Kvasir

Then spoke Ægir: ‘This seems to me a very good way to conceal
it in secret language.’ And Ægir went on: ‘How did this craft that
you call poetry originate?’

Bragi replied: ‘The origin of it was that the gods had a dispute
with the people called Vanir, and they appointed a peace
conference and made a truce by this procedure, that both sides
went up to a vat and spat their spittle into it. But when they
dispersed, the gods kept this symbol of truce and decided not to let
it be wasted, and out of it made a man. His name was Kvasir, he
was so wise that no one could ask him any questions to which he
did not know the answer. He travelled widely through the world
teaching people knowledge, and when he arrived as a guest to
some dwarfs, Fialar and Galar, they called him to a private
discussion with them and killed him. They poured his blood into
two vats and a pot, and the latter was called Odrerir, but the vats
were called Son and Bodn. They mixed honey with the blood and
it turned into the mead whoever drinks from which becomes a
poet or scholar. The dwarfs told the Æsir that Kvasir had
suffocated in intelligence because there was no one there educated
enough to be able to ask him questions.


- Prose Edda, Skaldskaparmal