Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

patronymic or, in other respects, of a general character. There was not more than one
Odin, one Thor, one Njörd, one Heimdall, one Loki, and there is no reason for assuming
that there was more than one Vali, namely, the divine son of this name. Of Baldur's
brother Vali we know that he was born to avenge the slaying of Baldur. His impatience to
do that which he was called to perform is expressed in the mythology by the statement,
that he liberated himself from the womb of his mother before the usual time (Baldurs
bróðir var um borinn snemma - Völuspá 32), and only one night old he went to slay
Hodur. The bonds which confine the impatient one in his mother's womb were his
vígbönd, the bonds which hindered him from combat, and these bonds were in the most
literal sense of the word úr þörmum. 11 As Loki's bonds are made of the same material and
destined to hinder him from combat with the gods until Ragnarok, and as his prison is in
the womb of the earth, as Vali's was in that of the earth-goddess Rind's, then Vála
vígbönd as a designation of Loki's chains is both logically and poetically a satisfactory
paraphrase, and the more in order as it occurs in connection with the description of the
impending Ragnarok, when Loki by an earthquake is to sever his fetters and hasten to the
conflict.
86.
THE TWO GIANT CLANS DESCENDED FROM YMIR.
In Hávamál (140, ff.), Odin says that he in his youth obtained nine fimbul-songs
and a drink of the precious mead dipped out of Odrerir from Bestla's father, Bölthorn's
famous son:
Fimbulljóð níu
nam eg af inum frægja syni
Bölþorns, Bestlu föður,
og eg drykk um gat
ins dýra mjaðar,
ausinn Óðreri.
The mythologists have assumed, for reasons that cannot be doubted, that
Bolthorn's famous son, Bestla's brother, is identical with Mimir. No one else than he
presided at that time over the drink dipped out of Odrerir, the fountain which conceals
"wisdom and man's sense," and Sigurdrífumál (13, 14) corroborates that it was from
Mimir, and through a drink from "Hoddrofnir's horn," that Odin obtained wonderful
runes and "true sayings."
Accordingly Mimir had a sister by name Bestla (variations: Beistla, Besla, Bezla).
A strophe by Einar Skalaglamm (Skáldskaparmál 9; cp. Gylfaginning 6) informs us that
Bestla is Odin's mother. Mimir's disciple, the clan-chieftain of the gods, is accordingly
11 "made of guts"; Þömb, the womb, guts (Vigfusson, Dict. pg. 756)