The mead of poetry: Myth and metaphor

THE M E A D OF POETRY: M Y T H A N D M E T A P H O R

The myth concerning the origin of poetry must play a major role in any discussion of Old Norse poetic theory. There are two chief sources for our knowledge of this myth: the long prose account in Snorra Edda and three independent allusions in HrvamrL A comprehensive account of the various mythological details has been given by Professor E. O. G. Turville-Petre, while Professor A. G. van Hamel has attempted to analyze the meaning for poets inherent in the myth 1.

Snorri's version is a late compilation of various strands. To iEgir's question, "whence originated that art you call poetry?" ("Hva6an af hefir hafizk sfi ilgrrtt, er 19~r kalli6 sk~ldskap?") the god Bragi replies with a full account not, as we would expect today, of the creative process but of the making and winning of the mead which is poetry in a quite concrete senseZ. Snorri does not suggest that the myth is an allegory or a symbolic abstraction, and we would not have expected him to. Skrlds- kaparmrl is a descriptive rather than a speculative work, and therefore the myths recounted in it are set down because they supply invaluable background to poetic imagery�9

After their war amongst themselves the gods signified their truce by mingling their spittle in one vessel z. From this spittle they then created a man and called him Kvasir, and Snorri describes him as "sv~i vitr, at engi spyrr harm 10eira hluta, er eigi kann hann 6rlausn." Kvasir, then, is clearly the personification of wisdom, characteristically seen as a divine creation�9 There is an analogy in Irish mythology, in which Wisdom is personified as the son of three gods, Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba 4. Kvasir was subsequently killed by the two dwarfs, Fjalarr and Galarr. Originally this must have been a quest for wisdom, though the murder is not well motivated: Kvasir was killed for his blood, since this is what the dwarfs take, but their callous slaughtering of the giant Gillingr and his wife makes one cautious of attributing obvious motivation to them. Dwarfs are elsewhere associated with both wisdom and bloodS: they are reposi- tories of wisdom, and Vqlusp6 9 tells that they were made from blood:

� 9 hverr scyldi dverga, dr6ttin scepia, 6r Brimis b166i oc 6r Blfiins leggiom 6.

For present purposes, however, the significance lies in what the dwarfs do with Kvasir's blood: "lgeir blendu hunangi vi6 b166it, ok var6 ]gar af mjq6r sz[, er hverr, er af drekkr, verrr sk~ild eSa fr0erima6r." The second result, frce6imarr "scholar, learned man", does not play a prominent part in the myth. The mead is essentially the mead of poetry, not of wisdom, though there is one example offrceOi "learning, knowledge" used in a kenning for poet. This is HolmgQngu-Bersi 10:

fell fyr froera spiUi framm lorrarinn rammi.

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The kenningfr~eda spillir could mean "plunderer of knowledge", and hence someone who draws on a fund of learning. (Finnur J6nsson, Lexicon Poeticum, 530, tentatively suggested a connection with spjall "saying, word", though this seems less likely.) The kenning lends support to a conjecture that if Snorri 's edafrtedimaOr is not just a casual addition of his own his source reflected an older view of the poetic art which made no distinction between scholar and poet.

Mead is not associated with poetry alone. A passage in Sigrdrlfumdl associates it with a collection of images representing abstractions. In the midst of the disquisition Sigrdrifa makes on runic lore we come upon a section which looks rather like an interpolation (stanzas 14.4-18). I t begins:

13fi ma~lti Mires hgfu6 fr661ict ib fyrsta or6, oc sag6i sanna staff (Then the head of Mimir spoke the first wise speech, saying true staves),

and goes on to detail where runes are carved. Most of this section is also found in VQlsunga Saga; comparison of the two shows many different readings, which suggests either that a list of this kind is flexible or that corruptions have crept into one or both of the extant versions. An examination of these variants would not be relevant here, especially since the main outline remains clear. That runes were carved on certain objects can only mean that the runes - as magical, almost animistic existences - partake of the attributes of the objects with which they are associated. They represent what the Norsemen called i]gr6ttir. Suggestions as to the abstract significances of a few examples will show this: d Sleipnis tpnnum - swiftness (alluding to the bit in the mouth); d biarnar hrammi - strength; d Braga tungo - poetic skill; d ~Ifs k l6m - fierceness;

lausnar 16fa - generosity or mercy, and so on. In the present context the most interesting aspect of this section is the dissemination of these ipr6ttir amongst gods, elves and men (st. 18):

Allar v6ro af scafnar, b~er er v6ro ~t ristnar, oc hverf6ar vi6 inn helga miQ6, oc sendar ~i vi6a vega.

(All which had been carved on were shaved off, and blended with the holy mead, and sent on far-flung paths).

Thus the mead is here seen as the bearer of all virtues, though of course it is not necessarily the same mead.

The obvious connection to be made at this point is with Hdvarndl st. 138 ft. (the self-sacrifice of ONnn in order to obtain wisdom), since the wisdom gained here is effectively placed under the collective heading r{mar: , ,nam ec upp r fnar , 0epandi nam". In the light of the Sigrdrlfumdl

John Stephens - The Mead of Poetry 261

passage we need not be troubled by the question of the precise meaning o f Nnar, but can regard it as the concrete "runes" signifying the abstract potency these represent. The Hdvamdl section is in turn linked with Snorri's account through the line ausinn tgOreri "(I was) sprinkled with 65rer i r" :

(The dwarfs) 16tu renna b166 hans i tvau ker ok eirm ketil, ok heitir s~f 66rerir, en kerin Srn ok Born.

Now these three works do not have precisely the same referent. There would be little, if anytl~ng, to connect Snorra Edda with Sigrdr[fumdl i f Hdvamdl did not contain features held in common with one or the other. How far, for example, can Sigrdrifumdl be accurately describe das embodying a myth? There are certainly mythic elements there, such as Mimir's head and holy mead, but they are there as material drawn into the service of a cryptic metaphor." On the other side, it is improbable that Snorri thought of his story as anything other than myth. Further, though the mead occupies a central position in botti Snorra Edda and SigrdrifumSl it is only a subordinate idea in Hdvamdl, according partially with each of the significances, given to it in the other two works. The phrases "drycc . . . ins dyra mia ra r" and "inn helga mioS" appear to share some common referent, and the result of 05inn's experience as portrayed by Hdvam6l manifests itself as both physical and verbal, corresponding to the list of ibrrttir in Sigrdrifumdl:

or6 mrr af or6i orrz leitari, verc mrr af verki vercs leitari (one word sought another word from me; one deed sought another deed from me)L

Despite the mention of 06rerir, I would suggest that this particular section of HdvamSl was originally not connected with the poetry-origin myth in its best-known form: mead once had a much wider general significance than it is given in Snorri's story.

I suggest that there existed a quantity of poetic lore centering on mead as an intrinsically potent force s , and continually drawn on by poets until eventually the feelings and emotions accruing to it were projected into myths. The poetry myth became the chief of these.

As Turville-Petre points out (page 39), the myth is not originally to be found in the form Snorri gives it 9. For example, apart from one kenning there is no evidence outside Snorra Edda for the Kvasir segment, which suggests that this motif was not widely known. A suggestion by van Hamel that Hdvamdl st. 104-110 contains the essential core of the myth is thus probably correct:

In Snorri's account a popular tradition on the same subject has been incorporated, but, abstraction being made of this, it is entirely based upon the strophes. So we can limit ourselves to a study of these 1~


However, van Hamel's reason for this limiting of scope cannot be as easily accepted. There is a certain imprecision throughout his paper, evidenced here by the use of "a popular tradition" to imply something inferior and debased when this need not be so. Perhaps there are elements in Snorri's account which could be regarded as debased (the by-play between the dwarfs and the giants, for example, the point of which seems to have been lost in the retelling), but van Hamel himself was quite prepared earlier in his article (page 131) to discuss Snorri's version as an integral whole. He has shifted his ground here in order to emphasize the "sympathetic magic" aspect of the poetry. Thus he sees the function of the Eddic myths in these terms:

These myths constitute the great examples for those who practise the art of the poet . . . themselves. These men incited their own inspiration and actualized their own magical faculties by believing in these examples and by imitating them. The mythical poems are the work of some of them and are intended to give shape to the spiritual code of their makers' craft 11.

The approach I am proposing differs from this, and depends on distin- quishing between myth as a supposed action in the past literally believed in and potentially re-creatable through imitation, and myth as an image embodying intuitions corresponding to thought on an abstract leveliL Myth can of course take either of these forms, but I doubt whether it can simultaneously be both. There is no way by which the poet could literally imitate the winning of the mead myth, except through the kind of feat performed. Thus van Hamel again: "The god has displayed his wisdom, he has enforced the love of a maiden, he has ventured his life." But these actions exist only on the periphery of the central image; it seems that van Ham. el at this point may be confusing ends with means, and it is the very nature of the Hdvamdl account which causes this. Van Hamel notes that the contest of wisdom (a dubious point anyway, based ofily on st. 104) and the risking of life "figure more or less as accessory elements", and the seduction of GunnlQ6 is the centre piece.

HdvamdI, it must be remembered, is a compilation of a number of separate poems, and the section in which this passage occurs deals with somewhat cynical views on love and love experience. It seems safe to assume that the GunnlQ5 story involves a version of the mead myth in which the emphasis has been shifted to accord with its new context. If 66inn gained the mead by beguiling the giant's daughter this would present itself as a supreme example of the successful, cynical seduction and hence as a perfect foil for the story which precedes it, in which the would- be seducer was thoroughly outsmarted.

This whole section of Hdramdl is not closely knit, and while we can agree with van Hamel that the two love-winning stories must be read together we should be wary of the assumption that the mead-winning story can be extracted in its pristine form. Anxiousness to give an account


of the myth makes it easy to overlook the simple fact that it exists here on the periphery and was not the purpose for recounting this story. What it does tell us is that by the time this poetry was composed there existed in mythic form a narrative about the origin of poetry which consisted of certain motifs. It cannot give us much help in explaining why the myth takes on the particular form it does.

Myths do not suddenly and miraculously appear in their final shape, but gradually evolve. Axel Olrik pointed out that the number of forms this particular myth has indicates not only its popularity but also that it may have had a period of time over which to develop various forms. He continues: "Og disse former svarer endog til forskellige trin i myteud- viklingen: den kortfattet energiske, den ~eventyragtig udmalende og den poetisk-r~esonerende. ''18 These are distinctions which, adapted to my own purposes, I have found invaluable for describing the poetry-origin myth. Like Olrik, I envisage three stages of development, but unlike him I see differences not in kind but in the way myth is understood, inter- preted and used.

The first stage is hardly myth at all, but metaphor. The process behind the origin of a myth is invariably the same, an attempt to give concrete expression to abstract concepts, or to express the inexplicable in terms of the explicable. This is a basic feature of poetic imagery in any period or form, though it is also characteristic of everyday thought habits. This first stage of myth development, then, associates certain appropriate images, such as mead, with natural phenomena or human actions, such as poetic creativity, and finally substitutes the one for the other. The passage from Sigrdrifumdl examined above is at this stage.

The second stage (corresponding to Olrik's "a~ventyragtig udmalende") is reached when such images for poetry are regarded as myths and undergo further embellishment. The mead myth as found in Hdvamdl 104-110 has reached this point. It is here that my emphasis diverges slightly from Olrik's. He, and I think rightly, envisages one original myth which deve- lops variants through the course of time, in this case a form of the "hvorledes vandet kom til menneskene" (how water came to mankind) myth:

Det m~erkelige er her, at myteforestillingen sft at sige aldrig er opst~tet; dens tilblivelse raekker tilbage mod menneskehedens tidligste f~elles barndom, og de fremskridende ~tusender hat blot udformet den pft forskellig vis i forskellige egne 14.

Like van Hamel, Olrik too limits his discussion to that part of the myth where 06inn steals the mead from Suttungr (though basing it on Snorra Edda rather than Hdvamdl, and implicitly reducing the impor- tance of Gunn196), thus also making the assumption that this episode is quite self-contained. In my view, the episode is not a development.of an ancient myth but a borrowing of it to express a different concept.This is what I regard as a stage three characteristic (corresponding to Olrik's


,,poetisk-r~esonerende"), the point at which the myth is turned back into metaphor again. Thus the 'water of life' motif functions as an archetype, as an image which is itself never invented but whose application can be. That is, though the broad outline of the myth is durable it undergoes modification during the passage of time; it decays and no longer communi- cates the original externalization of an inner event; it is then rediscovered, refelt and rethought, and transformed; and finally the "new" myth thus created undergoes the whole process again.

The mead myth as related by Snorri has terminated at stage two. The evolutionary process can be dramatically demonstrated for this myth by citing the occurrence of a complex of related motifs which no longer function in their original meaning but have been used for a new purpose. Their relevance to the new context can be easily defended. They occur in three passages in an episode from Egils Saga, chapters 71-7215:

Egill farm I~I, at honum myndi eigi sv~t bfiit eira; st66 harm !~i iapp ok gekk um g61f 19vert, l~angat er ~rm66r sat; harm t6k h?ndum i axlir honum ok kneik6i harm upp at stpfum. Si6an [geysti Egill upp 6r s6r sp~,ja mikla, ok gaus f andlit ~rm66i, i augun ok nasarnar ok i murmirm; rann sv~ ofan um bringuna, en Arm66i vat6 vi6 andhlaup, ok er harm fekk Qndinni fret s6r hrtmdit,

'19~ gaus upp sp~ja. (pp. 225-26)

Si6an snei6 Egill af honum skeggit vi6 hQkuna; si6an kr0ek6i hann fir/grinum i augat, swl at fiti IEi a kinnini... (p. 228)

Egill reist ffmar ok lag6i undir h0egendit i hviltma, bar er hon hvildi; hermi 196tti sem hon vakna6i 6r svefni ok sag6i, at hon var b~ heil . . . (p. 230)

I t perhaps seems far-fetched to suggest that these three passages obscurely contain vestigial 6 N n n allusions, but that is what I want to do. And in doing so, I want to begin to construct a hypothetical history of the myth of the origin of poetry as Snorri tells it.

Significant in these passages is the anecdotal occurrence of three motifs commonly associated with 65inn: the spewing poet, the loss of one eye, and the magical knowledge of runes. The second and third of these can be quickly dealt with, being marginal to the discussion. As mentioned above, it is 65inn who first masters the runes and learns how to use them; 65 inn usually appears with only one eye 16. The eye-plucking motif represents a common form of mutilation, and is easily paralleled - a similar story is told of another poet, HallfreSr vandr~eSask~ild 17. But its significance lies not in the action itself but in its occurrence in close proximity to the other two actions, since it is the coincidence of the three which suggests the mythic reminiscence.

The first passage, then, is the one of greatest interest. We recall that Kvasir was made after all the gods had spat into a vessel, and that 65inn,

John Stephens- The Mead of Poetry 265

in eagle form, vomited up the mead after he had stolen it: "en er 06inn kom in of.Asgar6,19~i sp3)tti hann upp mi6inum i ke r in . . . Suttungamj96 gaf 66inn ~isunum ok 19elm mpnnum, er yrkja kunnu." Snorri does not explain just how 66inn gave the mead to poets: if it is a metaphor no explanation is needed until an attempt is made to explain this process in concrete terms. The explanation is reflected in Egill's grotesque behaviour.

Vomiting occurs quite frequently in stories concerning the gift of the poetic faculty. An extremely apt (though late) example was cited by van Hamel, the story of Simon Dalask~ild and Klaufi, ghost of a trouble- some poet. Simon had one day defended Klaufi's character:

That same night the boy sees in his dream Klaufi standing by his bedside. Suddenly the dead man bows down over him and vomits into him ('<sp~r ofan ~ hann"). From that moment he can no longer refrain from speaking in poetry himself 18.

We can perhaps infer that this last sentence underlies Egill's mock- defence of his behaviour: "Ekki er at h.allm~ela m6r um l~etta, l~6tt ek gera sem bdndi gerir, sp~r harm af 911u afli, eigi si6r en ek."

As they al~pear in Egils Saga the motifs are utterly changed, probably drawn together by a trick of unconscious association. Whether this originated in an awareness of Egill as poet or as devotee of O6inn hardly matters. There may even be a firm tradition that Egill did do this to Armd6r, but again it hardly matters since myth in its ~rolution incor- porates historical or quasi-historical themes. The important thing is that somewhere during the development of Egill's story a half-remembered, now almost meaningless pattern of motifs was drawn in and used to illustrate facets of his character.

Where then do these myths originate? The precise starting point, the first germ of the idea, can only be guessed at. But let us say, as seems logical, that the first image for the poetic faculty wa s .(as in other lands) "a gift from the god", in this case 66inn, god of poetry. Poetry is a verbal art, and would therefore have come out of 6~Sinn's mouth. Any attempt to develop this image further in anything but abstract terms must inevitably lead to the conclusion that it came out in the form of saliva (compare with Kvasir) or of vomit (compare with the stolen mead). Once the latter becomes the dominant image there arises the further question of what the substance was before it was vomit: it must be something taken in by the god and enriched with his divine force. In abstract terms this could well be language itself, and Hdvamdl's "or6 m6r af orNlor6z leitaN" becomes relevant here. Snorri tells us that language was a dMne gift, imparted when the sons of Borr created man (page 15): "(gaf) 19ri6i ~isjdnu, m~l ok heyrn ok sjdn."

It is at this point that the analogy between poetic and drunken intoxi- cation manifests itself. Something consumed which subsequently pro- duces both rapture and vomiting must be an intoxicating drink, and it is

266 John Stephens - The Mead o f Poetry

here that the third allusion in Hdvamdl, the enigmatic statement of st. 13-14, fits in:

Ominnis hegri heitir, s~i er yfir 916rom larumir, harm stelr ge6i guma;

bess fugls fip6rom ec fiptra6r varc i gar6i Gunnla6ar.

plr ec vat6, var6 ofrplvi at ins fr66a F i a l a r s . . .

(He is called the heron o f oblivion, who hovers over drinking bouts; he steals the wits of men. I was entangled in the feathers of that bird in the house of Gunn196. I was drunk, I was exceedingly drunk in the house of the wise F j a l a r r . . . )

This cannot be made to accord with Snorri's mead story, where FjaUarr is a dwarf (he here apparently takes Suttungr's place) and O6inn seems to have remained clear-headed. It is the only extant version which retains the drunkenness motif, which originally must have been inseparable from the mead 19, The necessary poetic drunkenness was perhaps in the beginning produced by anything which could be called "inn helga mjo6". A man, in the manner of Arm66r and Simon, was simply spattered with the divine spew and spattered poetry in return. It is my suggestion that the myth begins to develop in terms of the water-of-life myth at this stage. As in Egils Saga a half-forgotten motif is given a new lease of life by transference to a new situation, so likewise the water-of-life myth is now revivified and used as an expression for the poetic process. Giants in Norse thought seem to have represented the crude, unbridled forces of nature z~ To snatch the mead which is poetry from giants would therefore be a metaphor for the reduction to order by the poet's efforts of unformed, often difficult, material: or, briefly, an image for the creative sliruggle. Egill testifies to the difficulty of composition in ArinbjarnarkviOa 14, when he speaks of Arinbjprn's glory "ascended with difficulty from the feet of poetry" ("bratt stiginn/bragar fdtum").

This metaphor, once it becomes myth, has been joined with the Kvasir- myth because the latter supplies specific details for the origin of the pre- cious liquid. But this in its turn is a separate metaphor: if poetry is the blood of personified wisdom mixed with honey we are obviously con- cerned with the perennial concept of poetryas the product of the intellect expressed in pleasing form.

The two metaphors turn out to be fairly similar, and a re-examination of Snorri's version shows that a central mythic concept has been repeated within that version, indicating, that there are at least two originally separate strands: it seems clear that expressions for much the same thing are to be found in the account of Kvasir made from divine spittle and that of O6inn vomiting up the newly-won mead.

In brief, I contend that the myth concerning the origin of poetry contains dements which show that it reflected a concept of the poetic art


which does not significantly differ from concepts held by poets in other places and at other times. The section involving Suttungr is a partial intuition, a clothing in substantial matter of the concept that the springs of poetry are to be sought in that region of the mind where emotions, thoughts, memories and perceptions exist. The Kvasir section is best characterized by terms such as Chaucer's "sentence and solas", or intellectual matter presented through delightful form.

Because their art was public rather than introspective the skalds themselves seldom use poetry to explore poetic processes. However some attempts were made to do this using the mead myth, and I conclude this paper with one of them, from the beginning of Egill's Sonatorrek (st. lb-2):

Esa wenligt of Vi6urs 19~i n6 h6gdrcegt 6r hugar fylgsni. Esa au619eystr

6r hyggju sta6 fagnafundr Friggjar ni6ja fir borinn 6r Jqtunheimum...

It does not look promising for 06inn's theft, nor easy to draw from the hiding-place of the mind The happy discovery of Frigg's kinsmen, borne long ago from giantland, is not easily made to flow from the place of thought...

All Egill is saying here is that his grief makes the task of composing poetry difficult. What is interesting is the way he says it. Firstly, there is a formal parallelism between "dr hugar fylgsni", "dr hyggju sta6" and "6r Jotunheimum" which equates them not only rhythmically and syntac- tically but also conceptually. The first two are in effect periphrases for 'breast', though we can easily understand them at face value as well because the metaphorical quality of each is much weaker than that of "Vi6urs l?3~fi", for example, and because each makes perfectly good sense without substituting 'breast'. Secondly, there is a consistent use with each phrase of, a word involving motion: "h6gdrcegt d r . . . " , "au6l?eystr 6 r . . . " , and "borinn 6 r . . . " . Thus ther~ is made an analogy between drawing the "theft of 06inn" from the breast and the mythic stea!ing of the mead. The use offylgsni "hiding place" as the source of"Vi6urs ]737fi" suggests the myth in itself, but because fylgsni belongs to a larger unit "hugar fylgsni" this remains a subordinate, though intensifying, association. The poet's breast and JQtunheimar are made similar in that each represents on its own level a source of poetry. The difficulty Egfll is now finding reflects the difficulty involved in first winning the 'mead'; that is, his present act of composition, his tapping of his own mental re- sources, is animage of the archetypal compositionalact of the poetic mind.

Macquarie University JOHN STEPHENS


N o t e s

1. E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), 35--41; A. G. van Hamel, "Gods, Skalds and Magic", SBVS 11 (1928-36), 129-52.

2. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, ed. F. J6nsson (K~benhavn, 1900), 71-74. 3. R. Stiibe in ,,Kvasir und der Magische Gebrauch des Speichels", Festschrift

Eugen Mogk (Halle, 1924), 500-509, demonstrated that belief in the magical properties of spittle was world-wide. The Kvasir story combines two elements: spittle is a common fermenting agent, and it is a magical, often life-giving, substance. For speculations on the name Kvasir see Stfibe, 500 and Turville-Petre, 40.

4. J. A. MaeCulloch, The Religion of the Ancient Celts (Edinburgh, 1911), 74. 5. Myth and Religion of the North, 234. 6. Quotations from the Poetic Edda are cited from Edda: Die Lieder des Codex

Regius, ed. Neckel and Kuhn (Heidelberg, 1962), Vol. I; skaldic quotations from Den Norske-lsl?indska Skaldediktningen, ed. E. A. Kock (Lurid, 1948).

7. Translation of this stanza, and of st. 13-14 below, follows Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion, 42 and 37.

8. For a general discussion of mead see G. Sverdrup, ,,Rauschtrank und Labetrank irn Glauben unserer Vorfahren", Avhandlinger utgitt av Det Norske Videnskaps- Akademi i Oslo. II Hist. - Filos. Klasse, 1940, No. 5, and especially p. 10: ,,Tiefer und heftiger als die meisten anderen V/51ker haben sie die Erniedrigung und die Erh6hung, das Tier- und das Gottwerden durch den Ranschtrank erlebt."

9. See also A. G. van Hamel, "The Mastering of the Mead", Studia Germanica tilliignade Ernst Albin Kock (Lund, 1934).

10. "Gods, Skalds and Magic", 138. 11. "Gods, Skalds and Magic", 136. 12. cf. R. T. Christiansen, "Myth, Metaphor, and Simile", JAF 68 (1955), 417:

"We might question whether people ever did actually believe in these gods, or, if they believed in the gods themselves, whether they believed in the tales told about them."

13. "Skjaldemj~den", Edda 24 (1926), 237 ("And these forms even answer to the various stages in the evolution of myth: the concise energetic, the fanciful depiction, and the poetic reasoning.")

14. "Skjaldemjoden", 238 ("It is here remarkable that the idea of the myth is, as it were, never originated; its origin stretches back towards the earliest common infancy of mankind, and the passing millennia have only elaborated it in various ways in various regions.")

15. Egils Saga Skalla-Grimssonar, ed. S. Nordal (Reykjavik, 1933), 225-30. 16. Myth and Religion of the North,. 62-63. 17. lslenzk Fornrit VIII, ed. Einar O1. Sveinsson (Reykjavik, 1939), 166-67. 18. "Gods, Skalds and Magic", 148. 19. The epithet inn frdOi, used of the giant, embodies the wisdom theme, thus

suggesting here a most unique combination of motifs. 20. J .A. MacCuUoch, The Celtic and Scandinavian Religions (Hutchinson's Univer-

sity Library, 1948), 133.

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The mead of poetry: Myth and metaphor