“What is wrong?” asked Gunnlod.
“I wish I had the skill to sing of your lips, how soft they are, how much better they are than the lips of any other girl. I think that would be an excellent song.”
“That is indeed unfortunate,” agreed Gunnlod. “For my lips are very attractive. I often think they are my best feature.”
“Perhaps, but you have so many perfect features, picking the best is so difficult. But if I were to take the tiniest taste from the vat called Bodn, the poetry would enter my soul and I would be able to make a poem about your lips that would last until the sun is eaten by a wolf.”
“Only the tiniest sip, though,” she said. “Because Father would get quite irritable if he thought I was giving away his mead to every good-looking stranger who penetrated this mountain fastness.”
They walked the caverns, holding hands and occasionally brushing lips. Gunnlod showed Bolverkr the doors and the windows that she could open from inside the mountain, through which Suttung sent her food and drink, and Bolverkr appeared to pay no attention; he explained that he was not interested in anything that was not about Gunnlod, or her eyes or her lips or her fingers or her hair. Gunnlod laughed and told him that he did not mean any of his fine words and he obviously could not want to make love with her again.
He hushed her lips with his lips, and once again they made love.
When they were both perfectly satisfied, Bolverkr began to weep in the darkness.
“What’s wrong, my love?” asked Gunnlod.
“Kill me,” sobbed Bolverkr. “Kill me now! For I will never be able to make a poem about the perfection of your hair and your skin, of the sound of your voice, of the feel of your fingers. The beauty of Gunnlod is impossible to describe.”
“Well,” she said, “I suppose it can’t be easy to make such a poem. But I doubt it’s impossible.”
“Perhaps . . .”
“Yes?”
“Perhaps the smallest sip from the kettle Odrerir would give me the lyrical skills to conjure your beauty for generations still to come,” he suggested, his sobs ceasing.
“Yes, perhaps it would. But it would have to be the smallest of smallest sips . . .”
“Show me the kettle, and I will show you just how small a sip I can take.”
Gunnlod unlocked the door, and in moments she and Bolverkr were standing in front of the kettle and the two vats. The smell of the mead of poetry was heady on the air.
“Just the tiniest of sips,” she told him. “For three poems about me that will echo down through the ages.”
“Of course, my darling.” Bolverkr grinned in the darkness. If she had been looking at him then, she would have known something was wrong.
With his first drink he drank every drop of the kettle Odrerir.
With his second, he drained the vat called Bodn.
With his third, he emptied the vat called Son.
Gunnlod was no fool. She realized that she had been betrayed, and she attacked him. She was strong and fast, but Odin did not stay to fight. He ran from there. He pulled the door closed and locked her inside.
In the blink of an eye he became a huge eagle. Odin screeched as he flapped his wings, and the mountain doors opened, and he rose into the skies.
Gunnlod’s screams pierced the dawn.
In his hall, Suttung woke and ran outside. He looked up and saw the eagle and knew what must have happened. Suttung too transformed himself into eagle shape.
The two eagles flew so high that from the ground they were the tiniest of pinpricks in the sky. They flew so fast that their flight sounded like the roar of a hurricane.
In Asgard, Thor said, “It is time.”
He hauled the three huge wooden vats into the courtyard.
The gods of Asgard watched the eagles screaming through the sky toward them. It was a close thing. Suttung was fast, and close behind Odin, his beak almost touching Odin’s tailfeathers as they reached Asgard.
When Odin approached the hall, he began to spit: a fountain of mead spurted from his beak into the vats, one after another, like a father bird bringing food for his children.
Ever since then, we know that those people who can make magic with their words, who can make poems and sagas and weave tales, have tasted the mead of poetry. When we hear a fine poet, we say that they have tasted Odin’s gift.
There. That is the story of the mead of poetry and how it was given to the world. It is a story filled with dishonor and deceit, with murder and trickery. But it is not quite the whole story. There is one more thing to tell you. The delicate among you should stop your ears, or read no further.