Norse Myths · Part 2 · The All-Father · B2
Odin’s Sacrifices
Part 2 of the Norse Myths: Odin, the one-eyed father of the gods, who gave up an eye to drink from the well of wisdom and hung himself on the World Tree for nine nights to win the secret of the runes. Purpose clauses (in order to, so as to, so that), give up something for something, the language of sacrifice and wisdom, and the past perfect for what had happened before, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
You met Odin in Hávamál, the god of wisdom giving advice. Tonight you will learn what that wisdom cost him. Odin was the most powerful of the gods, and yet he was always willing to give up something precious to learn more.
His eye, Demetria. And once, his life, or almost. He hung on the World Tree for nine nights, wounded with his own spear, without food or water, in order to see the runes. Tonight’s grammar is the grammar of purpose: why we do what we do.
A god who sacrifices himself to himself. Strange, and troubling.
Odin (in Old Norse Óðinn) is the chief of the gods, called the All-Father. He is the god of wisdom, poetry, war, magic and the dead. He has one eye, a wide hat and a grey cloak, and carries the spear Gungnir. Two ravens, Huginn (“thought”) and Muninn (“memory”), fly over the world every day and come back to tell him everything they have seen.
At one root of Yggdrasil lies the well of Mímir, whose water holds all wisdom. Mímir would only let Odin drink if he gave one of his eyes in exchange; Odin plucked it out and dropped it into the well. In Hávamál, Odin himself tells how he hung on “the windy tree” for nine nights, wounded with a spear, “given to Odin, myself to myself”, until he looked down, saw the runes, the letters of magic and writing, and took…
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