Poetic Hydromel

In the Scandinavian Mythology, the poetic Hydromel is a drink giving the talent of Poète to that which drinks some. The myth of poetic hydromel was reported by Snorri Sturluson in the Skáldskaparmál (1) .

The myth

Creation and murder of Kvasir

At the end of the war of the Valves, the gods celebrated the truce which they had just concluded while spitting in a tank. To preserve a symbol of this truce, they created starting from their saliva a man named Kvasir. It was so wise that one could not ask him question of which it did not know the answer. He travelled throughout the world to teach with the men the knowledge. But it went one day at two dwarf S, Fjallar and Gallar, which killed it and distributed its blood in two tanks and a cauldron named Bodn, Són and Ódrerir. They mixed its blood with honey, obtaining a Hydromel which transformed whoever drank some in “poet or scientist” ( skáld eða frœðamaðr ). The dwarves explained to the gods that Kvasir had been choked in its intelligence.

Dwarves with Suttung

Fjallar and Gallar invited a giant on their premises, Gilling, and his wife. They took along Gilling at sea and capsized their boat. The giant drowned. Restoring their boat, the dwarves returned on their premises and announced the news with the woman of Gilling, which tested a great sorrow. Fjallar proposed to show him the place where her husband had drowned but, when it passed the step of the door, Gallar killed it while making fall on it a grinding stone from mill.

When the son of Gilling, Suttung, learned what had occurred, it went to the dwarves and carried out them on a reef which the sea recovered with high tide. The dwarves begged Suttung and offered to him hydromel in compensation for the death of his/her father, which Suttung accepted. Returned at his place, the giant deposited hydromel in a place named Hnitbjörg, and the guard entrusted some to his/her daughter Gunnlöd.

Flight of poetic hydromel by Odin

Odin went near nine slaves who mowed hay, and proposed to sharpen their forgeries. Its stone to be sharpened was so effective that all proposed to buy it to him. Odin threw it in the air and, in the fray, all the slaves mutually sliced the throat with their forgeries.

It then went to spend the night in the brother of Suttung, Baugi, which complained that its business was badly, since its slaves had entretués themselves and that it did not know how to replace them. Odin, which was presented to him under the name of Bölverk, proposed to him to achieve the work of nine men in exchange of a mouthful of the hydromel of Suttung. Baugi accepted, by specifying that it did not have the hydromel, but which it would try to persuade his brother. During the summer, Bölverk did the agreed work and, of the winter, required its due to Baugi. Both thus went to Suttung, which refused to give the least drop of hydromel.

Bölverk then suggested in Baugi having recourse to a stratagem. It gave him the drill Rati and asked him to dig in the Hnitbjörg mountain. After Baugi had tried to mislead it, a hole was actually dug, and Bölverk slipped there, having taken the shape of a snake. Baugi in vain tried to strike it with the drill.

It arrived at Gunnlöd, with which it spent three nights. It could thus take three mouthfuls of hydromel. But each one emptied one of the containers which contained it.

It was metamorphosed then in eagle and flees. Suttung realized some and, taking its shape of eagle, continued it. When the Adzes transfer to arrive Odin, they left the containers in which it recracha its cargo. But it was necessary of it of if little which Suttung catches up with it that it let some escape a little by behind. No matter who could have access to this substance, known under the name of “share of the rimaillor” ( skáldfífla hlutr with the Nominatif). But poetic hydromel was given by Odin to the Ases and to the men endowed for poetry.

Source

Skáldskaparmál

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