Norse Mythology(6)

Odin took Mimir’s head back to the well beneath the world-tree, and he placed it there, beside his eye, in the waters of knowledge of the future and of the past.

Odin gave the Gjallerhorn to Heimdall, watchman of the gods. On the day the Gjallerhorn is blown, it will wake the gods, no matter where they are, no matter how deeply they sleep.

Heimdall will blow the Gjallerhorn only once, at the end of all things, at Ragnarok.





THE TREASURES OF THE GODS





I


Thor’s wife was the beautiful Sif. She was of the Aesir. Thor loved her for herself, and for her blue eyes and her pale skin, her red lips and her smile, and he loved her long, long hair, the color of a field of barley at the end of summer.

Thor woke, and stared at sleeping Sif. He scratched his beard. Then he tapped his wife with a huge hand. “What happened to you?” he asked.

She opened her eyes, the color of the summer sky. “What are you talking about?” she asked, and then she moved her head and looked puzzled. Her fingers reached up to her bare pink scalp and touched it, exploring it tentatively. She looked at Thor, horrified.

“My hair,” was all she said.

Thor nodded. “It’s gone,” he said. “He has left you bald.”

“He?” asked Sif.

Thor said nothing. He strapped on his belt of power, Megingjord, which doubled his enormous strength. “Loki,” he said. “Loki has done this.”

“Why do you say that?” said Sif, touching her bald head frantically, as if the fluttering touch of her fingers would make her hair return.

“Because,” said Thor, “when something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it is Loki’s fault. It saves a lot of time.”

Thor found Loki’s door locked, so he pushed through it, leaving it in pieces. He picked Loki up and said only, “Why?”

“Why what?” Loki’s face was the picture of perfect innocence.

“Sif’s hair. My wife’s golden hair. It was so beautiful. Why did you cut it off?”

A hundred expressions chased each other across Loki’s face: cunning and shiftiness, truculence and confusion. Thor shook Loki hard. Loki looked down and did his best to appear ashamed. “It was funny. I was drunk.”

Thor’s brow lowered. “Sif’s hair was her glory. People will think that her head was shaved for punishment. That she did something she should not have done, did it with someone she should not have.”

“Well, yes. There is that,” said Loki. “They will probably think that. And unfortunately, given that I took her hair from the roots, she will go through the rest of her life completely bald . . .”

“No, she won’t.” Thor looked up at Loki, whom he was now holding far above his head, with a face like thunder.

“I am afraid she will. But there are always hats and scarves . . .”

“She won’t go through life bald,” said Thor. “Because, Loki Laufey’s son, if you do not put her hair back right now, I am going to break every single bone in your body. Each and every one of them. And if her hair does not grow properly, I will come back and break every bone in your body again. And again. If I do it every day, I’ll soon get really good at it,” he carried on, sounding slightly more cheerful.

“No!” said Loki. “I can’t put her hair back. It doesn’t work like that.”

“Today,” mused Thor, “it will probably take me about an hour to break every bone in your body. But I bet that with practice I could get it down to about fifteen minutes. It will be interesting to find out.” He started to break his first bone.

“Dwarfs!” shrieked Loki.

“Pardon?”

“Dwarfs! They can make anything. They could make golden hair for Sif, hair that would bond with her scalp and grow normally, perfect golden hair. They could do it. I swear they could.”

“Then,” said Thor, “you had better go and talk to them.” And he dropped Loki from high above his head onto the floor.

Loki clambered to his feet and hurried away before Thor could break any more bones.

He put on his shoes that let him travel through the sky, and he went to Svartalfheim, where the dwarfs have their workshops. The most ingenious craftsmen of them all, he decided, were the three dwarfs known as the sons of Ivaldi.

Loki went to their underground forge. “Hello, sons of Ivaldi. I have asked around, and people here tell me that Brokk and Eitri, his brother, are the greatest dwarf craftsmen there are or have ever been,” said Loki.

“No,” said one of the sons of Ivaldi. “It’s us. We are the greatest craftsmen there are.”

“I am assured that Brokk and Eitri can make treasures as good as those you can.”

“Lies!” said the tallest of the sons of Ivaldi. “I wouldn’t trust those fumble-fingered incompetents to shoe a horse.”

The smallest and the wisest of the sons of Ivaldi simply shrugged. “Whatever they make, we could do better.”

“I hear that they’ve challenged you,” said Loki. “Three treasures. The gods of the Aesir will judge who made the best treasure. Oh, and by the way, one of the treasures you make needs to be hair. Ever-growing perfect golden hair.”

“We can do that,” said one of the sons of Ivaldi. Even Loki could barely tell them apart.