The
majority of knowledge myths detail how mankind comes by knowledge, always at
some price. The gods, or God, has knowledge already, but mankind is completely
ignorant. The Norse, however, have a knowledge myth where the gods seek out
knowledge.
We begin
with Odin, who knows about Ragnarok, which will destroy not just the world, but
all of the gods as well. This is fated to be. It will happen. No one can change that, not even the gods. However,
Ragnarok doesn’t have a set tour date. It can be postponed. And that is Odin’s
quest.
He starts
out by seeking the Well of Mimir. Mimir is just a head, having lost his body
long ago. He spends his time gazing into the well and guarding it from others,
selling drinks of it for those who want to know more.
A momentary
aside from our retelling. The scene in Avengers
Age of Ultron where Thor goes into a pool of water in a cave is a direct
nod to this Norse myth. Recall that Thor was seeking knowledge about his vision
from the Scarlet Witch. While we aren’t privy to exactly what he saw, we know
that learned from his time in the well because he came back to help create the
Vision. And now back to our regularly scheduled myth.
Odin pays
for a drink by plucking an eye out of his head, counting this a good bargain. I
would like to pause a moment. He
willingly plucked out his eye! I wear contacts, and it took me years to get
used to jabbing a finger in my eyes. No way would I ever pluck one out (I get
squeamish when movies and TV shows do anything to eyes). He doesn’t stop there,
though. The knowledge from the well isn’t enough. Next he literally hangs himself
from and crucifies himself to Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Don’t dwell too long
on the logistics of nailing himself to the tree. We just have to go with the
myth and say he was able to do it. He’s a god, after all.
Odin
sacrifices himself to himself. I know, I know, that makes no flipping sense
whatsoever. Except, maybe, it does. A sacrifice to be meaningful has to be of
high quality, and there is nothing better than Odin. At the same time, a
sacrifice must be made to someone, and since Odin is the All-father, he is the
natural choice for a sacrifice to be made to. Moreover, Odin is essentially
being reborn. He must sacrifice his old life in order to take up a life of
knowledge. So, through the vivid metaphor of sacrificing his own life, he
metaphorically can be reborn (or maybe literally, he is a god, after all).
With this sacrifice, he gains
wisdom and the knowledge of the runes. You’ve likely seen pictures of the runes
before, as they’re a popular staple for fantasy literature, and make a nifty
font. These runes make up the Norse alphabet, known as FUTHARK after the first
six letters of the alphabet (TH is one letter, known as thorn). The alphabet is
usually arranged in a table of six columns (again, FUTHARK) with three rows,
for a total of 18 runes. Each of these runes not only has a name, but a power,
which is why Odin wanted them in the first place.
I’m going
to take an aside to discuss a little bit of numerology in this myth. Odin hangs
from the tree for nine days, which is also the number of worlds connected by
Yggdrasil. The FUTHARK number 18, 2 x 9, or 6 x 3, as it is laid out. And, of
course, 9 is also 3 x 3. Three, then, is of prime (pun intended) importance to
the Norse. It pops up in their mythology over and over again. The three
brothers uncovered from the ice, the three beginning realms of Muspellheim,
Nifleheim, and the gap between them, Ginnungagap.
With the
knowledge from the well and now the runes, Odin has the power to delay the
onset of Ragnarok, which he will put to good use in some later myths we’ll
examine. But for now we need to examine a little more closely.
Knowledge
has a price, which is well established from looking at the myths of Pandora and
Eden. However, as stated before, mankind pays this price in those myths,
whereas Odin pays for it in the Norse. This is very important. Clearly, the
Norse people did not view their gods as all-knowing, not even All-Father Odin,
at least not until he obtained that knowledge. This puts the Norse gods on a
level not far removed from people. They have power and immortality, but they
have limitations just like humanity.
Also, this
is a society that values knowledge, perhaps even more so than the other
cultures and their knowledge myths. Knowledge is so important and powerful that
even the gods needed to pay a price for it, and a heavy one at that. Giving up
half of his vision (a metaphor for being able to see in other ways) is one
thing, but Odin literally makes a sacrifice out of himself for the power that
comes with knowledge.
The
ultimate form of that knowledge is also telling. The knowledge of fire from
Prometheus and the knowledge of Good and Evil from Eden are important forms,
showing the duality of nature, but with the Norse it’s something different. The
runic letters that make up the alphabet allow them to write, to give permanence
to their language. While the Genesis creation emphasizes the power of language
from the outset, Odin’s knowledge myth demonstrates that the Norse, too, hold
this to be important, especially in a world fated to be destroyed.
The threat
of Ragnarok is ever-present in the myth, but the use of writing gives a chance
of something greater. Not only will this power help Odin to delay Ragnarok,
but, perhaps, the writing will be the one thing that survives the destruction
of the gods and men. This is a way for the story, for the knowledge, of what happened
before to survive beyond the lives of gods and men. Up until this alphabet, the
Norse could only pass on stories orally, and if a people died, so did their
story.