the object he was best suited
1:28:07
to wield.
1:28:07
Draupnir, the ring, is worth pausing on
1:28:13
for a moment longer.
1:28:14
The name, in the old Norse, means "the dripper."
1:28:19
Or, in a slightly different reading, "that which drips."
1:28:22
It is one of the rare objects in Norse
1:28:26
mythology whose name is, itself, a description of what
1:28:31
the object does.
1:28:33
Every ninth night, the Prose Edda tells us
1:28:37
eight rings of equal weight and equal beauty dropped
1:28:40
from it.
1:28:42
Every ninth night.
1:28:43
Without ceasing.
1:28:44
The ring was, in effect, a self-replicating source of
1:28:48
wealth, a perpetual fountain of gold
1:28:51
in the form of more rings.
1:28:52
The reader of the modern world may find this
1:28:58
absurd.
1:28:58
The reader of the medieval north, who lived in
1:29:03
a world where wealth was a thing you could
1:29:05
weigh and where rings were one of the standard
1:29:09
forms in which it was carried, would have understood
1:29:12
it as a deeply serious image.
1:29:15
A king with Draupnir on his finger could
1:29:18
in nine months, become richer than any other king
1:29:20
who had ever lived.
1:29:22
The ring, in the surviving sources, was buried with
1:29:26
the god Baldur at his funeral
1:29:28
placed on his pyre as the boat burned.
1:29:31
The story, later, of Hermód's ride to the underworld
1:29:35
to retrieve it, is one of the saddest in
1:29:39
the whole of the Norse corpus.
1:29:41
But that story, tonight, is not ours.
1:29:44
Tonight we have one more gift left to forge.
1:29:47
In the next chapter, we come to the hammer
1:29:51
itself.
1:29:51
We come to Mjǫllnir.
1:29:53
Chapter Ten.
1:29:54
The Making of Mjǫllnir.
1:29:56
The hammer was made, as we said in the
1:30:01
previous chapter, in the same forge, in the same
1:30:05
single sitting in which the brothers made the boar
1:30:09
and the ring.
1:30:11
The hammer was the third and final gift.
1:30:13
It was the one Brokkr had been told
1:30:17
most urgently of all, that he must not stop
1:30:19
pumping for.
1:30:21
It was the one the fly bit Brokkr's eyelid
1:30:24
during.
1:30:24
And the blood ran into his eye.
1:30:27
And he stopped, for just an instant
1:30:30
to wipe his face.
1:30:32
The hammer came out of the fire with a
1:30:34
short handle.
1:30:36
I want to spend most of this chapter sitting
1:30:39
with the hammer itself, with its properties
1:30:44
with its qualities, with what it meant to the
1:30:47
Norse imagination.
1:30:48
Because Mjǫllnir is, by some distance, the most famous
1:30:51
of all the objects in Norse mythology.
1:30:55
It is the object that, more than any other
1:30:58
has survived into the modern world.
1:31:01
You can buy a small replica of it, today
1:31:06
in any airport shop in Reykjavík.
1:31:08
And from many shops in the world far from
1:31:12
there.
1:31:12
The hammer of Thor has, in its way
1:31:16
outlived even the religion that produced it.
1:31:18
What did the dwarves make?
1:31:22
They made a tool of dark iron.
1:31:24
The head of the hammer was, the surviving sources
1:31:28
tell us, square, though some accounts describe it
1:31:32
as more rounded, like a maul.
1:31:36
The metal was, by every account, the finest dark
1:31:39
iron the dwarves knew.
1:31:40
The weight of the head was such that no
1:31:45
being in Asgard but Thor could lift it
1:31:48
Thor's strength, in the surviving descriptions, was specifically the
1:31:52
strength required to swing the hammer.
1:31:53
The hammer demanded a god of his particular kind
1:31:57
to be useful at all.
1:32:00
The hammer had a name.
1:32:01
Mjǫllnir.
1:32:01
The etymology of the name is, even today, contested.
1:32:05
Some scholars derive it from a verb meaning to
1:32:08
crush or to grind, mala in some forms
1:32:13
and so read the name as Crusher or
1:32:17
Grinder.
1:32:18
Others derive it from a root meaning lightning or
1:32:21
flash, related to words for sudden white light in
1:32:25
some of the older Indo-European languages.
1:32:28
Still others have proposed that the name is older
1:32:32
than any of these readings, that it comes
1:32:35
from a time before the Old Norse language existed
1:32:38
in its surviving form.
1:32:39
And that we can only guess what it once
1:32:42
meant.
1:32:42
What is consistent is that, in the surviving Norse
1:32:45
use of the word, Mjǫllnir is the hammer's proper
1:32:48
name.
1:32:48
It is treated, in the texts, the way the
1:32:53
name of a person is treated.
1:32:56
The hammer is referred to, again and again
1:32:58
as if it had a personality of its own.
1:33:02
The hammer had three principal qualities.
1:33:05
The surviving sources are clear about all three.
1:33:08
The first was its strike.
1:33:10
Mjǫllnir, the texts tell us, could strike as hard
1:33:14
as Thor wished it to strike
1:33:17
against any substance, any creature, any obstacle .
1:33:20
And the hammer would not break.
1:33:23
Not on the bones of the largest giant.
1:33:26
Not on the stones of the deepest mountain.
1:33:29
Not on the shell of the great serpent that
1:33:34
lived under the world's sea.
1:33:36
Mjǫllnir was, in this sense, indestructible.
1:33:38
Whatever Thor swung the hammer at, the hammer would
1:33:42
either pass through, or the hammer would shatter .
1:33:46
And the hammer never shattered.
1:33:49
Therefore the thing struck always gave way.
1:33:52
This was the simple math of the weapon.
1:33:55
The second was its return.
1:33:57
Mjǫllnir, the surviving sources tell us, could be thrown.
1:34:02
The hammer, when thrown, would strike whatever Thor had
1:34:05
aimed it at, striking with the same impossible
1:34:08
force, breaking whatever needed to be broken
1:34:12
and then, after striking, the hammer would return to
1:34:18
Thor's hand.
1:34:18
There was no need to retrieve it.
1:34:21
There was no need to walk over to the
1:34:24
corpse of the giant and pull the hammer out.
1:34:30
The hammer simply came back, as if it knew
1:34:33
the way home.
1:34:35
This is a more remarkable quality than it sometimes
1:34:37
seems.
1:34:38
In the long history of mythological weapons across the
1:34:41
world's traditions, the returning weapon is rare.
1:34:45
Most weapons in mythology, once thrown, must be retrieved.
1:34:49
The Norse, in giving Thor a hammer that returned
1:34:52
of its own accord, were giving him a weapon
1:34:56
that could be used again and again
1:34:59
in rapid succession, against multiple enemies.
1:35:04
The hammer was, in this respect, the perfect weapon
1:35:06
for a god who would be fighting alone
1:35:09
in distant places, against many.
1:35:11
The third quality was the most surprising.
1:35:14
Mjǫllnir, the surviving sources tell us, could be made
1:35:18
small.
1:35:19
Small enough that Thor could tuck it inside his
1:35:22
tunic, under his cloak, against his chest.
1:35:25
The hammer could become, in this concealed form
1:35:29
the size of a pendant.
1:35:31
It could be hidden completely.
1:35:33
Thor could walk through any hall, any settlement
1:35:36
any human village, with the hammer on him
1:35:40
and no one would know.
1:35:42
This too is a more remarkable quality than it
1:35:46
sometimes seems.
1:35:47
The hammer, in the modern imagination
1:35:50
in the comic books, in the films
1:35:54
is a great visible object, a thing always present
1:35:59
in Thor's grip.
1:35:59
The Norse imagination, by contrast, gave Thor a hammer
1:36:04
that could disappear.
1:36:06
The god, in the surviving stories, could move through
1:36:10
the world without the weight of the weapon being
1:36:13
apparent.
1:36:13
He could arrive in a hall as a stranger.
1:36:18
He could sit by a peasant's fire as a
1:36:21
guest.
1:36:22
He could pass through a giant's gate as a
1:36:25
merchant.
1:36:25
And only when the situation required it
1:36:28
only when the moment came for the hammer to
1:36:32
be drawn, would the hammer appear, full-sized
1:36:35
in his hand.
1:36:36
This quality, scholars have noted, is one of the
1:36:39
reasons Thor figures so often, in the Eddic poems
1:36:43
in stories of disguise and infiltration.
1:36:45
The hammer being concealable made the god.
1:36:50
In some sense, mobile.
1:36:51
He could go where he wanted to go
1:36:54
in any form, and still be
1:36:57
at any moment, what he was.
1:37:00
And then there was the imperfection.
1:37:02
The handle was short.
1:37:04
The surviving sources are explicit about why this mattered.
1:37:08
Mjǫllnir's short handle meant, in the texts' language
1:37:13
that Thor could not, when swinging it
1:37:17
get the full leverage that a longer handle would
1:37:20
have given him.
1:37:21
He had to grip the hammer close to his
1:37:24
body.
1:37:25
He had to swing it with the strength of
1:37:29
his arm, rather than the leverage of a long
1:37:32
shaft.
1:37:32
The short handle made the hammer, in this respect
1:37:36
slightly less than what it could have been.
1:37:39
But here is the strange thing.
1:37:42
It did not, in any surviving account
1:37:44
prevent Thor from doing what he needed to do.
1:37:48
The hammer's short handle is referenced, throughout the Norse
1:37:52
corpus, mainly as a curiosity.
1:37:54
The dwarves regret it.
1:37:56
Sindri, when the gift is presented in Asgard
1:37:59
mentions it.
1:37:59
Brokkr is, in some surviving accounts, blamed for it.
1:38:03
But Thor, in the surviving texts, does not seem
1:38:08
to mind.
1:38:09
He takes the hammer.
1:38:11
He grips it where the handle is.
1:38:14
He swings it.
1:38:15
It strikes what he wants it to strike.
1:38:19
It returns to his hand.
1:38:21
It becomes small when he asks it to become
1:38:26
small.
1:38:26
The flaw, in the end, is more of a
1:38:30
story than a problem.
1:38:32
This is, I think, one of the quietly affecting
1:38:35
things about the whole story of Mjǫllnir's making.
1:38:37
The hammer is, by every objective measure
1:38:41
one of the great achievements of the Norse mythological
1:38:43
imagination.
1:38:44
It is the weapon that defends the world.
1:38:48
It is the tool by which the gods hold
1:38:51
the giants at bay.
1:38:52
It is the object whose presence, in the long
1:38:55
arc of the surviving stories, is the difference between
1:38:58
continued existence and the early arrival of Ragnarǫk.
1:39:02
And it has a short handle.
1:39:04
The flaw is part of the gift.
1:39:06
The gift is not less for having a flaw.
1:39:09
The flaw.
1:39:10
In some sense, is what makes the gift the
1:39:14
gift it became, a hammer that
1:39:18
by the texts' own account, was both perfect and
1:39:22
imperfect at the same time.
1:39:24
And that was, in any case, the greatest weapon
1:39:28
any of the gods had ever held.
1:39:31
A note on the name.
1:39:32
The most likely origin of Mjǫllnir, by the most
1:39:36
thorough modern philological work, is from an old Indo-European
1:39:40
root meaning "to grind" or "to crush"
1:39:43
the same root that gives us the modern English
1:39:46
word "mill," and the German Mehl for flour.
1:39:49
And the Latin malleus for "hammer." Mjǫllnir
1:39:52
in this reading, is "the crusher." The thing that
1:39:56
grinds.
1:39:56
The instrument of the great mill that turns the
1:40:01
seasons, that breaks open the storm-cloud, that strikes down
1:40:06
whatever stands across its path.
1:40:09
The connection between the hammer and the agricultural mill
1:40:13
is older, perhaps, than any of the stories we
1:40:16
are telling tonight.
1:40:18
Thor was, in the original old farmer's worship
1:40:20
the god of the field as much as he
1:40:24
was the god of the storm.
1:40:26
The same hammer that broke the giants' skulls was
1:40:30
the hammer that blessed the bride at a wedding
1:40:34
that blessed the field at sowing, that blessed the
1:40:38
harvest at the year's turn.
1:40:41
The hammer was, for the old Scandinavian farmer
1:40:43
who carved a small Mjǫllnir-shape on a pendant and
1:40:45
hung it on a leather cord around his neck
1:40:49
of which the archaeological record has preserved over a
1:40:54
thousand examples across Scandinavia and the British Isles
1:40:57
not a weapon.
1:40:58
It was a protector.
1:40:59
A small piece of the storm-god, carried at the
1:41:02
throat, against whatever the night might bring.
1:41:05
We turn now to the moment when the gifts
1:41:08
are brought back to Asgard.
1:41:09
And the gods sit down to judge them.
1:41:14
Chapter Eleven.
1:41:14
The Judgment of the Gods.
1:41:17
The surviving sources tell us that the brothers Sindri
1:41:22
and Brokkr followed Loki up out of Svartalfheim.
1:41:25
They brought their three gifts with them.
1:41:28
Loki brought the three gifts of the Sons of
1:41:31
Ivaldi.
1:41:31
The whole party, by the time it reached Asgard
1:41:37
was a procession, a trickster, two dwarves
1:41:40
six treasures.
1:41:40
They came to the gods.
1:41:42
The judgment, the surviving sources tell us
1:41:45
was to be made by three specific gods.
1:41:48
Odin, the Allfather.
1:41:49
Thor, the strongest.
1:41:50
Freyr, the god of the Vanir, who had joined
1:41:54
the Æsir's company after the war between the two
1:41:59
divine families.
1:42:00
These three sat in their high judgment-seats
1:42:05
the texts tell us.
1:42:06
And the gifts were laid out before them.
1:42:09
And the dwarves and the trickster waited to hear
1:42:15
how the gods would decide.
1:42:17
The first set of gifts was the work of
1:42:20
the Sons of Ivaldi.
1:42:21
Sif's hair was presented.
1:42:23
Skíðblaðnir was presented, folded, perhaps, into a small
1:42:26
bundle of wood the size of a piece of
1:42:31
cloth, and unfolded, for the gods, to its full
1:42:33
size.
1:42:33
Gungnir was presented.
1:42:35
The gods looked at the three.
1:42:37
They were pleased.
1:42:38
Each gift, in its own way, was a wonder.
1:42:43
The hair, when laid on Sif's head
1:42:46
immediately took root and began to grow as ordinary
1:42:49
hair grew.
1:42:51
She wept again, the texts suggest.
1:42:53
But the weeping this time was different
1:42:58
the weeping of a being who has had a
1:43:02
wrong made right, rather than of a being who
1:43:07
has had a wrong inflicted.
1:43:09
The ship, when unfolded, was as large as the
1:43:11
texts had promised.
1:43:13
And the gods could see that it would carry
1:43:17
all of them with their gear.
1:43:20
The spear, when balanced in Odin's hand
1:43:21
felt to him, the texts suggest.
1:43:24
Though they do not give us Odin's exact words
1:43:28
like a continuation of his own arm.
1:43:31
The Sons of Ivaldi had made fine things.
1:43:34
Then the brothers Sindri and Brokkr presented their three
1:43:39
gifts.
1:43:39
Gullinbursti was led out.
1:43:41
The boar, the surviving accounts tell us
1:43:45
was put on its feet on the floor of
1:43:48
the hall.
1:43:49
And the light from its gold bristles immediately filled
1:43:52
the space around it.
1:43:55
The gods marveled.
1:43:55
Freyr, who would receive it, was particularly pleased.
1:44:00
The boar, the dwarves said, would run faster than
1:44:04
any horse, through air or over water
1:44:06
and would always give its own light.
1:44:09
Draupnir was placed in Odin's other hand.
1:44:11
The gods watched it.
1:44:12
The dwarves explained its property, that every ninth
1:44:18
night, eight identical rings would drip from it.
1:44:22
Odin, the texts tell us, ran his thumb along
1:44:26
the edge of the ring, and felt the weight
1:44:29
of it.
1:44:31
And was, the texts suggest, in the careful
1:44:34
way they had of suggesting Odin's feelings without naming
1:44:39
them, moved.
1:44:41
And then Mjǫllnir.
1:44:41
The brothers brought the hammer forward.
1:44:45
They laid it on the long table at which
1:44:48
the gods sat.
1:44:50
They told the gods what the hammer was.
1:44:54
They told the gods, with some embarrassment
1:44:57
that the handle was shorter than they had intended.
1:45:01
They explained, in the surviving accounts, why this had
1:45:05
happened, a fly had stung Brokkr's eyelid during
1:45:08
the forging.
1:45:10
And Brokkr had stopped pumping the bellows for an
1:45:13
instant to wipe the blood from his eye.
1:45:17
And the handle had emerged shorter than the design
1:45:21
had called for.
1:45:22
The gods looked at the hammer.
1:45:25
Thor, for whom the gift was intended
1:45:27
picked it up.
1:45:29
He felt the weight of it.
1:45:30
He felt the balance.
1:45:31
He gripped it where the dwarves had made the
1:45:34
grip, close to the head.
1:45:36
He swung it, gently, in the air of the
1:45:41
hall .
1:45:42
And the hall, the surviving accounts tell us
1:45:46
vibrated faintly with each swing, the way the air
1:45:50
vibrates when a great bell is rung but the
1:45:54
sound has not yet escaped.
1:45:57
The three judges conferred.
1:45:59
The conversation, in detail, is not preserved.
1:46:02
But the outcome is.
1:46:04
The three gods, Odin, Thor, Freyr, declared
1:46:07
unanimously, that the hammer was the greatest of the
1:46:11
six gifts.
1:46:12
Not because it was the most beautiful.
1:46:14
Not because it was the most ingenious.
1:46:18
But because, in their judgment, it was the gift
1:46:23
that would matter most in the long defense of
1:46:26
Asgard.
1:46:26
Their reasoning, the surviving texts give us, was simple.
1:46:31
The world of the gods was surrounded
1:46:35
on all sides, by the world of the giants.
1:46:38
The giants would, at some unknown future moment
1:46:42
come against Asgard in numbers no other god's weapon
1:46:46
could resist.
1:46:48
The hammer, the indestructible, returning, concealable hammer
1:46:51
was the only object among the six that could
1:46:55
in the long view, hold the giants back.
1:46:57
The ship was beautiful.
1:46:59
The hair was a wonder.
1:47:01
The boar gave its light.
1:47:04
The ring gave its gold.
1:47:06
The spear, in Odin's hand, was a marker of
1:47:09
fate.
1:47:09
But the hammer was, in the gods' assessment
1:47:14
the difference between Asgard's continued existence and its end.
1:47:18
The hammer was the greatest gift.
1:47:22
Therefore the brothers Sindri and Brokkr had
1:47:25
by the gods' unanimous verdict, won the wager.
1:47:30
Loki had lost.
1:47:31
Brokkr, the surviving texts tell us, immediately stepped forward.
1:47:34
He was, by every account, a dwarf of strong
1:47:37
feeling.
1:47:38
The fly had stung him three times.
1:47:41
He had pumped the bellows through pain and blood.
1:47:45
He had been told, by his brother
1:47:49
that the work demanded everything of him.
1:47:52
And he had given everything.
1:47:55
And now Loki had lost the bet
1:47:58
the bet Loki himself had proposed
1:48:01
and Brokkr had come to collect what he had
1:48:04
been promised.
1:48:06
He had come, the surviving texts tell us
1:48:09
for Loki's head.
1:48:09
We come, in the final chapter before goodnight
1:48:13
to what Loki did then.
1:48:16
Chapter Twelve.
1:48:17
Goodnight.
1:48:17
And the Hammer at Rest.
1:48:18
Loki, when he saw the verdict, did what Loki
1:48:22
always did.
1:48:23
He looked for a way out.
1:48:26
He did not, in the surviving accounts
1:48:29
try to deny the verdict.
1:48:31
The judgment had been unanimous.
1:48:34
The three gods had spoken.
1:48:37
The brothers had won.
1:48:39
By the terms of the bet
1:48:42
the terms Loki himself had set
1:48:46
Loki's head was now forfeit.
1:48:48
Brokkr was entitled, in the harsh law of the
1:48:53
old Norse wager, to take it.
1:48:55
But Loki, and this is the moment that
1:48:59
more than any other, defines his cunning, found
1:49:04
in the wording of the bet, a small crack.
1:49:08
He turned to the gods, the surviving sources tell
1:49:12
us.
1:49:12
And he said: I wagered my head.
1:49:16
I did not wager my neck.
1:49:18
The brothers may have my head.
1:49:21
But they may not have my neck.
1:49:25
The gods looked at him.
1:49:27
The cunning of the argument is, in its old
1:49:30
Norse form, sharper than it sometimes seems in modern
1:49:35
paraphrase.
1:49:35
Loki was pointing out that one cannot remove a
1:49:39
head without cutting the neck.
1:49:41
The two are joined.
1:49:43
The head, in any literal sense, includes the upper
1:49:47
portion of the neck.
1:49:48
To take the head is, necessarily, to take part
1:49:52
of the neck.
1:49:53
But Loki had only wagered the head.
1:49:57
The neck, even the small portion of neck
1:50:01
through which a beheading must pass, was not
1:50:05
by the strict terms, his to give.
1:50:07
If Brokkr cut into the neck, Brokkr would be
1:50:10
taking something he had not won.
1:50:13
The gods, the surviving texts tell us, considered this.
1:50:17
The argument was, in the old Norse legal sense
1:50:21
sound.
1:50:21
Loki had identified a real ambiguity in the terms.
1:50:25
The wager, as it had been stated
1:50:29
did not give Brokkr the right to cut into
1:50:33
the neck, and there was, in the strict
1:50:37
logic, no way to take the head without doing
1:50:40
so.
1:50:40
Therefore Brokkr could not, by the gods' judgment
1:50:44
have what he had won.
1:50:46
The gods sided with Loki.
1:50:48
I want you to sit with this for a
1:50:51
moment, because it is one of the more affecting
1:50:56
passages in the Norse corpus.
1:50:58
Loki had done a real wrong.
1:51:00
He had cut Sif's hair.
1:51:02
He had taunted the brothers.
1:51:04
He had wagered his head, and lost.
1:51:07
And now, in the moment the consequence was
1:51:11
meant to come down on him, he found
1:51:15
in the precise language of his own wager
1:51:19
a wriggle.
1:51:20
And the gods let him have it.
1:51:23
Why?
1:51:23
The surviving sources do not, I think
1:51:25
fully answer this.
1:51:28
Several readings have been offered.
1:51:29
Some scholars have suggested that the gods
1:51:32
in this moment, were not yet ready to let
1:51:36
one of their own be put to death over
1:51:40
a craft contest, that the relation between the
1:51:44
Æsir and Loki, complicated and ambiguous as it was
1:51:47
was not something they wished to dissolve over the
1:51:50
technicality of a bet.
1:51:52
Others have suggested that the gods admired the cunning
1:51:55
of the argument itself, that the Norse old-law
1:51:58
tradition placed a real value on the kind of
1:52:03
sharp parsing Loki had just done.
1:52:04
And that to deny him his wriggle would have
1:52:08
been to deny the rules of their own legal
1:52:11
system.
1:52:12
Still others have suggested, more darkly, that the gods
1:52:16
knew Loki would, eventually, do worse
1:52:18
and that letting him off this once
1:52:21
in this small way, was the cost of keeping
1:52:25
him close enough to watch.
1:52:27
Whatever the reason, the gods sided with Loki.
1:52:32
Brokkr could not take the head.
1:52:34
We should sit with this for a moment.
1:52:37
This is, exactly, the sort of argument
1:52:41
that the trickster, in nearly every mythology in the
1:52:44
world, makes.
1:52:46
The letter of the agreement, held up against the
1:52:49
spirit of the agreement.
1:52:51
The literal word, used against the meaning.
1:52:54
The Norse poets, in their old way
1:52:57
seem to have admired this kind of legal cunning
1:53:01
even when it offended them.
1:53:03
They preserved many such moments, figures wriggling out
1:53:07
of impossible bargains by finding the small unsaid clause
1:53:09
the loophole, the technicality.
1:53:11
Loki was, in this single way, the patron of
1:53:15
every clever lawyer who has ever stood in any
1:53:18
court, anywhere, since the world began.
1:53:21
The Norse legal imagination, even outside of the mythological
1:53:25
texts, took these wrigglings seriously.
1:53:27
The Icelandic Grágás law codes, written down in the
1:53:30
centuries after the conversion to Christianity, are full of
1:53:35
careful parsings of exactly this kind.
1:53:37
What was promised, in the exact words.
1:53:40
What was withheld, by silence.
1:53:43
Where the boundary of an oath ran
1:53:46
when the oath had been spoken in a hurry.
1:53:48
The Norse, in their long Atlantic settlement
1:53:51
lived in a world where the precise word of
1:53:55
an agreement could mean the difference between life and
1:54:01
exile.
1:54:01
Loki's argument, in the story, would have been read
1:54:04
by a Norse audience not as cheating but as
1:54:08
a particularly fine specimen of the art they all
1:54:12
practiced.
1:54:12
He had read the contract.
1:54:14
He had found the gap.
1:54:16
He had walked through it.
1:54:18
And the gods, who lived by the same law
1:54:22
could not, in justice, refuse him the walk.
1:54:25
Brokkr was.
1:54:26
By every surviving account, angry.
1:54:28
He had been promised something.
1:54:31
And the something was being withheld.
1:54:34
And the withholding was, by the strict logic
1:54:38
of the law
1:54:40
sound.
1:54:42
He could not protest the verdict.
1:54:44
But he could do something else.
1:54:46
He could not take Loki's head.
1:54:49
But he could, the surviving accounts tell us
1:54:52
sew Loki's lips shut.
1:54:53
This is the strange compromise the story records.
1:54:57
Brokkr drew out, the surviving texts mention it
1:55:01
by name, an awl.
1:55:04
The awl was called Vartari.
1:55:07
The Old Norse word may relate to vörð
1:55:10
meaning watch or guard; the etymology is debated.
1:55:13
But the awl itself is named, in the texts
1:55:17
as if it were a person.
1:55:20
Brokkr took Vartari, the surviving sources tell us.
1:55:23
And he punched holes through Loki's lips.
1:55:25
He drew through the holes a strong leather thread.
1:55:29
He sewed Loki's lips shut, one stitch after another
1:55:33
while Loki, who could not, in the moment
1:55:37
refuse, since the alternative was the loss of his
1:55:40
head, stood and let it be done.
1:55:44
When the work was finished, Brokkr took the dwarf-brother's
1:55:48
farewell of Asgard and went back down to Svartalfheim.
1:55:52
Loki, the surviving texts tell us, eventually tore the
1:55:56
thread out of his lips.
1:55:58
He was, of course, capable of doing so
1:56:03
the thread was leather.
1:56:04
And the lips of a god are not so
1:56:07
different from the lips of a man.
1:56:11
He was, after the tearing, free to speak again.
1:56:14
But the surviving Norse imagination, for the rest of
1:56:18
the corpus, treated this as a marking.
1:56:22
Loki had been silenced, once, for the work he
1:56:24
had done.
1:56:26
The silencing did not last.
1:56:28
But it had happened.
1:56:30
The trickster who had cut a goddess's hair had
1:56:34
had, in turn, his own mouth sealed.
1:56:37
The Norse, in their long view, kept this in
1:56:41
mind.
1:56:42
The hammer, Mjǫllnir, appears in many later Norse stories
1:56:46
beyond this one.
1:56:47
It is the hammer Thor used, again and again
1:56:52
to defend Asgard from the giants who threatened it.
1:56:57
It is the hammer he raised, in one of
1:57:01
the surviving Eddic poems, Þrymskviða, the Lay of
1:57:04
Thrym, to retrieve it from the giant Thrym
1:57:08
who had stolen it, in a story that ends
1:57:11
hilariously, with Thor in a bride's dress.
1:57:14
It is the hammer that, in the prophecy of
1:57:19
Ragnarǫk, he will use to kill the great serpent
1:57:22
Jǫrmungandr at the world's end, and after which
1:57:26
he will himself, the prophecy tells us
1:57:29
walk nine steps and fall.
1:57:31
But all of those stories are for other nights.
1:57:34
Tonight, the hammer is new.
1:57:36
The forge has gone cold.
1:57:39
The dwarves have been paid and have returned to
1:57:42
their underground halls.
1:57:44
Sif has her hair back.
1:57:47
Loki has his mouth back, sometime later
1:57:50
when the threads loosened and he could speak again
1:57:54
.
1:57:54
Though the poets do not record exactly when.
1:57:57
The gods of Asgard have their treasures.
1:58:01
And Thor, the red-bearded one, the strongest of the
1:58:05
gods, the one who stood between the world of
1:58:09
men and whatever lay beyond it, has
1:58:12
at his belt, a hammer with a slightly short
1:58:16
handle and a power that no being in any
1:58:20
of the nine worlds could match.
1:58:22
It is enough.
1:58:23
It will do.
1:58:24
In the long arc of the surviving stories
1:58:29
across the rest of this season, and across every
1:58:32
Norse story we have not yet told
1:58:35
Loki's cruelty would grow.
1:58:38
He would do worse things than cutting Sif's hair.
1:58:41
He would do worse things than betting his head.
1:58:44
And the gods, who had let him wriggle out
1:58:48
of his head-bet once, would not, in the end
1:58:51
let him wriggle out of the consequences forever.
1:58:54
But that is the long arc of the stories.
1:58:58
Tonight is not the night for it.
1:59:01
Tonight, the hammer is in Thor's hand.
1:59:04
Sif's hair has grown back, gold and fine
1:59:07
on her head.
1:59:08
And she is, by the surviving texts' account
1:59:12
consoled.
1:59:13
The gods of Asgard have, by the strange accident
1:59:16
of Loki's cruelty and Loki's wriggle, gained five great
1:59:21
treasures and one weapon.
1:59:24
The world is, for the moment, safer than it
1:59:26
was the day before.
1:59:27
The dwarves are back in their forge.
1:59:31
Loki is back among the gods
1:59:32
silent for a time, then speaking again.
1:59:36
And the hammer, the short-handled hammer
1:59:39
the hammer the fly almost ruined, the hammer that
1:59:43
would, in the long view, hold off the end
1:59:48
of the world, is at rest by Thor's
1:59:53
side.
1:59:53
You may, sometime in the coming nights
1:59:56
want to come back.
1:59:57
The almanac will be here.
1:59:59
Episode four is coming next.
2:00:01
It is the story of a wolf.
2:00:04
A wolf the gods could not defeat by force.
2:00:09
A wolf they had to bind through cunning.
2:00:12
And a god, not Thor, not Loki
2:00:15
not Odin, who paid in his own body
2:00:18
to make the binding hold.
2:00:21
That story comes next.
2:00:23
It will be here, on the same schedule.
2:00:26
New episodes Wednesdays and Sundays, at 8pm Eastern.
2:00:29
For tonight, you have done enough.
2:00:34
The wind in the trees is doing what the
2:00:38
wind has always done.
2:00:41
The night is doing what the night does.
2:00:44
The almanac is moving slowly.
2:00:47
The hammer is at rest.
2:00:48
Thor is in his hall.
2:00:50
Sif is in her hall.
2:00:52
Loki, well, Loki is somewhere, doing what Loki
2:00:58
does.
2:01:00
Let the breath slow.
2:01:02
Let the shoulders drop.
2:01:04
Let what remains of the day go to the
2:01:09
same long darkness in which the dwarves' work is
2:01:13
even now, being carried on, in forges we cannot
2:01:16
see, by hands we will not meet.
2:01:20
The almanac will continue.
2:01:21
The next chapter of the season will arrive in
2:01:25
its time.
2:01:25
For tonight, the work of the day is finished.
2:01:29
Goodnight.
2:01:30
Sleep well.
2:01:32
The Sleeping Almanac will be here when you come
2:01:35
back.