Rated: General
Summary: Before Bragi, the long-bearded god, came to Valhalla, he met a beautiful woman in a deep forest, who asked him to judge a contest between herself and her brothers.
A/N: This story is largely fanciful, based on a few tantalizing hints. First: the notion of a connection between Iðunn and the sons of Ivaldi is attested, and the description of the story of Kvasir is well-known. There have been previous suggestions of Bragi’s connection to Kvasir, but as far as I know, this is nothing more than speculation. I have made up most of this, though I have tried to make it sound Norse mythology-ish, at least.
Many thanks to kimikocha and Husband, for beta-ing!
For Bragi, first maker of poetry
When gods die, sometimes they return in new ways. Kvasir was a god created from the spit of the Aesir and Vanir, or perhaps he was a man. He was not an ordinary sort of fellow, at any rate, but he was murdered by two dwarfs who cut his throat to make mead from his blood and that was the end of his first story, or at least his part in it. The story keeps going, and as he was a god of stories or of poetry or skaldishness, this shows you that he cannot have died the way a mortal might, to pass out of touch with this world.
In the rest of the story, it is told how Odin All-father made love to the giantess Gunnlod and stole the mead of Kvasir from Suttung her father to bring it back to the gods. The mead of poetry was returned to them, but Kvasir himself returned in a different form, nine months later, when Gunnlod gave birth to Odin’s son Bragi, who is called first maker of poetry; and who could he be but another form of Kvasir, with a sobriquet like that?
Continue reading “The Story of Bragi and Iðunn”
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