Idun Falls to the Nether World
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Guerber, H. A. (Hélène Adeline)
As the disappearance of Idun (vegetation) was a yearly occurrence, we might expect to find other myths dealing with the striking phenomenon, and there is another favourite of the old scalds which, unfortunately, has come down to us only in a fragmentary and very incomplete form. According to this account, Idun was once sitting upon the branches of the sacred ash Yggdrasil when, growing suddenly faint, she loosed her hold and dropped to the ground beneath, and down to the lowest depths of Nifl-heim. There she lay, pale and motionless, gazing with fixed and horror-struck eyes upon the gruesome sights of Hel’s realm, trembling violently the while, like one overcome by penetrating cold.
“In the dales dwells
The prescient Dis,
From Yggdrasil’s
Ash sunk down,
Of alfen race,
Idun by name,
The youngest of Ivaldi’s
Elder children.
She ill brooked
Her descent
Under the hoar tree’s
Trunk confined.
She would not happy be
With Norvi’s daughter,
Accustomed to a pleasanter
Abode at home.”
Odin’s Ravens’ Song (Thorpe’s tr.).
Seeing that she did not return, Odin bade Bragi, Heimdall, and another of the gods go in search of her, giving them a white wolfskin to envelop her in, so that she should not suffer from the cold, and bidding them make every effort to rouse her from the stupor which his prescience told him had taken possession of her.
“A wolf’s skin they gave her,
In which herself she clad.”
Odin’s Ravens’ Song (Thorpe’s tr.).
Idun passively allowed the gods to wrap her in the warm wolfskin, but she persistently refused to speak or move, and from her strange manner her husband sadly suspected that she had had a vision of great ills. The tears ran continuously down her pallid cheeks, and Bragi, overcome by her unhappiness, at length bade the other gods return to Asgard without him, vowing that he would remain beside his wife until she was ready to leave Hel’s dismal realm. The sight of her woe oppressed him so sorely that he had no heart for his usual merry songs, and the strings of his harp were mute while he remained in the underworld.
“That voice-like zephyr o’er flow’r meads creeping,
Like Bragi’s music his harp strings sweeping.”
Viking Tales of the North (R. B. Anderson).
In this myth Idun’s fall from Yggdrasil is symbolical of the autumnal falling of the leaves, which lie limp and helpless on the cold bare ground until they are hidden from sight under the snow, represented by the wolfskin, which Odin, the sky, sends down to keep them warm; and the cessation of the birds’ songs is further typified by Bragi’s silent harp.