Ye Gods, a Real Entry.
Jul. 5th, 2004 12:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
letterbladeOr Ye Odin, at the rate I'm going.
Posting this now (as opposed to later) partly in honor of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mattador's preference for Norse mythology over boobs and partly in honor of the following exchange this morning:
Me: *staggers squinty-eyed to the breakfast table bundled in stripy blanket and red flannel nightgown* Coffeeeeeee...
Backdraft: You look like Odin in his pyjamas.
Me: ?!?!!
[Bystanding family members asumed as shit. Conversation about Loki's frilly nightgown ensues.]
Me: I'm LiveJournaling this.
At any rate, on a more serious note. (No, really. I seem to keep introducing this quite solemn piece in a silly context. When I read it in the coffeehouse at Northfield [er, I'll explain what Northfield is later, because that'll take a whole nother entry], I came up to read wearing four black socks rubber-banded together as a beret substitute [hell, it was black and floppy and ugly, it'll do] and promptly had to take it off so as to not provide inappropriate visuals [sorry, Llewellyn, no chicken hat.]) Somewhat creative retelling of a bit of Norse mythology I happen to be highly obsessed with, and take a point in pride in being obsessed with before I read American Gods. Yeah, you know what's coming. In retrospect, actually came out much less grim than I intended it to be, and the title is just silly, but I had fun with the language. Might take another stab at the story later, perhaps.
Semi-original work! Yelp, yelp, yelp!
~~~
When Odin, the highest of the gods, paid his longest visit to the ash tree at the heart of all worlds, all things but one were in place in creation. The world had been formed from the broken body of the giant Ymir, and the sun and the moon and the fell wolves that harried them through their orbits had been placed in the skull-vault of the sky; the world-tree had spread out all its branches and the living trees, Ask and Embla, had spread their human children all through the middle earth. The Aesir, those great gods of blood and honor, had assembled in their lofty halls and strung their bridge of rainbows down to earth with golden Heimdall, born of nine mothers, to watch their passage with his ringing horn of alarum. The Aesir, too, had made their treaty with the gentle Vanir, and the hunting goddess Skadi had come from the glaciers to join them, and so had fiery Loki, he who had shared his blood with Odin himself and called him brother. And Odin himself, the father of the gods, the terrible old man flanked by ravens and accompanied by wolves, had embarked on his ruthless quest for sublime knowledge and the deepest of wisdoms. Odin had squatted beside the seer Mimir's well, and given without hesitation his own right eye for a drink of those waters of the cosmos and prophecy; and Odin, too, had lied and cheated and stolen to drink the mead of wit and poetry. But the last sacrifice had not yet been made, the final wisdom had not yet been gained, and there was one more thing to be created before everything was in place for the long high summer of the gods, before all light died with gentle Balder and faithless Loki turned away and the wheel of the world spun to winter.
And so Odin left his great hall and walked alone to the world-tree with the hood of his gray cloak pulled low over his single eye, bearing only a coil of rope and his great spear Gungnir. And only the goddesses, who keep their own counsel, could have said if his noble wife Frigga had watched his passage from the throne they shared at the top of the world; and only the goddesses, within the secrets kept deep in the hearts of women in a fierce world, could have said if she had wept.
~~~
The Norns watched.
The wisest of all were the women, though they might walk but briefly through the sagas their grandsons of spirit sang around bardic fires. And these women, the Norns, these spinners of fates, and too the witch-women and seeresses who followed them, knew beyond knowing and understood beyond the ken of mortal gods--for Odin and his clan were indeed mortal, doomed to fall in bloody battle at the end of their world, and this knowledge had weighted heavy on the All-Father ever since he'd swallowed it from Mimir's well. And so, driven to find more, he stood beneath the towering world-tree and let his cloak fall amongst the leaves.
The Norns, the three spinning sisters, watched, and perhaps even guided Odin's path towards the great tree, and the threads of all fate ran through their skillful hands. The lives of men and gods and of the All-Father himself were strung out and clipped short by women's hands and women's work, and though it was the men who strived and pumelled and fought great battles and sung great songs to remember them by, it was the women who were the air they breathed and the world they walked through, women who lived their lives and kept their hearts unasking, unwritten, and wisest of all. But Odin strove for all the wisdom a man or god could grasp, and so took his great spear and set it to his side and pierced himself through with not even a grimace, for he was a warrior and thought nothing of pain.
The great and secret knowledge of the women passed unwritten, but so did all things in those early days, before the final act of creation, and so Odin, bleeding, uncoiled the rope and slugn it over a high and sturdy branch and tied himself a hangman's noose. And so none but the shadowy Norns ever knew what stormed in Frigga's heart as she watched--if even she watched--from the throne of a kingdom at the end of the rainbow.
~~~
The world-tree stretched its roots to the deepest bowels of Hel's domain and its uppermost leaves into the highest clouds of the heavens, and all the realms of existence, of dwarves and giants and gnomes and elves and men and gods, were cradled in its branches, and the wind that rattled its leaves was the wind between the worlds. And when his feet left the leaf-strewn earth Odin too was between the worlds, swung by the howling winds of space, as the noose tightened around his neck and his spear hung heavy in his side. For this was his final sacrifice. He had given his eye for wisdom; now there was nothing left to give but his life. So he hung himself in sacrifice most high, offered his divine self to himself as one human would kill another in his name, and reached the point of death, saw the face of death, but did not die, for he was a god, for it was not his fate to die until the battle at the end of the world, for no lesser a death would have fitted this one some called Glad-of-War.
Nine days and nine nights he hung, bleeding and strangled, and what he saw with his one eye from that space between the worlds none can truly say. He was alone but for the chattering of a squirrel running along the trunk and the wild screams of the great storm eagle that made its aerie in the highest branches. None came to offer him bread or meat or a horn to drink from; perhaps, unspeaking, the Norns watched him from the shadows, but none can say.
For nine days and nine nights Frigga and the Aesir ate and drank and waited without their All-Father, and none can tell what knowledge they had, nor what passed between them, as their leader swung like a dead man from the great ash.
For nine days and nine nights Odin hung between death and life, his body and soul alike in agony, until his warrior spirit was stripped away, until the gateways of his heart were broken down and surrendered, until he opened his mouth and screamed aloud, screamed for the pain both of living and dying, and the abject cries of the All-Father and Most-High rang through the emptiness of worlds.
And for nine days and nine nights the twigs of the great tree had been falling, their leaves stripped from them by the wild winds, until they settled upon the ground that seperated the realms of earth from the realms of air. And as the last night passed and dawn broken, Odin, weeping in surrender, saw how the twigs had fallen, and understood, finally, the last wisdom his quest had to offer, for the twigs had taken the shape of runes. And Odin saw the runes of the alphabet and the ways of writing, by which all wisdom is preserved, and Odin saw too eighteen great runes of magic, words of power and healing, protection and attraction, of a secret he will not even name.
And, after nine days and nine nights, crying aloud, Odin fell naked to the hard ground of the worlds, for the rope had snapped from the weight of one who bore the knowledge of runes and the face of death. But there are no stories told of what Odin thought or spoke as he walked living from the tree that he had ridden as his gallows, nor of how the Aesir greeted him when he returned, nor of how Frigga first touched the wound in his side. The Norns spun out their threads as the lives of gods wound on, as the happiest time of the Aesir whiled away in the sky, until Balder's death, until the light left the world and the time of wolves drew nigh. But that was how Odin's quest of wisdom reached an end, how he came to be named the Gallows-God and the world-tree Yggdrasil, the High One's Steed. And, the most important of all, now that the battle of Ragnarok has passed and that grand old god has met his death by the jaws of the great wolf Fenris, his blood brother's monstrous son--that was how writing came into the world.
Posting this now (as opposed to later) partly in honor of
mattador's preference for Norse mythology over boobs and partly in honor of the following exchange this morning:Me: *staggers squinty-eyed to the breakfast table bundled in stripy blanket and red flannel nightgown* Coffeeeeeee...
Backdraft: You look like Odin in his pyjamas.
Me: ?!?!!
[Bystanding family members asumed as shit. Conversation about Loki's frilly nightgown ensues.]
Me: I'm LiveJournaling this.
At any rate, on a more serious note. (No, really. I seem to keep introducing this quite solemn piece in a silly context. When I read it in the coffeehouse at Northfield [er, I'll explain what Northfield is later, because that'll take a whole nother entry], I came up to read wearing four black socks rubber-banded together as a beret substitute [hell, it was black and floppy and ugly, it'll do] and promptly had to take it off so as to not provide inappropriate visuals [sorry, Llewellyn, no chicken hat.]) Somewhat creative retelling of a bit of Norse mythology I happen to be highly obsessed with, and take a point in pride in being obsessed with before I read American Gods. Yeah, you know what's coming. In retrospect, actually came out much less grim than I intended it to be, and the title is just silly, but I had fun with the language. Might take another stab at the story later, perhaps.
Semi-original work! Yelp, yelp, yelp!
~~~
When Odin, the highest of the gods, paid his longest visit to the ash tree at the heart of all worlds, all things but one were in place in creation. The world had been formed from the broken body of the giant Ymir, and the sun and the moon and the fell wolves that harried them through their orbits had been placed in the skull-vault of the sky; the world-tree had spread out all its branches and the living trees, Ask and Embla, had spread their human children all through the middle earth. The Aesir, those great gods of blood and honor, had assembled in their lofty halls and strung their bridge of rainbows down to earth with golden Heimdall, born of nine mothers, to watch their passage with his ringing horn of alarum. The Aesir, too, had made their treaty with the gentle Vanir, and the hunting goddess Skadi had come from the glaciers to join them, and so had fiery Loki, he who had shared his blood with Odin himself and called him brother. And Odin himself, the father of the gods, the terrible old man flanked by ravens and accompanied by wolves, had embarked on his ruthless quest for sublime knowledge and the deepest of wisdoms. Odin had squatted beside the seer Mimir's well, and given without hesitation his own right eye for a drink of those waters of the cosmos and prophecy; and Odin, too, had lied and cheated and stolen to drink the mead of wit and poetry. But the last sacrifice had not yet been made, the final wisdom had not yet been gained, and there was one more thing to be created before everything was in place for the long high summer of the gods, before all light died with gentle Balder and faithless Loki turned away and the wheel of the world spun to winter.
And so Odin left his great hall and walked alone to the world-tree with the hood of his gray cloak pulled low over his single eye, bearing only a coil of rope and his great spear Gungnir. And only the goddesses, who keep their own counsel, could have said if his noble wife Frigga had watched his passage from the throne they shared at the top of the world; and only the goddesses, within the secrets kept deep in the hearts of women in a fierce world, could have said if she had wept.
~~~
The Norns watched.
The wisest of all were the women, though they might walk but briefly through the sagas their grandsons of spirit sang around bardic fires. And these women, the Norns, these spinners of fates, and too the witch-women and seeresses who followed them, knew beyond knowing and understood beyond the ken of mortal gods--for Odin and his clan were indeed mortal, doomed to fall in bloody battle at the end of their world, and this knowledge had weighted heavy on the All-Father ever since he'd swallowed it from Mimir's well. And so, driven to find more, he stood beneath the towering world-tree and let his cloak fall amongst the leaves.
The Norns, the three spinning sisters, watched, and perhaps even guided Odin's path towards the great tree, and the threads of all fate ran through their skillful hands. The lives of men and gods and of the All-Father himself were strung out and clipped short by women's hands and women's work, and though it was the men who strived and pumelled and fought great battles and sung great songs to remember them by, it was the women who were the air they breathed and the world they walked through, women who lived their lives and kept their hearts unasking, unwritten, and wisest of all. But Odin strove for all the wisdom a man or god could grasp, and so took his great spear and set it to his side and pierced himself through with not even a grimace, for he was a warrior and thought nothing of pain.
The great and secret knowledge of the women passed unwritten, but so did all things in those early days, before the final act of creation, and so Odin, bleeding, uncoiled the rope and slugn it over a high and sturdy branch and tied himself a hangman's noose. And so none but the shadowy Norns ever knew what stormed in Frigga's heart as she watched--if even she watched--from the throne of a kingdom at the end of the rainbow.
~~~
The world-tree stretched its roots to the deepest bowels of Hel's domain and its uppermost leaves into the highest clouds of the heavens, and all the realms of existence, of dwarves and giants and gnomes and elves and men and gods, were cradled in its branches, and the wind that rattled its leaves was the wind between the worlds. And when his feet left the leaf-strewn earth Odin too was between the worlds, swung by the howling winds of space, as the noose tightened around his neck and his spear hung heavy in his side. For this was his final sacrifice. He had given his eye for wisdom; now there was nothing left to give but his life. So he hung himself in sacrifice most high, offered his divine self to himself as one human would kill another in his name, and reached the point of death, saw the face of death, but did not die, for he was a god, for it was not his fate to die until the battle at the end of the world, for no lesser a death would have fitted this one some called Glad-of-War.
Nine days and nine nights he hung, bleeding and strangled, and what he saw with his one eye from that space between the worlds none can truly say. He was alone but for the chattering of a squirrel running along the trunk and the wild screams of the great storm eagle that made its aerie in the highest branches. None came to offer him bread or meat or a horn to drink from; perhaps, unspeaking, the Norns watched him from the shadows, but none can say.
For nine days and nine nights Frigga and the Aesir ate and drank and waited without their All-Father, and none can tell what knowledge they had, nor what passed between them, as their leader swung like a dead man from the great ash.
For nine days and nine nights Odin hung between death and life, his body and soul alike in agony, until his warrior spirit was stripped away, until the gateways of his heart were broken down and surrendered, until he opened his mouth and screamed aloud, screamed for the pain both of living and dying, and the abject cries of the All-Father and Most-High rang through the emptiness of worlds.
And for nine days and nine nights the twigs of the great tree had been falling, their leaves stripped from them by the wild winds, until they settled upon the ground that seperated the realms of earth from the realms of air. And as the last night passed and dawn broken, Odin, weeping in surrender, saw how the twigs had fallen, and understood, finally, the last wisdom his quest had to offer, for the twigs had taken the shape of runes. And Odin saw the runes of the alphabet and the ways of writing, by which all wisdom is preserved, and Odin saw too eighteen great runes of magic, words of power and healing, protection and attraction, of a secret he will not even name.
And, after nine days and nine nights, crying aloud, Odin fell naked to the hard ground of the worlds, for the rope had snapped from the weight of one who bore the knowledge of runes and the face of death. But there are no stories told of what Odin thought or spoke as he walked living from the tree that he had ridden as his gallows, nor of how the Aesir greeted him when he returned, nor of how Frigga first touched the wound in his side. The Norns spun out their threads as the lives of gods wound on, as the happiest time of the Aesir whiled away in the sky, until Balder's death, until the light left the world and the time of wolves drew nigh. But that was how Odin's quest of wisdom reached an end, how he came to be named the Gallows-God and the world-tree Yggdrasil, the High One's Steed. And, the most important of all, now that the battle of Ragnarok has passed and that grand old god has met his death by the jaws of the great wolf Fenris, his blood brother's monstrous son--that was how writing came into the world.
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Date: Jul. 5th, 2004 07:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 5th, 2004 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jul. 6th, 2004 07:26 am (UTC)Gorgeous.