Odin and Frigg Use Hlidskialf

King Hraudung had two sons; one was called Agnar, and the other Geirrod. Agnar was 10 years old, and Geirrod 8. They both rowed out in a boat with rods and trailing lines to catch small fish. The wind drove them out into the ocean. In the dark that night, they made land-fall, and went ashore; they found a crofter. They stayed there for the winter. The old woman fostered Agnar, and the old man Geirrod. In the spring, the old man got them a ship. And when he and the old woman took them down to the shore, then the old man spoke privately to Geirrod. They got a breeze and came to their father’s harbour. Geirrod was forward in the ship, he jumped ashore and pushed the ship out and said: ‘Go where the evil one may take you!’ The ship was driven out, and Geirrod went up to the house. He was greeted joyfully; his father had died. Then Geirrod was taken as king and became a splendid man.

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.


- Poetic Edda, Grimnismal