The God Bragi - Heathen Gods

Bragi, whose name means “the best” or “the foremost”, is said to be the god of poetry; Óðinn tells us in Grímnismál 66 that he is the most awesome of skalds. Since we already know Wodan to be (to a much stronger degree, as nearly all the skaldic references to “poetry” attribute it to him) the god of that craft, Bragi’s function in that role is a little puzzling. However, the first skald of recorded memory was the early ninth-century Bragi Boddason inn gamli (the Old). This fits with traditional images of Bragi having a long white beard in spite of his marriage to Iðunn; it could also be theorized that a human who had been accepted among the god/esses would have more need of her apples than the other deities. We do know that humans were sometimes taken up among the ranks of the god/esses: when St. Ansgar came to convert Sweden, one of the godmen at Birka had a dream in which the Ases appeared and said that if the Swedes wanted more gods, they would take the recently deceased king Eiríkr into their company rather than having a foreigner among them. It is, thus, often thought that Bragi may be the deified skald.

Another suggestion has been offered: that Bragi was gotten by Wodan on Gunnlöð during the three nights in which he won the mead of poetry. There is no evidence for this in the sources, but it seems a nice interpretation, and some may prefer it to the idea of a deified Viking Age skald. Certainly Hávamál and Snorri give us the image of the man flying away and leaving the woman weeping behind which is also seen at the end of Völundarkviða; and in Völundarkviða the abandoned woman is definitely pregnant.

Bragi does not appear in any Eddic myths, but he does exchange words with Loki in Lokasenna; in fact, Loki begins by attacking him, adding to what is clearly a standard formula - “Heilir æsir heilar ásynjor / ok öll ginnheilog goð” (Hail the Æsir, hail the Ásynjur, and all power-holy gods) the contemptuous “Except for one Ase who sits within, Bragi, on the benches”. Bragi, seeing that Loki is looking for trouble, offers to give him him sword, horse, and armring if he will sit down and shut up. Loki replies that Bragi has neither horses nor arm-rings, for he is the wariest of battle and the most frightened of shooting, to which Bragi answers that if they were outside he would swiftly have Loki’s head in his hands, and Iðunn has to calm her husband. Loki then mentions that Iðunn had laid her shining arms over her brother’s slayer; whether this is a deed of Bragi’s we know nothing about, or whether Loki is speaking of another event altogether, there is no way to tell.

Bragi is seen in the skaldic poem Eiríksmál: he compares the sound of Eiríkr (Bloodaxe) and his troops approaching Valhöll to the sound of Balder returning (to which Óðinn replies, “Witless words should wise Bragi not speak), and asks Óðinn why the god had not given Eiríkr victory, if he was the braver man. Óðinn replies with the famous words, “The gray wolf gapes ever at the dwellings of the gods”, - an answer which has inspired many skalds, then and since. He also appears in Hákonarmál, in which he seems to act as a sort of herald, being the first to speak to Hákon as the slain king comes to Valhöll’s door and to offer him the friendship of the einherjar. His role in the latter poem also strengthens the idea that he was once a human who was taken up into the ranks of the god/esses, as it is the legendary heroes Sigmundr and Sinfjötli who carry out the same act of greeting for Eiríkr Blood-Axe in Eiríksmál.

In Sigrdrífumál, “Bragi’s tongue” is listed in the category of objects on which runes are carved. The same list includes Sleipnir’s teeth, the wolf’s claw, the eagle’s beak, the bear’s paw, the bridge’s end, the sledge-straps, and a host of other items. These probably do not literally have runes risted into them, but are, rather, items of the greatest might through which the power of the runes flow. Blithely ignoring everything we know about Norse tradition, with only this stanza to go from, Barbara Walker (The Book of the Crone , and other feminist rewritings of everything mystical) has recently invented a myth in which Iðunn, rather than Óðinn, was the original finder/keeper of the runes and carved them onto her husband’s tongue. Since this contradicts all known sources and accords only with Walker’s ideology, it can safely be dismissed.

The cup of oath-drinking is called bragarfull, which means “the best cup”. Sometimes it is also referred to as “Bragi’s cup”, probably out of a false etymology which derives the adjective bragr, “the best”, from the god’s name. However, since songs and poems are often spoken at symbel, the “Bragi’s cup” could indeed have gotten its name from the god.