Vafþrúðnir

Vafþrúðnir ('mighty weaver' — of riddles) was the acknowledged champion of cosmic knowledge, and Odin, over Frigg's objections, went to his hall to test him, calling himself Gagnráðr. The stakes settled at heads: whoever failed a question forfeited his. What follows in Vafþrúðnismál is the Norse cosmos as a quiz show — the horses of day and night, the river between gods and giants, the fates at Ragnarök — with the giant answering everything and asking well.

Then the guest asked his last question: 'What did Odin whisper in the ear of his son, before Baldr was borne to the pyre?' Only one being alive knows that. 'No man knows what you said, in bygone days, into your dead son's ear,' the giant answered — 'with a doomed mouth I have spoken my ancient lore. Now I know I have matched wits with Odin: you will always be wisest.' The poem ends there, on the gasp; it does not need to show the axe.

Vafþrúðnir exists in a single poem, and it is enough: Vafþrúðnismál is one of the summits of the Poetic Edda, and the giant it is named for is the most learned being in the nine worlds after — as the poem itself finally rules — exactly one other.

The contest of heads

The poem opens at home in Asgard, with a domestic scene rare in eddic verse: Odin tells Frigg he is curious to visit Vafþrúðnir and test the old lore of that all-wise giant. Frigg counsels against it — she would keep the Father of Hosts home, for no giant is Vafþrúðnir's equal in strength of knowledge. Odin goes anyway, of course; her blessing follows him out the door. He arrives in the giant's hall as a nameless traveler and announces, with the politeness of a drawn blade, that he has come to see whether his host is truly wise. Vafþrúðnir's reply sets the stakes at once: you will not leave this hall, guest, unless you prove the wiser. Asked his name, Odin gives the alias Gagnráðr — something like "contrary-counsel" or "victory-counsel," a name that is itself a move in the game.

The examination runs both ways. First the seated giant quizzes the standing guest — the horses that draw day (Skinfaxi, shining-mane) and night (Hrímfaxi, frost-mane), the river Ífing that divides the lands of gods and giants and never freezes, the plain Vígríðr where the last battle will be fought. Gagnráðr answers everything, and the giant, impressed, invites him to the bench: now let them speak with their heads on the wager. It is Vafþrúðnir who proposes the death-stake, in his own hall — a detail worth remembering when the end comes.

What Odin learned from the giant

Then Odin asks, in numbered sequence — "first," "second," "third," up toward the twelfth and beyond — and the giant's answers amount to a compressed encyclopedia of the cosmos. Where did earth and sky come from? From Ymir's flesh and skull — and here the giant gives the older name Aurgelmir and the uncanny genealogy: the first being formed from the venom-drops of the Élivágar rivers; a boy and girl grew under his arm; foot begot son upon foot. Vafþrúðnir even adds his credentials, the oldest eyewitness statement in the mythology: he remembers Bergelmir being laid on the lúðr — his first memory, from the dawn of time. Odin presses on: whence comes winter's father Vindsvalr and summer's father Svásuðr; how did Njörðr come to be a hostage among the Æsir; what do the einherjar do all day in Odin's courts (fight, fall, rise, and drink together, forever).

Then the questions bend toward the future, which is to say toward Ragnarök — and the giant knows that too, "all the fate of the gods." A new sun, daughter of the old, will run her mother's road after the wolf has swallowed her. Two humans, Líf and Lífþrasir, will hide in Hoddmímir's wood and live on morning-dew through the Fimbulwinter, and repeople the world. Víðarr and Váli will inherit the gods' sanctuaries when Surtr's fire is slaked; Móði and Magni will carry Mjölnir when Thor has fallen to the serpent. And Odin's own fate? The wolf will swallow the Father of Men, the giant answers steadily, and Víðarr will avenge him, tearing cold jaws apart in the last fight. The giant recites his questioner's death to his face, not knowing the face.

The unanswerable question

Odin's final question is the most famous cheat in Norse literature: "What did Odin say in the ear of his son, before Baldr was borne to the pyre?" It is not a knowledge question at all — it is a self-identification, an unmasking, and a checkmate in one sentence, answerable by no being in the nine worlds but the one who whispered. Vafþrúðnir's response is the poem's glory. No rage, no excuse. "No man knows what you said, in bygone days, into your dead son's ear." He acknowledges that with a doomed mouth he has spoken his ancient lore, that he has been contending with Odin himself — "you will always be wisest of beings." The poem ends on that line. Whether the head-wager was collected, it does not say; the silence after the last stanza is the axe. The same trick, incidentally, was too good to use once: in the riddle-contest of Heiðreks saga, Odin ends the game with the identical question, and Baldr's pyre-whisper became proverbial for the unknowable. What Odin actually whispered remains the mythology's best-kept secret — the sources never tell, and every guess (a promise of return? the word "resurrection"? simply "Baldr"?) says more about the guesser than the god.

In the primary sources

Vafþrúðnir appears only in Vafþrúðnismál, the third poem of the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda, 55 stanzas of ljóðaháttr dialogue. But his influence radiates: Snorri Sturluson mined the poem heavily for Gylfaginning, quoting it repeatedly for cosmogony and Ragnarök — so much of what "everyone knows" about Norse myth is, at bottom, Vafþrúðnir's exam answers. Even Gylfaginning's frame, a disguised questioner in a hall where the loser of a wisdom-game forfeits everything, is Vafþrúðnismál's situation reengineered. The name also stands in the þulur among giant-names. Beyond that, nothing: no deeds, no family, no hall-name. He is knowledge with a beard, invented — or remembered — for one perfect poem.