Óðinn

While listening to Jackson Crawford's translation of the "Poetic Edda" as an audio book around the turn-of-the-year, I sketched out this image periodically. The composition is divided thematically into quadrants depicting Óðinn in evolving mindsets.

The upper, left-hand quadrant depicts Óðinn as a rigid, Iron Age All-Father flanked by his ravens Huginn and Muninn. The upper, right-hand side illustrates a scene from Hárbarðsljóð where Óðinn as Hárbarðr argues with Þórr.

The bottom, left-hand quadrant shows Óðinn preparing to throw Gungnir to start the Æsir-Vanir War. The bench on which he sits has a few symbolic images including Þórr killing Jǫrmungandr. This juxtaposes a father starting an age of bloodshed with his son ending the age through comparable violence.

The bottom, right-hand image depicts Óðinn in Hávamál considering his life's choices. When Óðinn warns about being too drunk, I like to think he was lamenting his foolish decision to start the Aesir-Vanir War.

The ethos of my sketch is based in two tragic ironies I considered that were bred into Norse thought. The ultimately wise All-Father in a moment of drunken weakness started a war serving as the basis for grudge matches between gods and otherworldly beasts eventually resulting in the end of the realm he helped build.

Þórr supposedly understood the plight of the Norse in Miðgarðr unlike his father. However, at the Ragnarøkkr his father inadvertently caused, the thunder god would kill the Miðgarðr Serpent causing the destruction of man's entire world and himself through his rash decision. Vǫluspá proved to the Old Norse people that major events would be crafted by larger-than-life entities who were compelled to act by forces even larger than themselves (such as the Nornir or unchangeable fate.)

Óðinn can see future events, so he fluctuates between attempting to stop them and sinking into depression over the inevitability of an ending. In the temporarily beauteous world that grows out of the deaths of the Aesir which the völva foretells to Óðinn, an ominous image of a released Níðhǫggr flies over the landscape possibly signifying the foreboding a necessary balance of destruction with life. Even Óðinn along with his brothers killed Ymir to make the world out of his body. As a mortal individual in this culture, one would learn to accept the dichotomous, strange actions of kinsmen and foes because the Norns may sway them to actions they did not intend to execute.