Fire Torture

Odin and Frigg sat in Hlidskialf and looked into all the worlds. Odin said, ‘Do you see Agnar, your foster-son, there raising children with a giantess in a cave? But Geirrod, my foster-son, is king and rules over the land.’ Frigg says: ‘He is so stingy with food that he tortures his guests if it seems to him that too many have come.’ Odin says that is the greatest lie. They wagered on the matter.

Frigg sent her handmaid, Fulla, to Geirrod. She told the king to beware lest a wizard, who had come into the country, should bewitch him, and said he could be known by this sign: that no dog was so fierce that it would leap on him. And that was the greatest slander that Geirrod was not generous with food; however, he had that man arrested whom no dog would attack. He was wearing a blue cloak and called himself Grimnir, and would say nothing more about himself, though he was asked. The king had him tortured to make him speak and set him between two fires, and he sat there eight nights.

Geirrod the king had a son who was 10 years old, and he was called Agnar after Geirrod’s brother. Agnar went to Grimnir and gave him a full horn to drink from, saying that the king was acting wrongly to have him, an innocent man, tortured. Grimnir drank it up. Then the fire had come so close that Grimnir’s cloak burned. He said:

1 ‘Hot you are, hurrying fire, and rather too fierce;
go away from me, flame!
My fur cloak singes, though I lift it up,
my mantle burns before me.

2 ‘Eight nights I have sat here between the fires,
yet no one offered me food,
except Agnar alone, and he alone shall rule,
the son of Geirrod, the land of the Goths.

3 ‘Blessed shall you be, Agnar,
since Odin bids you be blest;
for one drink you shall never
get a better reward.

4 ‘The land is sacred which I see lying
near the Æsir and elves;
but in Thrudheim Thor shall remain,
until the Powers are torn asunder.

5 ‘Yewdale it is called, the place where Ull*
has made a hall for himself;
Alfheim the gods gave to Freyr
in bygone days as tooth-payment.*

[...]

48 ‘Broadhat, Broadbeard, Victory-father, Hnikud,
All-Father, Father of the Slain, Atrid and Burden-god;
by one name I have never been known
since I went among the people.

49 ‘Grimnir they called me at Geirrod’s
and Ialk at Asmund’s,
and then Kialar, when I pulled the sledge;
Thror at the Assembly,
Vidur in battle,
Oski and Omi, Equal-high and Biflindi,
Gondlir and Harbard among the gods.

50 ‘Svidur and Svidrir I was called at Sokkmimir’s,*
and I tricked the old giant then,
when I became of Midvidnir’s famous son
the sole slayer.

51 ‘Drunk are you, Geirrod! You’ve drunk too much;
you are bereft of much, of my support,
that of all the Einheriar, and Odin’s favour.

52 ‘Much I told you but little you remember;
friends have played you false;
I see my friend’s sword lying
all spattered with his blood.

53 ‘The Terrible One will now take the weapon-weary slaughtered man;
I know your life is over;
the disir are against you, now you may see Odin,*
draw near to me if you can!

54 ‘Odin I am called now, Terrible One I was called before,
they called me Thund before that,
Vak and Skilfing, Vafud and Hroptatyr,
Gaut and Ialk among the gods,
Ofnir and Svafnir, all these I think stem
from me alone.’

Geirrod the king sat with a sword on his lap, half drawn from the sheath. But when he heard that it was Odin who had come there, he stood up and intended to pull Odin away from the fire. The sword slipped from his hand, hilt downwards. The king lost his footing and plunged forwards, and the sword pierced him through, and he was killed. Odin disappeared. And Agnar was then king for a long time afterwards.


- Poetic Edda, Grimnismal