THE TERRIBLE ONE'S HORSE: CHAPTER 14

SPEAKER OF SECRETS: PROPHECY AND THE HEAD OF MIMIR

The god Mimir (“the Rememberer”) is very important in Norse myth, although equally as obscure.  What we do know about him can be set forth below in summary form:

According to Snorri Sturluson’s “Ynglinga Saga”, Mimir is one of the peace hostages the Aesir send to the Vanir in exchange for Kvasir.  The Vanir cut off Mimir’s head and send it back to the Aesir.  Odin preserves the head with herbs and incantations.  He thus gives the head the power to speak to him and thereby to reveal to him many secrets.

In the Eddas the portrait of Mimir is somewhat different.  There he (or his head?) presides over the famous Well of Mimir, which is

“…under the root [of the World Tree] that goes to the frost giants… Wisdom and intelligence are hidden there, and Mimir is the name of the well’s owner.  He is full of wisdom because he drinks of the well from the Gjallarhorn.  All-Father [= Odin] went there and asked for one drink from the well, but he did not get this until he gave one of his eyes as pledge:  As it says in the Sibyl’s Prophecy 28:

Odin, I know all,

Where you hid your eye

In that famous

Well of Mimir.

Each morning

Mimir drinks mead

From Val-Father’s pledge.

Do you know now or what?”

(Snorri’s Edda, Gylfaginning 15)

According to Fjolsvinnsmal 20 and 24, the World Tree itself, normally called Yggdrasill, the Terrible One’s Horse, i.e. Odin’s Horse, is also referred to as Mimameidr or “Mimir’s Pole/Tree”.  A Hoddmimir’s Wood in listed in Vafthrudnismal 45 as a name for the tree, again Yggdrasill, where the survivors of the Ragnarok (elsewhere Lif and Lifthrasir) are sheltered.  Mimir’s Sons, not otherwise identified, are mentioned in Voluspa 46 at the beginning of the account of Ragnarok, the Doom of the Powers at the end of the world.  Grimnismal 50 names Mimir ‘Sokkmimir’ or Sunken-Mimir, makes him the son of a Midvidnir, and tells us Odin slew him.  Finally, Mimir’s name is found in the Thular as the name of a giant, and the kenning ‘Mimir’s friend’ for Odin occurs in Sonatorrek 23 and Volu-Stein 1.

The first thing we must get out of the way actually concerns the god Heimdall.  As we have Odin’s eye being drunk from by Mimir, we need to determine what connection, if any, this eye has to do with Heimdall’s Gjallarhorn, the ‘resounding horn’.  In Voluspa 46 this horn is blown by Heimdall to warn the gods at the beginning of Ragnarok.  Snorri has this in Gylfaginning 26 and 50, although as we have seen already in Gylfaginning 15 above he refers to the Gjallarhorn as a drinking horn with which Mimir drinks from his own well.

Scholars have discussed a further confusion over Heimdall’s horn.  In the Sibyl’s Prophecy 27, we are told that Heimdall’s ‘hljod’ is hidden under the World Tree. The complete listing for hljod from the Cleasby-Vigfusson Icelandic dictionary is as follows:

HLJÓÐ, n. [Ulf. hliuþ = GREEK, 1 Tim. ii. 11, in Uppström's edition; cp. A. S. hleoðor = sound; mid. H. G. lût; cp. O. H. G. hliodar; Germ. laut; Dan. lyd; Swed. ljud; akin to it are several Gr. and Lat. words with an initial GREEK, cl; the original meaning is hearing or the thing heard, like Gr. GREEK and hljóð, hljómr, hlust (q. v.) are kindred words; hence comes the double sense of this word in Icel., sound and silence.

The ‘hearing’ of Heimdall was legendary.  According to Snorri (Gylgaginning 27), “He hears the grass growing on the earth and the wool on sheep, as well as everything else that makes more noise.”

The same Eddaic strophe that mentions the hearing of Heimdall also relates the springing forth of a stream with ‘loamy/clayey/muddy flood’ (aurgom forsi) from the wager of the Father of the Slain, i.e. from the solar eye of Odin.

While there may indeed be confusion here over the hearing of Heimdall and his sound-producing horn, it is also quite possible the hljod should not be interpreted in this context as HEARING, but as SOUND.  In other words, what Sibyl’s Prophecy 27 has hidden under the tree is the SOUND THAT ISSUES FROM THE GJALLARHORN.  And as Simek relates under his entry for the Gjallarhorn, there are other instances of a war or hunting horn doubling as a drinking horn.

In my previous article on the valknut, I demonstrated that the white ‘clay’ or ‘mud’ that the Norns draw along with water from the Well of Urd and coat the heavenly tree with was symbolic of the white cloud covering the sky.  It is fortunate for us that Sibyl’s Prophecy 27 refers to the liquid that streams from Odin’s eye as a ‘loamy/clayey/muddy’ flood.  This tells us we are NOT dealing here with the solar light reflected from the moon, which is the case with the fabled mead of poetry.  Instead, what we have is a myth which tells of the rising of the sun in the morning from the sea (= Well of Mimir AND the Well of Urd) and the sun/eye/drinking horn’s passing up through the cloud to give the Sky-Father his “drink”.  It is also possible, of course, that the early Norse knew that it was the sun that generated clouds, as its appearance could cause mist to rise from other bodies of water.  If this were so, the sun-horn might have been seen as drawing up the cloud from the sea.

Mimir is thus yet another version of Odin the Sky-Father.

And Mimir’s decapitated head?  According to the Eddas, the primeval giant Ymir was slain by Odin (as Sokkmimir was slain by the same god).  Of Ymir’s skull the sky was made, while his brains became the clouds.  The Norns use the clouds to help preserve the Sky-Tree from decay.  Similarly, Odin uses herbs and incantations to preserve Mimir’s head.  I would propose, therefore, that Mimir’s head as the sky/dome of heaven that stretches over and covers the sea/Well of Mimir represents an attempt to identify Odin the Sky Father with the sky-skull of the primeval giant.  This is a sort of symbol transference and is a game regularly engaged in by the Norse poets.