Hœnir

Hœnir appears wherever Odin travels in a trio: at the making of humankind (where some sources say he gave Askr and Embla their reason), and on the road with Odin and Loki in the myths that begin with a stolen otter and end with cursed gold. Tall, handsome, and kingly to look at, he was sent to the Vanir as a peace-hostage — a prestigious gift.

The Vanir soon learned his secret: at the assembly, whenever Mímir was not beside him, Hœnir answered every question with "let others decide." Feeling swindled, they beheaded Mímir and sent the head back to Odin. Yet Hœnir outlasts the joke: in Völuspá's vision of the world after Ragnarök, it is Hœnir who "chooses the lot-twigs" — the quiet god finally reading fate himself.

The third man at the making of the world

Hœnir's most important moment comes at the very beginning. Völuspá tells how three gods came from the company of the Æsir to the seashore and found Askr and Embla, the ash and the elm, lying "capable of little, fate-less." Each god gave a gift: Odin gave önd, breath or spirit; Hœnir gave óðr — mind, sense, the very faculty of thinking; and Lóðurr gave lá and "good colour," the blush of living flesh. If the poem means what it says, every human thought since has been Hœnir's gift.

There is a complication worth stating plainly. When Snorri retells the creation of humans, his trio is not Odin, Hœnir, and Lóðurr but "the sons of Borr" — Odin, Vili and Vé — with the gifts distributed differently. Whether these are two versions of one myth, or Hœnir and Lóðurr are other names for Odin's brothers, is one of the oldest arguments in Norse scholarship, never settled. What is constant is the pattern: creation is the work of a trio, and Hœnir belongs to Odin's oldest travelling company.

The hostage who could not decide

After the war between the Æsir and the Vanir ended in stalemate, the two families exchanged hostages to seal the peace. The Vanir sent their best — Njörðr, Freyr, and Freyja came to Asgard — and the Æsir, says Ynglinga saga, sent Hœnir, "whom they declared well fitted to be a chieftain," together with the wise Mímir. The Vanir made Hœnir a chief at once: he was big, handsome, and looked every inch a leader.

Then came the discovery. At the assembly, Hœnir performed superbly as long as Mímir stood at his elbow. But whenever a hard case arose and Mímir was absent, Hœnir gave the same answer every time: "let others decide" (ráði aðrir). The Vanir concluded they had been cheated in the exchange — given a handsome figurehead whose wisdom was another man's. They took their revenge not on Hœnir but on the brains of the operation: they beheaded Mímir and sent the head to Odin, who embalmed it with herbs and sang spells over it so that it speaks to him still. The story is a small masterpiece of political satire — the imposing chairman, the indispensable adviser, the institution that discovers too late where the competence actually lives — and Hœnir walks out of it unharmed, which may be the most political detail of all.

On the road with Odin and Loki

Hœnir's third role is the quietest: he is the perpetual third companion. In the prose of Reginsmál, and in Snorri's Skáldskaparmál, Odin, Hœnir, and Loki are travelling together when Loki kills an otter that turns out to be Otr, son of Hreiðmarr — the killing the gods must ransom with Andvari's cursed gold, the treasure that will destroy Sigurðr and the Völsungs. In the ninth-century poem Haustlöng, the same trio is on the road when the eagle-giant Þjazi extorts Iðunn from Loki. Hœnir never does anything in these tales — he witnesses, he accompanies, he is there. Skaldic kennings remember him as "Odin's bench-mate," "the swift As," "the long-footed one," and — most mysteriously — aurkonungr, "mud-king." Scholars have puzzled over these oddly bird-like epithets (long legs, marshes, a name that may echo a word for hen or stork) and read Hœnir variously as a faded sky-god, a stork-like giver of soul, or a god whose myths were lost before the poets could explain his nicknames. The honest answer is that no one knows.

At Ragnarök

Hœnir does not fight in the last battle — at least, no source places him there. Instead he appears on the far side of it, in one of Völuspá's most haunting lines. When the earth rises green from the sea and the Æsir meet again on Iðavöllr, the poem says: þá kná Hœnir hlautvið kjósa — "then Hœnir will choose the lot-twigs," the wooden slips used in divination. The god who for a whole mythology could only say "let others decide" ends it as the reader of fate for the renewed world. Whether the poet intended the irony we cannot ask, but it is hard to believe it is an accident.

In the primary sources

Hœnir appears in the Poetic Edda in Völuspá (the creation of humans, and the lot-twigs after Ragnarök) and in the prose of Reginsmál; in the Prose Edda in Skáldskaparmál (the Otr episode, the Þjazi episode via Haustlöng, and his kennings); and in Heimskringla's Ynglinga saga (the hostage exchange and Mímir's beheading). He is also named in the late poem Fjölsvinnsmál and in Sörla þáttr. No temple, place-name, or cult of Hœnir is securely attested; he lives entirely in the texts.

Legacy

Hœnir left no weekday, no fountain, no ski resort. His legacy is a question that has kept scholars busy for two centuries — who is this silent god who gives humanity its mind, fronts for wiser men, watches Loki ruin everything, and inherits the reading of fate? Every theory about him (faded sky-god, soul-giving stork, hypostasis of Odin) says as much about the theorist as about the god. He remains the mythology's great bystander: present at the beginning of the world, present after its end, and almost never caught saying anything in between.