Wikipedia Trail: From Odin to Yggdrasil
Odin, Georg von Rosen (1886).
One such instance involves his theft of the Mead of Poetry, fermented from the blood of a man who was created from the spittle of gods. This beverage was believed to bestow marvelous powers of speech, deduction, and language upon anyone who consumed it, potentially triggering fits of poetic glory or even a rage of destruction. Odin absconded with this precious beverage, removing it from the world of men forever, save those few talented poets deemed worthy of its consumption.
The sacrifice of Odin, to Odin, as related in the Hávamál from the Poetic Edda, is translated beautifully by Carolyne Larrington:
"I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run.
No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,
downwards I peered;
I took up the runes,
screaming I took them,
then I fell back from there."
Is this a sacrifice? Is this a transaction? Is this another scheme?
Yggdrasil, the World Tree, spans all nine realms of Norse cosmology, and is a home for several animals itself. Speculations regarding the tree mentioned within the Hávamál could place Odin staring into the depths of a well far below or out into the farthest reaches of heaven; he interacts with a realm outside Asgard in the acquisition of the mysterious runes, sacrificing his body for the knowledge of (or power over?) life itself.
The runes themselves are believed to each contain an individual power, existing outside of a god and subsequently acquired and passed along to humanity to be used as wards and curses and decoration alike. Realistically, the runes show a derivation from earlier alphabets, with Old Italic and Latin as contenders.
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