Above is a new video I've just made, entitled "Yule and the Wisdom of Odin" (12 29 2019).
The Yule season in northern Europe spanned a period on either side of the winter solstice, and appears to have been closely associated with the god Odin the All-Father. Odin is a complex god and a boundary-crossing figure, which may help to explain his association with this great turning point of the year. The very word Yule is thought by some to be connected with one of the names of Odin. And even to this day, if you want to wish someone Merry Christmas in the language of Norway or Denmark or many of the other lands of the far north, you say “God Jul!” ("Good Yule!"). And in the song "Silent Night" in Norwegian, the lyrics are saying "Glade Jul, Hellige Jul," or “Glad Yule, Holy Yule.”
Other names of the god Odin include:
- Mimir’s Friend,
- Wolf’s Enemy,
- Gunnlod’s Embrace,
- the Wise Victory-Tree,
- the Raven-Tester,
- the Bale-worker,
- the Spear-Lord,
- the Long-Beard,
- the Hanged One,
- the Hooded One,
- the Masked One,
- the Terrible One,
- the Wise One,
- the Concealer,
- the All-Father,
- the Yule-Father,
- the Wanderer,
- the Awakener,
- the Truth-Finder,
- the All-Wise, and
- the Sage (among many other names).
Odin is the god who sees through the surface appearances to the deep hidden heart of things, most clearly in his ordeal to gain the secret of the runes, but also in his quest to obtain the Mead of Poetry, as well as in his pursuit of the wisdom preserved among the oldest jotuns, the giants of Norse myth whose time predated that of the gods, and who were the first beings, before gods and men.
One such quest is described in the Vafthruthnismal, in the Poetic Edda, or Elder Edda, in which Odin seeks out the ancient jotun Vafthruthnir, and engages the giant in a riddle contest.
Of this episode, Professor Carolyne Larrington of Oxford says (in her translation of the Poetic Edda):
[. . .] Odin is characterized by his obsessive quest for wisdom, particularly for information about Ragnarok. In this poem he sets off, against his wife's advice, disguised as a poor wanderer, to test his wisdom against the giant Vafthrudnir, known only from this poem. Once Odin has proved his mettle, by answering questions which the giant puts to him, he is invited to risk his head in questioning the giant. Vafthrudnir's Sayings (Vafthrudnismal) belongs to the genre of the wisdom contest, known in many other cultures. Two protagonists ask each other questions or riddles, until one fails to answer. Thus the questioner must know the answer to his question; the answerer corroborates the interlocutor's information, rather than providing new facts. The trick question with which Odin wins the contest seems to be a favourite of his, since he also uses it to secure victory in a riddle contest against King Heidrek in Heidrek's saga. Vafthrudnir's questions elicit simple mythological facts: the names of the horses who draw the day and the night, the name of the river which divides giants and gods and of the field on which the battle of Ragnarok will be fought. Odin's questions are more pointed: he draws out the history of the universe, its past (vv. 20 - 35), and present (36 - 43), culminating in questions about the future and Ragnarok (44 - 54). Some scholars have speculated that Odin's real aim is to discover his own fate (52 - 3); once he hears about the wolf, he brings the contest to a speedy end with his unanswerable question. Odin alone knows what he whispered into Baldr's ear [. . .]. As a contest between god and giant, Vafthrudnir's Sayings is mimetic of Ragnarok. Vafthrudnir's answers emphasize the ancientness and authority of the giants as the first of beings, but Odin's questions lead away from the giants and their claims, to the final triumph of gods and men. It is they, Odin's descendants and creations, if not Odin himself, who will survive the final conflagration. The giants may have had a past, but they have no future; Vafthrudnir's defeat in the contest symbolizes the final defeat in time of the giant race. [36]
Note that the Norse myths thus portray the pursuit of wisdom as a process of seeing through riddles. Odin, in disguise, gives his name in this contest as Gagnrathr, or "Riddle-Reader." The very nature of a riddle is the requirement of being able to see beyond the literal meaning, to see connections and patterns that are not necessarily apparent on the surface. The god who is called in other places the All-Wise gives his name as the Riddle-Reader: he is not content with surface or literal appearances. He is also the god of poetry – and poetry by its very definition eschews the literal, perceives and evokes hidden connections, and pierces through surface appearances.
Note how this tendency is the very opposite of the inability to see through the “eye-illusions” prepared by the jotun Utgarda-Loki in the episode of Thor’s visit, accompanied by Loki and two mortal companions, to the realm of Utgard, where even Thor’s unmatched strength and power is defeated through illusion. That episode shows that if we believe lies about ourselves and about the world around us, we can be easily defeated, even if we are more than capable of overcoming those challenges, based on our actual potential and ability.
This is very much the situation that the people of virtually every nation on earth find themselves in at this very moment in history, living in a world of incredible abundance, but presented with the illusion of scarcity by the proponents of austerity, who want to take that abundance for themselves, and whose power depends on the inability to see beyond the literal, and therefore the ability to see beyond the illusion.
At this Yuletide season of the year, associated so closely in the northern lands with the god Odin -- the god who is obsessed with seeing beyond the literal and surface of things, the god who introduces himself as the “Riddle-Reader” to the ancient jotun Vafthruthnir -- we should think very carefully about what these ancient myths, this ancient wisdom given to humanity for our benefit and blessing in this life, these stories of Odin and Thor and their visits to the realm of the jotuns, mean for our lives in this very present moment.
I am convinced that it is absolutely imperative that we stop allowing ourselves to be tricked, as Thor and his companions are tricked, by illusions that cause us to sabotage our own potential, illusions perpetrated by those who realize that we are actually far more capable than even we ourselves realize, and who don’t want us to reach our true potential (we ourselves often participate in that sabotage, by accepting the illusions and lies given to us by others, as Thor and his companions do in that story) – and instead that we begin to read the riddles and start to see the connections that may not be obvious on the surface. The ancient myths actually present this as a matter of utmost importance – indeed, a matter of life and death.
And so, as they say in Norway and in other parts of the far northern region of our planet, God Jul!
