Principales características del Contrato de Concesión

Having considered Valhalla and its roots in the need to deal with death and grief through memorialization, it is now time to turn again to its lord: to one-eyed Wotan in his broad- brimmed hat. “What distinguishes the historical Valhalla from Hel is, shortly stated, Óðinn”; and indeed, the god himself can hardly be separated from his hall. For as Valhalla is the Hall of the Slain, Wotan is the Father of the Slain (Valfather) and the Receiver of the Slain (Valthögnir), and he is also the one whom the Norse skalds had to thank for the gift of poetry by which they enshrined their holy dead within his hall. To fully understand what this meant to the Norse, it is necessary to delve deeper into the god’s nature--to see him as they saw him, both awesome and terrifyingly dark, giver of victory and song, and claimer of lives in return.

As discussed in the first chapter of this book, Wotan’s role as a battle-god is specifically that of a god of death in battle, who receives the slain as his own sacrifices; and it is this role which he obviously fulfils in regards to Valhalla. Egill Skalla-Grímsson’s Sonatorrek shows him as a more general god of death, bearing up, for instance, the sickness-dead Gunnarr; and blamed for breaking troth with Egill in regards to the death of Egill’s sons. Wotan also seems to reveal himself as a god of death--perhaps even a personification of death--in Grímnismál, where his threat to Geirroðr, “Now you shall see Óðinn!” says nothing other than, “Now you shall die!” Several of Wotan’s attributes in the Norse sources also provide us with the clear image of his role as a death-god--and, perhaps, a member of the host of the dead himself. How the Norse understood, and felt about, Wotan was expressed directly by how they described him: wandering through the wilderness in his blue-black cloak, sacrificial spear in his hand and his face half-hidden by his low-hanging hat, riding on a many-legged gray horse, followed by ravens and wolves--perhaps with the mark of the hangman’s noose to be seen beneath his beard, as hinted at by his by-names such as “Hanged One” (Hangi).

The first mark by which a Norseman would have known Wotan from any ordinary mounted wayfarer is, of course, his peculiar steed, the eight-legged gray Sleipnir. A number of theories have been advanced regarding Sleipnir’s multiple legs, some of which would point directly to a specific relationship between Sleipnir and Wotan as death-god. H.R. Ellis-Davidson, for instance, suggests that the eight legs may signify the four pallbearers who carry the dead, comparing the Norse image of the eight-legged horse to an Indian dirge which sings of the funeral bier as the horse with eight legs and four heads. Höfler likewise argues for the eight legs as representing four humans, but perceives Sleipnir as the “horse” of traditional folk-masquerades, which, according to his theory, are related to the folklore of the Wild Hunt and to the cult of Wotan as, not only god of death, but specifically leader of the frenzied dead who ride out during stormy nights in autumn and winter (especially around the Yule season). Mis-legged horses, as well as appearing in German Wild Hunt folklore, are also often taken as signs of death or ill-omen: North German and Danish folk belief both include tales of the Helhest, or “death-horse”, which “has three legs and one eye, and when someone sees it, he shall die”, or else goes around in times of plague. Alternate interpretations, however, include an influence from neighbouring shamanic cultures, since the eight-legged horse is attested in Siberian shamanism (Nancke-Krogh, for instance, compares a shaman’s many-legged hobby-horse from northern Mongolia and an eight-legged bronze horse ornament from Russia on which the legs are formed by hanging bells); Sleipnir as a symbol of the winds, with his eight legs corresponding to the eight directions of the Northern map; or the eight feet simply showing Sleipnir’s unusual speed. The plethora of plausible explanations makes it difficult, if not impossible, to single out any one as an indicator of Sleipnir’s character--or Wotan’s.

More significant is Sleipnir’s gray colour. Turville-Petre observes that the dead Guðrún Gjúkadóttir (Wagner’s Gutrune), when she appears in a dream to a post-conversion

Icelander, is mounted upon a gray horse, as is the woman who appears in a dream to foretell the death of Gísli the Outlaw. In Icelandic folktales of the Black Death, the plague takes the shape of a man and woman riding gray horses or of a gray bull. Brennu-Njáls saga includes a frightening vision of a pitch-black man on a gray horse riding through fire and shooting a fiery shaft as a token of the catastrophic events to come: whether this man is meant to be Óðinn or not, the imagery is certainly reminiscent of Óðinn (whose name appears nowhere in the saga); and if he is not Óðinn, he is certainly dead, as his colour and the repetitive staves of his verse (in Icelandic literature, it is typical for dead persons to repeat the last lines of their poetry) make clear. The Norse word for gray, grár, is also used metaphorically to denote spite or malice. Sleipnir’s colour, thus, is the colour of a death- horse, the gray shadow bringing forth the terrifying quality of his rider--whose appearance on horseback bodes a coming war, as seen, for instance, in the tale of the Smith of Nesjar: That same winter (1208 C.E.) after Yule, before the beginning of summer, a smith lived in Nesjar. That was one evening, when a man came riding and asked him for lodgings and asked him to make horseshoes. The farmer said he could well do that: they got up when it was a long time until dawn, and started to forge. The farmer asked: “Where were you last night?” “In Melðadal”, said the guest: that was north in Telemark. The smith said: “You must be the greatest liar-man, because no one could have travelled all that way.” Then he went back to forging, and could not forge as he wished. The guest said: “Forge as you yourself wish to fare”, and the horse-shoes became larger than he had seen before, but when they carried them to where he had the horse, then they shoed it. Then the guest spoke thus: “You are a foolish man,” he said, “and unwise: why do you ask nothing?” The smith said, “What sort of man are you? or from whence have you come? or where shall you fare?” He answered, “I have come from the North over the land, and I have long dwelt in Norway, but I expect

now to fare eastwards to Sweden, and I have long been on shipboard, but now I must go about by horse.” The smith said, “Where do you expect to be by evening?” “Eastwards in Sparmörk”, he said. “That must not be the truth”, the farmer said, “for

that can hardly be reached in seven days’ ride.” He mounted then upon the horse; the farmer asked, “Who are you?” He answered, “Have you ever heard Óðinn spoken of?” “I have heard him named,” the farmer said; “Here you may now see him”, the guest said, “but if you do not trust that which I have said to you, you may now see my horse leap over the wall.” The horse backed up: then he turned the spurs to the horse and pricked him on; the horse leapt over the wall, and never came down, so that he (the smith) never saw him again. Four nights later there was a great battle . . . between King Sörkvir and King Eiríkr. The smith told this tale to Jarl Filippó that same winter in Túnsberg . . .

(Fornmanna sögur, vol. 9. Sveinbjörn Egilsson and others, eds. Norræna fornfræðafélags, 1828-37, pp. 55-56.)

In spite of his disbelief, the smith is spared from death, probably because he has done Óðinn a favour--a common motif in folktales of the Wild Hunt, and also frequently

appearing in Scandinavian folktales of the Black Death, where Plague rewards the man who has carried her across the river either by sparing him, or, if he is already doomed to die, giving him a quick and easy death.

Wotan’s blue-black (blár) cloak was another sign of his dark and terrifying nature in the minds of the Norse. Blár is a colour associated directly with death, especially with the evil dead. For instance, in Eyrbyggja saga, the body of the undead Thórólfr Twist-foot is described as “blár as Hel” and big as an ox, while the same description also appears for the malicious corpse Glámr in Grettis saga. Such descriptions were based on observed reality: the darkness of skin and gross swelling are well within the range of normal symptoms of decay, while the tendency to interpret such signs as supernatural, especially if the person has died under abnormal circumstance (violence, accident, an unfamiliar illness), is also usual, as discussed extensively by Barber: “it is these people . . . who are apt to lie undiscovered long enough to develop into monsters, growing in size, changing colour,

shedding their skin--in short, undergoing all the diverse changes that we have seen in the ‘vampires’”. When the dead appear in the supernatural world, the dark hue of the decaying body may have appeared symbolically as dark clothes, as in the case of Guðrún Gjúkadóttir in Sturlunga saga, for example.

In the human world, blár and black were used as mourning clothes among the Norse. Here, as with the other Indo-European peoples who followed this usage, the purpose was probably that of identification with the dead--whether, as Ranke suggests, to symbolically share the experience of death with the deceased, or, as is more often the case in folklore, to prevent the jealous dead from dragging the living back with them.

Unique to the North, however (as far as we know), was the custom of wearing blue-black for the purpose, not only of acknowledging death, but of actively dealing it out. This practice may have gone back to a very early time in the Germanic world: Tacitus speaks of the Harii as blackening their shields, dyeing their bodies, and attacking on dark nights: “by sheer panic and shadowy effect they strike terror like an army of ghosts”, an activity which Ranke interprets as imitating the dead and perhaps thus assuming their powers. In the sagas, wearing blue/blue-black clothing is specifically a sign of the intention to kill, as noted, among others, by Hermann Pálsson: “The image of Hrafnkell on both occasions riding in blue clothing is all we need to know about his mood and intention, for in the sagas blue clothing is customarily worn by killers”. The hero Víga-Glúmr (Battle-Glúmr), quite possibly an hereditary worshipper of Óðinn, is given a blár cloak and inlaid spear by his grandfather in Norway; when he kills his enemy Sigmundr, Víga-Glúmr’s brother Thórsteinn recognises what his sibling has been up to by the combination of “both cloak and spear” (ch. 8, p. 28) before he sees the blood in the inlay-work on the spearhead. Interestingly, the cloak is the article most often referred to in this context. Of course, as the usual outer garment, it would be the most immediately visible and thus the obvious choice for announcing one’s intentions to the casual observer (or the saga-audience, as the case may be). However, the cloak, especially a hooded one such as Víga-Glúmr’s, is also significant because it conceals the wearer’s body and, at times, face--as would be appropriate if the garment were indeed seen as a means by which the bearer identified himself with the dead and the powers of the realm of death.

“Now you may see Óðinn”: as the Norse saw him, a terrifying figure, whose image encompasses both the dead and the force of death--riding to herald war on his ghastly gray horse, swathed in his blue-black cloak, holding the spear which dooms his battle-sacrifices, followed by carrion-beaked ravens and bloody-mouthed wolves. He is a god to be feared and propitiated, certainly--but worshipped out of love, for himself and his gifts?

God of Runes and Magic

Óðinn shifted shapes. His body lay then as if sleeping or dead, but he was then a bird or an animal, a fish or a wyrm, and fared in a moment to faraway lands on his errands or those of other men. He was also able to slake fire with a single word or calm the sea or turn the wind in any direction he willed . . . he woke up dead men from the earth or sat himself beneath hanged men . . . He was able to achieve all these accomplishments with runes and those songs which are called galdrar . . . Óðinn was accomplished at that skill from which the greatest power followed, which is called seiðr, and practiced it himself, and with this he was able to know the fates of men and things unset, and also how to cause the deaths or soul-loss or ill luck of men, and also how to take from men wit and life-force and give it to another

(Ynglinga saga, pp. 18-19).

Throughout his wanderings among his people, Wotan seems to have two chief guises. One was spoken of more fully in the first chapter: the god of battle-death and sacrifice, the armed and armoured god who sits in Valhalla among his heroes, watchful against the end of the world. The other, at first glance, seems to have very little to do with Valhalla or heroic deeds: this is the ancient wizard wandering between the worlds in his endless search for wisdom, who we see in several of the Eddic poems. In “The Dreams of Baldr”, for instance,

Wotan rides down Hel-road to call a dead seeress forth from her grave; though she

struggles against him, complaining of her long sleep, in time she must tell him all he wishes to know. Vafþrúðnismál shows him, ever-greedy for lore, going in disguise to the hall of the jötunn Vafþrúðnir--a journey of peril from which Frigg fears he will not return. Óðinn wagers his head against Vafþrúðnir’s in a riddle-game; having found the answers he seeks, he wins by asking the jötunn the one unanswerable question: “What did Óðinn whisper in the ear of his son Baldr on the funeral pyre?” Like the unlucky Geirroðr, Vafþrúðnir recognises his guest--and loses his life.

Most of all, however, the image of Wotan as seeker of wisdom, willing to go to any lengths in order to get the power of knowledge, is summed up in one of the best-known passages of Hávamál: at the climax of his lengthy recitation of lore and advice, he reveals, I know that I hung on a windy tree,

nights all nine,

gored by a spear, given to Óðinn, given, self to myself.

On that tree of which no man knows, from what roots it rises.

With no bread they heartened me nor with drinking horn, I pried downward,

I took up the runes, roaring I took them, I fell afterwards from there . . .

This image--the long-bearded god hanging on the ancient tree, struck through with his own spear, to find the hidden lore of the runes through his own pain and death--has struck many as the deepest and most meaningful face of Wotan. It is ironic, then, that over the past century both the age and the Northern origin of the ordeal of the runes have been

questioned more thoroughly than any aspect of the god’s existence.

Óðinn’s self-sacrifice on the windswept tree hangs, both geographically and spiritually, between two equal and opposite poles. Eastward stands the Siberian shaman: beating on an adorned drum (similar to the drums used by the Saami, whom the Norse both respected and feared for their magical skills), and clad in a costume which might perhaps resemble a bird, reindeer, or bear, jingling with iron pendants. In due course, he may climb into the white branches of the birch-tree that, for him, embodies the cosmos; by doing this, he travels through the worlds, where he may seek out the spirits that dwell in the various realms--like Óðinn on the World-Tree (if indeed, as most interpretations would have it, that is the tree on which the god hangs). More importantly still, it is only through the initiation of death that the shaman finds his own powers: in a visionary trance, he experiences the rendering of his flesh, the sundering and re-forging of his bones. Often this is preceded by an sickness which has put him in grave danger of physical death; both during and after his initiation, it is not uncommon for him to use means such as extreme heat, extreme cold, and pain in order to raise his own spiritual powers. Could the shaman’s gaining of power through death and suffering have influenced the figure of Óðinn hanging on the tree? This has been argued extensively since the nineteen-twenties, since the similarity between Óðinn’s hanging on a tree which might be the World-Tree and the shamanistic means of travelling between the worlds by climbing a birch-tree was first observed, followed quickly by comparisons of the transformative ordeals of initiation, which can be summed up most neatly by Buchholtz’s observation that “(Óðinn’s ordeal) is the most impressive example in favour of shamanism . . . the ecstasy first creates the godly.”

However, far to the South stands a figure whose ordeal is, in many of its particulars, a near-perfect reflection of Óðinn’s. Like the Northern god, he hangs on a tree; like the Northern god, he is pierced with a spear, and receives no bread to comfort him or strong drink to numb his pain; his death, too, is couched in terms of a sacrifice, and, like Óðinn (according to later interpretations of the Southern legend) he descends to the Underworld, then comes back in full godly power. This is, of course, the central figure of christian

mythology: the crucified and resurrected Jesus of Nazareth. The close similarity between the two legends was noticed by the Danish scholar Sophus Bugge as early as the 1880’s: