Kvasir

Summary

Kvasir is a wise man in the Scandinavian myths whom the gods made from spittle, and whose blood became the mead of poetry. Bragi tells his story to the gods' guest Ægir in answer to the question: where did this art you call poetry begin? Skáldskaparmál 5.

Bragi said: the gods had a quarrel with the people called the Vanir. They held a peace meeting and sealed the truce by having both sides go to one vessel and spit into it. When they parted, the gods kept the vessel, unwilling to let the token of peace be lost, and made a man of it named Kvasir, so wise that no one could ask him anything he could not answer. He travelled far and wide through the world to teach men wisdom, until he came as a guest to two dwarfs, Fjalar and Galar, who called him aside and killed him. They let his blood run into two vessels and a kettle, the kettle named Óðrerir and the vessels Són and Boðn, and mixed honey with the blood, and from it came the mead that makes whoever drinks it a poet or a scholar. They told the gods that Kvasir had choked on his own wit, because no one was learned enough to question him. Then the dwarfs drowned the giant Gillingr and killed his wife with a millstone; his son Suttungr carried them out to a skerry the tide covers, and they ransomed their lives with the mead. Suttungr took it to a mountain called Hnitbjörg and set his daughter Gunnlöð to guard it. That is why poets call poetry "Kvasir's blood", "the dwarfs' drink" and "the liquid of Óðrerir".

Then Odin came under the name Bölverkr, "evil-doer", and worked a summer for Baugi, Suttungr's brother, for the wage of one drink of the mead. When Suttungr refused, he bored into the mountain with an auger named Rati, crept in as a serpent, lay three nights with Gunnlöð, and was granted three draughts, with which he emptied the kettle and both vessels; then he flew off as an eagle. Suttungr flew after him as an eagle, and the gods set out their vessels in the yard of Asgard. Odin spat the mead into them, but Suttungr was so close that he sent some of it out behind him; no one guarded it, anyone who wished took it, and it is called "the poetasters' share". Odin gave the mead to the gods and to those men who can compose poetry. Skáldskaparmál 6. Odin speaks of it in his own voice in Hávamál: Gunnlöð gave him on a golden seat a drink of the precious mead and he repaid her poorly; Óðrerir came up to the rim of men's sanctuary; he deceived Suttungr and left Gunnlöð weeping.

The idea the story turns on is that wisdom here is made from a peace: from the spittle of two sides who had been at war. It lives as a man who walks among people and teaches them, is killed and becomes a drink, passes through murder, ransom, seduction and theft until it reaches the gods, and then the poets take from it. Poetry reaches people only after passing through all these hands, and on the way a share falls behind for those who compose badly.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the essay does not read it. The final r of Kvasir is the Old Norse nominative ending; it drops in the genitive, Kvasis, as in "Kvasir's blood", leaving Kvas-. That is Arabic qabas: q becomes k in the European languages, b, sister of f and w, becomes v, and s is s. In Lane qabasa nāran is to take fire from its main mass, whence qabasa ʿilman, he acquired knowledge, aqbasahu ʿilman, he taught him knowledge, the qābis is one who seeks fire or knowledge, and al-qawābis are "those who teach men what is good". On this reading Kvasir is the qābis who travelled the world teaching people, and his blood is the firebrand from which every poet takes his flame: Odin with his three draughts, and the poetasters with what fell behind him. Cleasby–Vigfusson writes the name Kvásir with a long vowel, the long ā of qābis.

Linguistic Root

Kvasir and qābis

Cleasby–Vigfusson calls Kvasir "a mythological person, the hostage given by the Vanir to the Ases, whose blood when slain was the poetical mead", and notes that poetry is called "Kvasir's blood". The dictionary thus follows Ynglinga saga for his origin. It gives no etymology for the name, and Orel's Germanic handbook has no entry for it.

Lane, under q-b-s: qabasa nāran, "he took fire from him; or he took fire from the main mass thereof"; qabasa ʿilman, "he acquired knowledge from him; or he learned knowledge"; aqbasahu ʿilman, "he taught him knowledge"; qabas, "a firebrand taken from the main mass of fire"; qābis, "a seeker of fire" and "a seeker of knowledge"; and al-qawābis, "those who teach men what is good". From it comes ʿAlī's saying, "so that he manifested a light of truth to the seeker thereof".

The comparison follows the merger groups of the Juthoor sound laws: q belongs to the velar group that becomes c, k and g; b to the labial group that becomes b, p and v; s to the sibilant group that becomes s. The long vowel after the k in the dictionary's spelling answers the long ā of qābis. One thing remains: we have not reached a Germanic etymology of the name against which to weigh this reading, so it rests on the sound and on Kvasir's story alone.

Other readings

The name could also be read as kayyis: in Lane kays is intelligence and sagacity and the kayyis is the intelligent, sagacious man, and Kvasir is the wisest of beings. But this reading sets y against v, and y, a weak letter, drops far more often than it becomes a labial. It could be read as kaʾs, a cup with drink in it, but a glottal stop does not become v. The essay does not mention Kvasir, though it reads the name of Odin, who drank his blood, as udhun, the ear that hears and knows.

Key Mythic Narratives

Kvasir the Vanir hostage

Ynglinga saga gives Kvasir another origin. After the war of the Æsir and the Vanir, the Vanir gave Njörðr the rich and his son Freyr, and the Æsir gave Hœnir and sent with him Mímir, the wisest of men; in return the Vanir gave the wisest in their own company, whose name was Kvasir. In this version Kvasir is a man of the Vanir, not a being made from the spittle of both sides.

Kvasir and the net

In Gylfaginning Kvasir appears alive after the death of Baldr. When Loki fled, made a net and burned it on seeing the gods approach, the first to enter the house was Kvasir, "the wisest of all"; he saw in the ashes the pattern of the burned net, understood that it was a device for catching fish, and told the gods, who made one like it and caught Loki with it. Snorri does not reconcile this with the story of Kvasir's killing.

Odin at Fjalarr's

In Hávamál Odin says that the heron of forgetfulness hovers over drinkers and steals their wits, that he was fettered with its feathers in Gunnlöð's courts, and that he was drunk, overfull of drink, at wise Fjalarr's; the best ale, he concludes, is the one after which each man gets back his own wits. Fjalarr here bears the name of the dwarf who killed Kvasir, and the text does not say whether they are the same.

Symbolic Reading

The Norse rereading essay reads the war of the Æsir and the Vanir as a conflict between a warrior class and a class of farmers and traders, and their peace as the alliance of power and wealth on which northern society rested; it makes Odin a lesson in seeking knowledge whatever the price. On that reading, applied here to a story the essay does not mention, Kvasir is the peace itself become knowledge walking among people. What the text itself holds is two things from daily life: spitting into one vessel as the token that seals a truce, and honey mixed into a liquid to make a drink for the hall.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Rigveda 4.27 a falcon carries Soma down from the height of heaven, the archer Kṛśānu shoots at it, and a feather falls from the bird; in Skáldskaparmál Odin in eagle shape carries the mead made from Kvasir's blood to Asgard with Suttungr chasing him, and some of the mead falls from him. In both stories the drink of inspiration is stolen on a bird's wings and its thief is pursued. In the Pyramid Texts Atum spits out Shu and Tefnut, so the first pair is made from the creator's mouth, and Kvasir is made from the spittle of all the gods. Prometheus steals fire from the gods for men, and the firebrand taken from a fire is the reading given to Kvasir's name here.

The mead of poetry that Odin brings to the gods and the poets, paid for with a summer's labour and a broken oath, is a case of the culture heroes, and his trick on Baugi and Gunnlöð a case of the trickster.

Iran also has a drink that gives knowledge: in his hymn haoma gives those who sit long over books knowledge and wisdom, and its exhilaration comes with Truth, while other drinks come with Wrath; see Haoma.

In India the bird Garuḍa carries the drink of immortality from heaven after defeating the gods who guard it, without tasting it, and when Indra strikes him with the thunderbolt he lets fall a single feather; the drink goes back to the gods at the end of the story; see Garuḍa.