By Winifred Hodge Rose and John T. Mainer
Here is a collection of writings about the Norse God Vidar: personal perspectives on his nature, meaning, and mysteries.
Vidar is considered a god of vengeance, whose cosmic task is to slay the Fenris-Wolf at Ragnarök. Norse myth tells us that all the leather scraps and trimmings leftover from shoe-making end up being made into a great boot that Vidar wears. After the Fenris-Wolf has swallowed Odin during Ragnarök, Vidar takes his oath-sworn vengeance for his father’s death by stepping with this boot on Fenris’s open jaw, and tearing him apart.
Vidar is also called the Silent God, perhaps in reference to an ancient practice among some Heathen tribes of keeping silence until a mighty oath one has sworn is achieved. Odin has not yet been swallowed by the Wolf; Vidar, as yet, has not taken his sworn vengeance. Hence, he is silent.
This is how I relate to him: as a God who enjoys the silence and solitude of Landvidi, his broad domain or God-home. To me, he is a patron of silence, solitude, of broad, quiet, natural lands stretching out into the distance. I often experience, in meditation, that I am sitting across from him at a campfire, near a stream on a quiet night, with the stars spread out overhead and the owls calling, and the scent of pines around us.
Vidar pitches in when the other Deities and humans need him, but still he is detached, biding his time. Something is always withheld; his time is not yet. He stands back, waiting, observing, thinking in silence. His silence hides his power.
What is / will his time be like? Is his time the vengeance itself? Or is the vengeance on Fenris simply the gateway into his time? His true time, I believe, does not contain the Wolf: it flows past the Wolf into other Worlds.
Vidar is strong sunlight; to me the Dagaz / Day rune, with its toroid shape, represents some of his mystery. But now, in these days, his holy light is obscured by the shadows of the world; here, he is a dark God. In his true time, his time fulfilled, he shines in the morning, riding the Worlds on new tides of time. Here is the ‘wide wind-realm’ that is spoken of in Voluspa, here at home in Vidar’s mind, his long view of time and space. A gleam of his light shows above the horizon even now, even here, while on the other side of the sky, the quiet stars shine on.
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Here is a profound and powerful poem by Heathen author and poet John T. Mainer, and a brief conversation between him and myself about Vidar, whom we both highly honor. My thanks for John’s gracious permission to include them here.
Silent One’s Service
By John T. Mainer
For Vidar Odinson, Fenrir bane, who with his boot made of scraps will shatter the All Father’s bane, killing Fenrir at Ragnarök. He speaks little, yet weaves of broken things that which will do what the mightiest godly weapon could not. For those of us whom life has made broken things, his touch is powerful, and his silence holds a purpose, felt if not spoken.
He is forever silent
Watchful and dark
His is the second kill
Of broken things he makes
Salvation in the hour
When all is lost
From broken things
He forges
Second chances
* * * * *
Scraps and leavings
Broken and lost
Without a word he takes
Finds purpose in the leavings
Finds strength within the scars
Weaves of the breaking
Wolf-killing strength
Where Victory Father fell
His scraps alone
Prevail
* * * * *
How many of us
From proud might fallen
From beauty broken
From wisdom riven
To scraps are fallen
Yet
In his hands a weaving
In his eyes a purpose
A use yet
For such as us
* * * * *
He never told me
For what purpose gathered
Against what hour he watches
For what need he sees
One use yet
For scraps and leavings
Yet he weaves
And we abide
In silence
* * * * * * * *
From John:
I have always been Odin’s man, yet I cannot deny that a part of me has grown in awareness of Vidar for decades. The silent one isn’t like Odin, his presence is often very powerful without attempting to grab your attention or influence directly what you are doing. Understanding his purpose for me is far below thought, a dim understanding of purpose, of intent, more of a glimpse of a distant goal and the will to reach it than anything I could put into words.
Oddly, now that I am less than I have ever been, I hear him better, though understand again only at the instinctive rather than reasoning level. I hope this poem brings you something. It wasn’t a choice to write it, but a task I could not rest until I completed it. I don’t know if I grasp entirely what I put into it, but I do ACCEPT it. If that makes any sense.
From Winifred:
Your poem, John, has such a grip on me and won’t let go. I’ve spent days exploring why: because this poem speaks to something universal in today’s world, as we face the threat of climate-Ragnarök, and so many other dire challenges. In the face of all this, all of us are scraps and bits. We are not magic swords that can fell our troubles with one mighty blow, but bits and pieces struggling to shape our responses, however small, to the challenges our whole world faces. It is both powerful and comforting to feel that Holy Beings are helping us to shape our bits and pieces into something that is strong enough to matter, whether in the short term, or in the long view that curves over the event-horizon of space-time, into other Worlds.
It’s interesting: just as you said you could not rest until you completed this poem, I also could not stop working with it, couldn’t put it down, until I understood more deeply why it speaks so strongly to me—it’s my favorite of everything I’ve read of yours. Some of its power, for me, relates to what I just wrote, but some for sure relates to the Vidar connection that you and I both have. I’ve been close to him for years, and the relationship is much as you describe with regard to yours. Unspeaking, a sharing of sacred space and meaning that has no words.
But for me the relationship is also different. Your connection, as a lifelong warrior, is so strong with its unspoken, dark-night-of-the-soul-and-of-the-world purpose; it speaks to you in the darkness of unknowing, the grimness of Vidar’s call to vengeance, and your faith that he has a true use for you.
When I encounter him in shared space, human-oriented space, it is often at night, but a very different night, with shining stars and peaceful woods around. But when I see him on his own, in god-visions of other worlds, he is always the rising morning, the sun coming over the horizon, the power of the Dagaz rune, the sense of fresh, crystalline wind and light sweeping toward us across unguessable horizons. It is so different from his portrayal in the old myths, but I feel it is so true to who he is, or will be, or always has been….I feel that he is not strongly anchored in Time, but moves around to fill his own spaces in different ‘spiritual time zones’. And he looks very different, depending on which time zone one encounters him in!
He is calling you to aid him at Ragnarök. He is showing me what lies beyond Ragnarök, whether that ‘beyond’ is a literal thing in This-World, which I find unlikely, or whether it is a calling to understand and participate in how the Holy Ones themselves experience the time-outside-of-time that represents the deeper meaning of the Gods’ return and the renewal of the World’s foundations. Vidar’s message coming through both of us is that Ragnarök—whatever that truly is— is a bridge that must be crossed, through faith, courage and dedication, in order to reach Vidar’s bright land of morning on the other side of the Sun: the realm of the Dagaz rune.
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The Testing of Young Vidar
Here are two passages from a ‘fantasy’ novel I am writing, about the giantess Gridhr, Vidar’s mother. In the first passage, Odin has obtained a wolf’s head from Gridhr; the wolf’s jaw is wrenched sideways due to the killing blow from her staff. Odin takes it into the forest to perform an enchantment on it. In the second passage, Vidar is a young boy living with his mother in her cave-dwelling; he has not yet met Odin. Odin comes to him during the night and calls him out to the forest for a test of his courage and ability. Does young Vidar have it in him, to face the Fenris-wolf one day? Odin and Vidar go to the clearing in the forest where, years ago in the story, Odin had preserved and enchanted the wolf’s head and set it on a stump, waiting for this moment in time.
Odin walked toward the forest for a short way, then took a turn down toward the lower stretches of the stream. 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 until he came to a natural glade, created by the felling of a large tree that left a flat 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 utter, nevertheless.”
Years pass, and then….
In the deepest part of the night as he slept in his giantess-mother’s cave-dwelling, Vidar felt a touch on his mind, a call in his dream. He opened his eyes drowsily, and saw a cloaked shape standing in the darkness, outlined by the dim light of embers from the firepit behind his back. Vidar sat up in alarm, brushing his tousled hair from his eyes. The shape bent toward him, whispering.
“Vidar, I am your father, Odin. You must get up now and come with me.”
Vidar untangled his skinny little-boy’s limbs from the sleeping-hides and rose unsteadily to his feet, still more than half-asleep and wondering whether he was dreaming. Odin led him out into the moon-blanched landscape, where Vidar tripped over ground he was familiar with, groggy with sleep and confusion and the strange light of the moon. He rubbed his eyes and breathed deeply, trying to wake himself up.
“Tell me, boy,” Odin began. “Do you play often in that forest out there?”
“Yes, I do.” Vidar peered up at the hooded form, trying to get a sense of his unknown father. “Are you really Odin?” he asked hesitantly, knowing that indeed he was.
Odin grinned, giving the question no answer. “Have you ever found anything…unusual out there? Anything unexpected?”
Vidar glanced away from the shadowed face, rapidly awakening now and his mind beginning to work again. “Yes….there’s one thing I’ve seen….”
“Tell me,” said his father.
“A head.” Vidar took a deep breath and watched Odin, trying to judge his reaction. “A wolf’s head.”
“A head,” repeated Odin, glancing at him. “Just a plain old head? What is it doing out there?”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Vidar doubtfully. “It’s just sitting out there on a stump. It’s dried, but most of the fur is still on it. It doesn’t even stink, or not much, anyway. It’s stuffed with something…with dried plants. I picked it up to look and I saw all the stems poking out. Its jaw is crooked, too, like it was wrenched out of place. It looked like one of our ram’s jaws looked, one time when he was fighting with another one and got rammed in the face. It was sticking out sideways, until Mother put it back again.”
“What—she put the wolf’s jaw back?”
“No! The ram’s jaw!” Vidar laughed, and Odin smiled at the sound.
“So what do you think of this not-very-stinky wolf’s head out in the woods?”
Vidar looked down at his feet, scuffing through leaf-mold now as they approached the edge of the moonlit woods. “Well…well, it’s kind of interesting.”
“Is that so? You think it’s interesting?”
“Yes. I don’t know why, really. I like to go out there and look at it sometimes. I tried to move the jaw one time—see if I could put it back, or open the mouth wider. But I couldn’t move it. It was a pretty big wolf, and the jaw is dried in place, I guess. I didn’t want to break it off.”
“Why not?”
“Why not….? I don’t know. I guess I just like it the way it is. It wouldn’t be so much fun to play with if it was broken in pieces.”
“What do you play with it?”
“Well, I just play like I’m fighting with it, that’s all. I have a stick for a sword and I fight with it. But I don’t hit it too hard. I only banged a bit of fur off it, once or twice. It’s still a pretty good fighter, and it snarls at me sometimes.”
“It does, does it? Do you like that?”
“Yes!” The boy grinned fiercely. “I do. I wish it would snarl more often.”
They were fully into the forest, picking their way over dimly-lit fallen branches and tangles, moving slowly.
“Why don’t you take me to see this wolf’s head now? Maybe it will snarl at both of us. Wolves like to howl at the moon, you know, and there’s a fine moon up there right now. Worth a try, don’t you think?”
Vidar grinned eagerly and took the lead, now moving easily through the darkened woods. “I’ll show you, Father. It’s not too much farther now. See that great big rock sticking up over there? The stump and the head are over on the other side of that.” He trotted along at a brisk pace, moving like an eel through the tangles and blockages on the ancient forest floor.
“Do you come out at night here often, boy?” asked Odin.
“No-oo…Mother doesn’t much like me to. She says there’s thurses around, and that the old wolf has plenty of friends out here. And she’s right, too—I often hear them. Sometimes I do come, though; I like it out here at night.” Vidar glanced sidelong at his father, but got no word of criticism or caution from him.
“So your mother knows about the wolf’s head, does she?”
“Yes, she knows. But she won’t tell me anything about it—who put it there or anything. She just leaves it alone and doesn’t want to talk about it. I suppose she’s really more interested in her sheep.”
“Yes, I suppose live sheep would be more interesting than a dead wolf’s head, at that. I think she said something about that to me once. A practical one, your mother.”
Vidar lost interest in a conversation that had declined to the mundane level of sheep and mothers, and dashed off at an even faster pace, nearing the clearing where the wolf’s head perched on a stump out in the middle of the glade. “Come along, Father! Here it is!”
They approached the stump together, Vidar dancing in excitement. “There! What do you think of that! Pretty fierce, isn’t it?”
“Hmmmm…” said Odin, stroking his beard and looking profound. “So tell me, Vidar: how do you get it to snarl?”
Vidar paused, looking thoughtfully at the head. “Ummm…well, it just does, sometimes. It just ups and snarls, and rolls its eyes. There’s some of its eyes left here, if you look closely. They’re kind of dried up, but they’re there.” He poked a finger cautiously into a hairy eye-socket. “See? Maybe if I wave a sword at it it’ll snarl for us.” He dashed off eagerly to arm himself with a long stick, and ran back to flail wildly at the wolf, yelling at the top of his lungs.
Odin watched as the youngster leapt and darted in circles around the wolf’s head with a wild light of battle in his eyes. His body was that of a child, unthewed by a man’s muscle and bone, but he moved with grace and an instinct so sure that Odin could almost see a ghostly grey opponent whirling and snapping around the boy—an opponent whose every move Vidar anticipated before it was made.
Odin nodded to himself, and made a quick gesture with his hand. Two hairy grey shadows glided forward, seemingly from the folds of his cloak, and circled to approach the child from opposite directions. Little could be seen of them save their eyes, gleaming in the moonlight, and the flash of moonlight on a fang. They bore no wolf-scent on them, only the scent of a nightbound forest, earthy and green.
Gliding low on his belly, the wolf Geri made to seize Vidar’s ankle in the darkness, only to be stopped by a sharp crack on the muzzle from the child’s stick. The return sweep of the stick caught between Freki’s forepaws, tangling them as he raced toward the boy, who levered his stick-sword swiftly between the wolf’s own legs to disable his opponent.
Vidar seemed unaware that the two wolves were there. Caught up in his battle-dream, he leapt and swung, shouting at the wolf’s head on the stump in challenge. All his attention was focused on the head and on the movements of his imagined opponent, while each move he made countered the grey shadows that slunk around him. Frustrated, their snarls crescendoed in the quiet night. Suddenly, the boy stopped his wild movements, delight in his eyes, and turned toward Odin watching from the shadows.
“Father! Do you hear? It’s snarling! It’s snarling louder than it ever did before!” Overjoyed, Vidar threw back his head, laughing, and tossed his stick into the air where it fell slowly down, end over end. The wolves circled him, bewildered by this uncharacteristic behavior. This odd little creature neither acted nor smelled like prey at all. They shook their heads, snorting to clear their sensitive noses from the scuffled leaf-mold, and looked back at Odin in confusion.
Odin smiled. “Come, son. It’s time you were back in your bed again.” He laid his broad hand on his son’s small shoulder as Vidar pressed confidingly against him, still filled with delight.
“Didn’t I tell you, Father? See what a fine wolf’s head it is! And it did snarl, too!”
“That it did, my boy. And it won’t be the last time you’ll hear a wolf snarling his battle-call at you—not by a long shot.”
Vidar sighed in satisfaction and led his father home through the shadowed woods. Behind them, two grey shapes ghosted through the trees, still snarling faintly, still confused.
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Note: John Mainer has published three books of stories: They Walk With Us, about the Gods’ companionship with us as we walk the difficult ways of Midgard; and two volumes of Kindertales: Stories Old and New for the Children of the Folk. They are all available from the Lulu bookstore: https://www.lulu.com/shop
