(A chapter in my novel, Gridhr Jotun-Kin. The chapters can be seen in order, beginning with the Prologue, by clicking on the menu title “Gridhr Jotun-Kin: A Serial Novel”, above.)
Winifred Hodge Rose
A fair day, with Sunna high in the sky, growing in strength now as winter trailed toward its end. Gridhr’s sheep wandered loose outside their cave, browsing for any interesting tidbits that had escaped the gnawing of winter, while the dogs and the huge, curly-horned herd ram kept watch. Many of the ewes were fat with lamb; soon Gridhr would be kept busy with the day-and-night demands of lambing. But for now, there was leisure for other tasks.
Gridhr crouched on the patchy snow, well away from the sheep and her own cave-dwelling, flaying a wolf carcass with her sharp black-glass knife that she saved carefully for such tasks. It was sharper than any bronze or iron knife could be, though its brittleness required care. But for flaying the skins, for the more delicate cutting in her cookery and herbwork, and for cutting thread and cloth, there was no better knife than this one—one of her most cherished treasures. It was becoming rather thin and narrow now, from the many chippings to sharpen it. Once it had been large and broad, a handful for a giant’s fist, when it had belonged to Gridhr’s mother long ago. Before too long, Gridhr would need to think about replacing it, either by trade if she had luck, or more likely by a long trip to a fire-mountain, the only place where one could find the black glass.
Absorbed in her work, Gridhr was startled when a man’s cloaked shadow fell across the carcass in front of her. Knife in hand, she stood quickly, looking at him in annoyance, then glanced over at the dogs and the herd ram. Why had they not given any warning of the stranger’s approach? They were going placidly about their business, seemingly oblivious to him. Frowning dangerously, her deep gaze returned to the stranger standing calmly in front of her, leaning on his staff. She saw that he was Man-kin, of middle years but unusually sturdy and tall, not so very much shorter than she was herself, though less massive of build. After regarding him carefully for some minutes, she sensed no ill about him, neither in his looks nor in the energies he gave out from his being. So Gridhr allowed her hackles to lower and her height to shrink closer to his, in courtesy, speaking formally to him in a cool but pleasant tone.
“What seek you here, stranger?” she asked. “Few travelers fare this way. Have you lost your bearings, then?”
“Nay, that I have not, good dame. My path is leading me right where I wish to go.”
“Well then, I will guest you if you want, before you travel on.”
A smile twitched the stranger’s heavy, grizzled beard. “Not all of your kinfolk are so fair-spoken to travelers.”
Gridhr tossed her head and laughed. “Say rather that some of my kinfolk have no fair speech at all, and you’ll have the right of it! Rocks and clubs are all you’ll get from those. But here is a frithstead for those who come in peace. Sit now and be welcome, while I finish this task.” Gridhr gestured to the folded hide nearby, which she had brought to wrap the jointed wolf-meat once she had butchered it. “I must finish this skinning now, before the carcass stiffens any further. Afterwards there will be time for better hospitality.”
The stranger nodded and lowered himself cross-legged onto the proffered hide, watching as Gridhr set to work again. “I see this wolf has a wrenched jaw, or a broken one,” he noted, glancing keenly at her.
Gridhr nodded. “Yes. I killed him at dawn today with a blow to the face from my staff. He was a loner, a warg, and getting old now. Two years have I been watching him, and I saw that he could not feed himself through another winter, alone as he is. See his thinness even now? But his pelt is still thick, and his meat and bones will add good flavor to the stew.”
“Will you be drying some of the meat, too?”
She glanced quickly at him, on the edge of a smile. “Have you eaten dried wolf meat?”
“No, I can’t say that I have. But I am not well versed in such matters of cookery.”
“Clearly you are not, good sir! Fresh wolf is tough enough, especially a stringy, hungry old fellow such as this one. Even my good Jotunn-teeth flinch at the thought of what his meat would be like, dried! Besides, there is hardly enough of him here to be worth the trouble of drying. He is mostly bone and sinew.”
The stranger watched as Gridhr energetically hacked the wolf’s head off with her heavy bronze knife, then laid it aside and began turning back the skin over the wolf’s shoulders as she loosened it with the black-glass knife.
“Will you save the head?” he asked.
“What for?”
“To hang on your wall, or your door, perhaps.”
Gridhr chuckled. “Nay, I have no need of a broken-jawed wolf’s head in my home, I thank you! Nor do I suppose my sheep, or my dogs for that matter, would be glad of its smelly presence.” She sliced a few more inches of pelt free. “Would you like to have the head yourself?”
The stranger gazed at it and said musingly, “Perhaps I will take it, at that. As a reminder.”
Gridhr looked at him quizzically, but he had no more to say. She worked in silence for some minutes, and quickly finished the skinning, then laid the fresh pelt aside and set to disjointing the carcass into pot-sized chunks. When she was done, he helped her load and wrap them in the carrying-hide.
Then, picking up the heavy, wet pelt, she said, “I need to go stake this out in the stream, to soften it for flensing. And I need a good wash, myself.” She glanced down at her bare body, the soft hairs of her arms and legs matted with gore and bits of membrane.
“I’ll come and give you a hand.”
Gridhr had permanent stakes set along the sides of a shallow part of the stream, where she could tie hides for the long soakings they needed as part of the curing. In this swift little stream, only a thin skin of ice had formed, easily broken and brushed away so they could lay the pelt out flat and tie it to the stakes.
“That’s good,” she said, standing and stretching her back. “A task more quickly over, with the company.” She smiled briefly at the stranger. “Now for a wash.”
“I think a wash would be good, myself, after my travels.” Courteously, he turned and headed downstream, leaving her the better upstream stretch.
~~~
Gridhr strode back to her dwelling, still tingling pleasantly from the icy water. Her heavy, wet mane of hair was a weight that most Man-kin women could not even have lifted, but she tossed it back lightly over her shoulders as she went, giving it a chance to dry. Passing by the butchering-site, she picked up the bundled wolf-meat under her arm, then whistled to her dogs and gestured toward the cave that served as a sheepfold. Ears and tail-flags flying, the dogs swooped around the perimeter of the grazing sheep, hustling them into a milling, baaing pack within a few short moments. The wooly mass trotted into the cave and Gridhr wedged the hurdle closed behind them with a boulder. Several chunks of wolf-meat went to reward the panting dogs for their labor.
Before entering her home, Gridhr stopped by her outdoor harrow, a pile of loose rocks where she placed her offerings to the spirits of her forebears. She unwrapped the meat and took out the liver and kidneys, and a forequarter of meat. Laying these on the harrow, she chanted a call to her elder kin: Aurgelmir Giant-Father and his children: Mimir, Bestla and Thrudgelmir. She chanted other names of her dead kin, ending with those of her parents, Aurnir and Eisurfala, and stood quietly for several minutes afterwards, feeling the soul-strength of her forebears and the peace of the late afternoon wash through her being.
Gridhr stepped into to her home and occupied herself in combing out her tangles and rebraiding her hair. Then she went to the carved wooden chest where she kept her clothing and ornaments, and took out a long, soft rectangle of woolen cloth, a few shades lighter than her chestnut hair. Draping it around herself, she fastened two corners together with a large brooch at one shoulder, leaving it gracefully falling free of her other shoulder. A cord belt around the waist tied it closed and completed her outfit.
Usually when at home alone she went unclothed, seeing no point in soiling and ripping the cloth that took her such pains to make, while she went about the strenuous and messy tasks of her livelihood: caring for her sheep, hunting, gathering, gardening, butchering, shearing, milking, woodcutting, and more. She found clothing rather a nuisance, in any case. Her Jotunn-blood kept her comfortable in the cold, though she did enjoy the softness of her warm bed piled with fleeces. But to honor a guest or a friend, she liked to don the clothing that she spun, wove and dyed with skill and care especially for such occasions.
Gridhr was kneeling by the firepit dropping chopped pieces of the wolf’s heart and spleen into the stew when she heard the polite cough of the stranger, announcing his presence at the doorway. By then the sky was dim, the cave-dwelling dark except for firelight. For a moment as he stood in the doorway, his shadowy shape seemed to her to be larger than a giant, and she had the impression of a great tree looming even taller behind him, with the faint sense of enormous wings spread out at the top of the tree. But as she peered more closely through the gloom, she saw that after all he was of a size not abnormal for a man, though a good deal larger than most.
“Come in and be welcome,” she told him. “There is a seat here by the fire for you.” She pointed toward a massive chair of dovetailed logs tightly bound with sinew, with seat and back of stretched hide draped with fleeces. Not many halls anywhere boasted chairs of such comfort, and Gridhr was justly proud of her making. But the stranger stood, making no move to sit down.
“I fear my clothing is wet and dirty….” he began.
Gridhr realized that was true. “I should have thought of that myself,” she said apologetically; “I am not very used to the vagaries of clothing.” She moved to her wooden chest again. Taking out a length of dark blue wool, one of her best pieces, she handed it to him. “This long sark should fit you comfortably, and I see that dark blue is a favorite color of yours.”
A grin flitted across his face as he acknowledged that it was. Quickly he stripped off his wet clothing and spread it out to dry, then donned the blue garment. Gridhr handed him a large horn brimming with ale, wishing him good health to go with it.
The grizzled stranger raised the horn high, saying courteously “Good luck to this home and all who come within; may you ever find as kind a welcome where you go, as I have found with you.” He drank deeply and settled into the capacious chair with a sigh of enjoyment.
“Your shoes?” Gridhr asked. “Don’t you want to take them off to dry?”
“I suppose I should do so,” the man answered, “though I have no others to put on.”
She looked at him curiously. “I’m afraid I don’t have any to lend you, either. I have never worn shoes, and would think it wrong to do so. I cannot imagine ever wanting to wear them.”
“Wrong? Why so?”
“Surely you must know that the ground we walk upon is made from the flesh and bones of Aurgelmir Giant-Father, slain long ago by three brother Gods.” As she spoke, she saw that a sudden flaring-up of the fire had brought a flush to his cheek, and one of his eyes glinted in the light. The other eye, she had already noticed, seemed strangely clouded and dim. Perhaps he was partly blind, poor man, though he seemed otherwise very healthy and fit.
“And so,” she continued, “the ground being the body of our forefather, we think it wrong to allow anything to come between us and him when we walk abroad on the land. Thus, we shun the wearing of shoes. Besides, my feet are like a second pair of eyes. They know well how to find the best places to walk or run, without me paying much attention to them. Why would I want to put on shoes and blind them? And shoes are such nuisances, by what I have seen: forever getting wet and muddy, needing to be dried and cleaned. They can’t be comfortable to wear like that. Not like feet, that can be cleaned and dried in moments, and be good as new.”
“Well, that is one way of seeing it, certainly,” he answered politely. He bent over and began to untie the thongs of his shoes, then paused and glanced up at her. “I’ll tell you, though: I think that one day you’ll help to make a heavy shoe for a close kinsman of yours.”
Gridhr gaped incredulously at him. “And are you a seer, then?” she demanded. Then she began to chuckle. “Well, foretell as you will; I cannot imagine that such a thing would ever be.”
The stranger hooded his smile, bending again to untie his shoe-thongs. “You’re right that I should take these off to dry. With these hides and fleeces spread on the floor, I can hardly complain of barefoot discomfort. Indeed, you have a most comfortable dwelling here; I can see that you have put much careful work into it.”
Pleased, Gridhr turned back to attend to the stew, which was beginning to smell rich and flavorful. Onions, garlic, turnips, carrots, parsnips and apples—shriveled but still good from her sand-storage pit—had gone into it, along with dried berries and herbs, barley, nutmeats, wild grains and seeds, in all making a dish halfway between a stew and a rich porridge. A generous portion of dried mutton and bear meat had been added, along with fresh meat and the cracked marrow-bones from the old wolf, rich in fat. A meal well-fit to feed an honored guest, she thought, and one that not many halls could offer now, at the tail-end of winter when supplies were running low. She felt that he was someone deserving of honor, though she realized suddenly that she still did not know his name.
“By what name may I call you?” she asked him now.
“Svipal will do,” he answered.
“‘Changeable’? And are you so? I think perhaps that’s true,” she said, answering her own question. “My own name is Gridhr.”
“‘Impetuous? Violent? Greedy?’ I don’t know that your name fits you so well.”
Gridhr grinned wryly. “Well….I have ever gone my own way, and do as I please.”
“And done very well for yourself, as I can see. Do you get lonely here at all?”
“Lonely? Here? Not at all. This neighborhood is well-populated with Jotnar, and many are kinsfolk and good friends of mine. The closest lives only half a day’s walk from here, a bare forty miles, so you can see what I mean. In fact, I worry a little about the crowding; we Jotnar need a lot of room. Unfortunately, among my closest neighbors are the most unpleasant ones: Geirrod and his nasty daughters Gjalp and Greip. The one good thing is that they like me no better than I like them, so we keep our distance. I just got back a few days ago from a visit to my dear foster-mother Hala, and while I was there, Skadhi and Hyrrokkin visited as well. No, I am not lonely. Come, let’s eat now. The food is ready.”
Gridhr brought a small table over near the chair where Svipal was sitting and laid out on it a large wooden bowl of the stew-porridge and two horn spoons. She added several thick slices of rye bread and a small cheese, and drew up a stool for herself to sit across from him. Picking up a slice of bread, she dipped it in the stew to soften, then lifted it dripping to her mouth.
After chewing and swallowing, she nodded at Svipal and said firmly, “Eat. Food will do you good.”
He smiled at her brisk tone and picked up his spoon to tuck into the stew, which did smell irresistible at the end of a long day without food. In a short time the bowl was polished bare, mopped up with the last slices of bread, and half the small cheese was gone as well. Gridhr put the table aside and returned to sit by the firepit on a pile of fleeces, having provided both herself and her guest with horns of foaming ale. She looked forward eagerly to hearing all the news the traveler had collected on his journeys, a traveler’s fair payment for hospitality given.
~~~
Several hours and a keg of good ale later, a warm, companionable silence fell between them, broken only by the hissing of the coals. Svipal’s glance was drawn to the draped cloth of Gridhr’s gown, hanging loose from her shoulder. With a sidelong glance at her, he pushed it gently aside to stroke her heavy breast. Gridhr, warmed with ale and good company, leaned forward into his offered kiss, eyes half-closed, languorously relaxed and willing to enjoy another benefit of a rare visitor to her steading.
As he leaned over her, her vision suddenly blurred. His face appeared as though she was looking at him under water. She blinked several times to clear her sight in the dim light, and suddenly everything about him fell into place. The clouded eye he had, his size and strength, his blue cloak, the image she had briefly seen of him taller than a giant, with an enormous tree looming behind him: he was not some ordinary wanderer passing through; oh, no. He was Odin! Odin the slayer of Aurgelmir Giant-Father; Odin, whom many Jotnar regarded as an oathbreaker, thief and enemy. She saw his features more clearly now; they were not so very different from the face she had seen in the vision, staring into her eyes through those of the Seeress. But somehow he had laid a cloud over that face that had dimmed his intensity, his power and his passionate nature, and had made him seem ordinary, an unassuming traveler passing through, nothing more.
With this recognition, Gridhr felt an instinctive snarl welling up from within herself. She drew sharply back from him, glaring, her face distorted with anger. “Svipal, indeed you are! Ever the deceiver, are you not, Odin?” she growled at him. “What do you seek here with me? What mischief brings you here? And why would you think to find a welcome? The Æsir I love not, and you least of all!” Her anger grew greater as she spoke, as she leaped to her feet, looming tall above the seated Ase. She was no longer willing to offer him the courtesy of reducing her height.
Odin did not move, folded up as he was beside the fire, but only sat and stared into the embers, and spoke not in response to her. Gridhr fumed, grabbing her staff and thumping it on the rocky floor in her rage, violently tempted to swing it at the back of his head and knock him into the fire. She stayed her hand, though it trembled and twitched on the staff, yearning for blood. She had welcomed him in, fed him, given him frith-peace and guest-right. She could not now in honor attack him, deceiver and enemy though he was. Gridhr ground her teeth, trapped between two sides of her nature, and finally released her feelings in a roar of rage that echoed through the chambers of her cave. Her dogs picked up the signs of her anger and began baying and howling themselves, setting off the sheep into uneasy bleating underlain by the deep bass baaing of the rams. The chorus of anger washed over Odin as waves over a rock in the sea, leaving him untouched in his morose posture beside the dying fire.
Still trembling with rage, Gridhr left the cave. Her honor would not allow her to attack him or throw him out, but there was nothing that would make her stay the night in the cave with him. She stalked to the sheep-cave next door, shoving the boulder out of the way and almost ripping apart the hurdle as she opened it and went in. Her animals, uneasy, milled and snorted around her legs. Slowly, their warmth and familiar smell, their breathing and soft, thick coats, calmed her by their ordinariness and innocence. She squatted down into the midst of the flock with the dogs against her back, and leaned her head against the sturdy withers of the big herd-ram. He bent over and nuzzled at her hair, taking an experimental nibble that snagged in his teeth. His jerking and snorting as he tried to loosen the strands from his mouth made Gridhr chuckle in spite of her anger, as she reached over to reclaim her tresses and scratch his familiar, bony face. Slowly, a degree of peace settled over Gridhr’s homestead, and all sank into sleep.
~~~
Gridhr awoke early the next morning, jostled by the sheep’s restlessness as the dawn light called them to their foraging. The milling of the animals stirred up thick odors from the dung on the floor, making her sneeze and become aware of the discomfort of her position. Stiffly and grumpily she arose, battled her way through the wooly mass, and opened the hurdle to let all of them out. She was well aware, by then, of the state of her fine wool gown, which had not been improved after a night crouched on the floor of the sheepfold. Angrily, she added that to her other grievances against Odin.
Having been made so intimately aware of the state of the sheepfold floor, she decided she might just as well sweep it out then and there. She gathered a pile of dung into a large basket, and, grinning at her temptation to offer it to Odin for his breakfast, instead she lugged it out to her winter-fallow garden plot and dug it into the soil.
After that task she headed for the creek to give her gown and herself a much-needed washing. She spread the gown across a shady bush to dry, keeping it out of the sunlight to avoid fading the dye. Then Gridhr splashed downstream to work on the wolfskin. She took her bronze scraper out of the small tree-hollow where she kept it, handy to the place in the stream where she soaked the hides. Next she untied the wolf pelt from the stakes in the stream, and hauled the dripping wet mass up onto the turf where she had another set of stakes set up to tie it to. Having fixed the pelt in place, she set to work scraping the membranes off the inside of the skin. She would have to soak and scrape it several times, before it was ready for the next stage of curing.
Her work soothed her and improved her mood, until she caught sight of Odin walking across the field nearby. She frowned and sat up straight, watching him and hoping he was leaving. Odin walked over to the wolf’s head, left where she had finished butchering the previous day, and picked it up by an ear. He turned toward Gridhr, apparently intending to repeat his request to have the head. Forestalling him, Gridhr called out irritatedly, “Take it and go away!” She watched as he stepped across the shallows of the stream and headed toward the forest on the other side.
~~~
Odin walked toward the forest for a short way, then took a turn down toward the lower stretches of the stream, out of Gridhr’s uncomfortable sight. There, he carefully washed the wolf’s head, removing much of the meat from inside the neck with his knife. He left the head soaking in the stream while he hunted for the herbs he would need. With winter’s hold still tight upon the land, it would be hard to find them, but he knew where to look to find roots, bark, shoots and hidden greenstuffs. It took him the better part of the morning to gather them all, and tie them safely into a knotted corner of his cloak. Then, retrieving the dripping head, Odin set off into the forest.
The tall Ase wandered apparently aimlessly through the forest until he came to a natural glade, created by the felling of a large tree that left a smooth stump in the middle of the clearing. Perhaps Gridhr had felled this tree to make the comfortable chair he had enjoyed last night, Odin thought wryly. He settled himself on the soft, snow-patched mast under the trees and began his work of preserving the wolf’s head.
First he sorted the herbs carefully by kind, each into its own little pile in front of him. Then he gently picked up each pile in turn and sang a soft song over it, holding each bundle of plantstuff up to his mouth so the breath of his song flowed over it. As he sang, he remembered another time he had done such work, long ago: preserving the head of his friend and kinsman Mimir. Mimir had been given hostage to the God-tribe of the Vanir, to settle a war between them and the Æsir. In spite of Mimir’s calm wisdom, a blessing to any folk, the Vanir had become angered and beheaded him, sending the head back to his kinsmen in retribution. Odin remembered his grief at the loss of his mother’s brother, and his determination that he would not lose the rede of this wise Jotunn, in spite of his death.
Mimir’s head lay now within a dim cavern under a root of the World-Tree, warding the Well of Memory that holds the knowledge-treasures of all the ages in its depths. There, Odin had gone to seek the wisdom of this Well, and Mimir had exacted from him wisdom’s price: the pledge of Odin’s eye to lie in the Well, to see what it could not see if it remained in his head. Shaking his head at the memories, Odin sat quietly for a time, allowing the magic of his songs to blend with the powers of the herbs.
When the herbs were fully empowered, Odin stuffed the wolf’s neck-cavity full, and rubbed aromatic leaves carefully over every hair on the surface of the head. He laid large leaves over the wolf’s eyes and nostrils, smoothing them down, and breathed over the leaves. Finally, he took two soft, greyish, elongated leaves, snow-dried and withered but still potent, and placed them carefully under the tongue of the wolf, to either side of the center. Odin laid a forefinger along each leaf in place, and sang again: a buzzing, burring song sung deep in his chest, more like a giant bumblebee than anything else. Again, he recalled his similar actions, laying the leaves in Mimir’s mouth so that now Odin could sit with his uncle’s head in the dim cavern and listen to the low, rumbling voice give forth its words of wisdom.
Odin smiled at the thought, and regarded the wolf’s head. “Wisdom you may not speak, as others know it,” he told the head. “But wisdom will come from what you speak, nevertheless.”
Finished at last, he left the wolf’s head behind him, set upon the stump in the forest clearing. Before heading back toward Gridhr’s cave and the task that awaited him there, Odin spent several hours gathering a second supply of roots, bark and shoots, carefully carving runes on the larger pieces before securing them all into a compact bundle tucked under his arm.