Meeting Odin
A Minta Story

Whether Minta, my Troll Mother, was a magical troll—the odd troll out, as it were—or whether all trolls were equally magical: I hadn’t settled this in my mind yet. Perhaps the truth lay somewhere in between (while Minta likely shared her magic with her kind, she possessed it—and commanded it—in spades; something like that, say).

Now, a very practical part of her magic, which I had the occasion to both witness and benefit from on many, many occasions, was that she could appear, disappear, elsewhere-appear, elsewhere-disappear (all in an instant) from anywhere to anywhere on this planet—and perhaps off-planet as well, I haven’t put that question to her yet for she is a little reluctant to elaborate on this particular subject.

This said, I’m in my sleeping quarters at the hospital where I work as a temporary nurse in the late summer of 1968 when she suddenly appears—not out of nowhere—I assume out of her arctic dwelling—but might as well have been out of nowhere.

First not here, but there—then here, and not there.

One moment, I’m reading Bertrand Russell’s exposé on God—who, by Russell’s light, began his career as a local, tribal idol housed in Mount Sinai, but give or take a few centuries later, He is the sole Creator of both heaven and earth—quite a leap, or promotion, that. Or, as Russell puts it:

To understand how these beliefs [Judaism and Christianity] developed, we must remember that Yahweh, the God of the Jews, was in the beginning first and foremost the Deity of a Semitic tribe Who protected His own people. Along with Him, there were other gods presiding over other tribes. There is not at this time any hint of another world [or the creation of this one]. The Lord God of Israel directed the earthly fortunes of His tribe. He is a jealous God and will not suffer His people to have other gods beside Him. The prophets of old were political leaders who spent quite a lot of time stamping out the worship of other gods, for fear of incurring Yahweh’s displeasure and jeopardizing the social cohesion of the Jews. This nationalistic and tribal character of the Jewish religion was enhanced by a series of national disasters.

In 722 B.C. Israel, the northern kingdom, fell to the Assyrians, who deported most of its inhabitants. In 606 B.C. the Babylonians captured Nineveh and destroyed the Assyrian Empire. The northern kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonian King Nebuchadrezzar who took Jerusalem in 586 B.C., burnt the Temple, and led large numbers of Jews into captivity in Babylonia.

Not until the year after Cyrus, the Persian King, had taken Babylon in 538 B.C. were the Jews allowed to go back into Palestine. It was during the Babylonian captivity that the dogma and national character of the religion hardened. Since the Temple was destroyed, the Jews had to dispense with sacrificial rites. Much of the traditional lore of their religions as it survives today goes back to this period.

But, now, hey, wait a minute. Are you (Russell) saying that this god who started out as a tribal god living in Mount Sinai, as the years marched on morphed and grew into the creator of heaven and earth, the one who threw Adam and Eve out of Paradise for apple-eating, the one who banished Cain for killing his brother, the one who handed down the ten commandments, the one who my grandmother still prays to on a daily, if not hourly, basis? We are talking about the same guy, right?

Russell nods.

Oh, my. Oh, my.

In fact, realizing this for the first time in my silent third-floor room, lifted an enormous burden from my shoulders (out of my head would be more accurate, spring-cleaned it). God, as I had come to know Him over the years, from, say, age three on up, did, in fact, not exist. Fiction. Dreamed up. Mountain-Idol.

So, one minute I was humming with the experience and the insight, when who should appear, as I said, out of for all intents and purposes nowhere, but Minta, mostly beloved Troll Mother of mine.

“You rumbled,” she said.

“I what?”

“You rumbled.”

True, I had shivered at the realization Russell had spawned, at the liberation from my childhood (and my grandmother’s) God. But rumbled?

I was just about to say this, when Minta said, “Shivered loudly.”

“You could hear?”

“Not hear, exactly. But, hear, yes, in a way.”

“You are too much,” I managed while still trying to collect and marshal my thoughts around God vanishing and Minta appearing.

Then I held up the large book I was reading—Wisdom of the West by Russell, in a Swedish translation. I showed her the page before I realized, or remembered rather, that Minta did not read. Notice that I’m not saying could not read, for I was not actually convinced yet, that she could not. I’m saying she did not, not as far as anyone knew anyway.

“Here,” I pointed to the paragraph. “Russell outlines the history of God Almighty—and yes, he does have a history, and I guess that’s the very scary point—Omnipotent Gods are, logic would insist, history-less.”

“Russell’s the writer?”

“Famed mathematician and philosopher,” I informed her.

“And how does he know?”

“Research.”

“He was there?”

“Not as such.”

“So how does he know?”

“He’s read a lot of accounts by those who were there.”

“Ah.” Not convinced. “And you believe what he says?”

“I do.”

“Well, that’s what’s important.”

Still coming to grips with God, the impostor, I nodded. “Indeed.”

Minta regards me for some time, mulling over whether to or not, then coming down on the side of to: “You asked me once about my meeting Odin,” she said.

“I remember.”

She sat down on the floor. “Let me tell you about that,” she said.

I threw my eargates wide open.

:

Odin loves rebels. He loves poets. He loves stories and tales. He loves history. And for some reason—and no one’s ever discovered this reason—he loves trolls. Some say it’s because he’s actually a giant troll himself, but this is not the case.

Much as you grew up with your grandmother Olga’s devotion to her Christian God, the very one you’ve just evicted by the sounds of it, I grew up with my parents’ and my tribe’s devotion to Odin. And much the same way that you came to understand your God to have created heaven and earth I understood Odin, with the help of other, lesser, gods, to have created our earth.

She looks at me drawing breath to ask her something, but she preempts this question by saying she’ll get to Troll Heaven in a bit. Hold my horses, would I?

But what Odin loves the best are runes. Not only does he love, he’s obsessed with them. In fact, he would be the foremost connoisseur of runes in the world, any world. And this is chiefly a story about runes.

:

You know what they are, right? Looking up at me sitting on my bed from where she was sitting on the floor, my eargates still wide open.

I nodded—well, half-nodded. Some reservation.

Well, she wasn’t taking any chances and went on to explain.

:

Runes are letters, just like your English alphabet consists of letters. But runes are letters designed not for paper and pen but for knife and wood, for chisel and stone. Later, runes were also inscribed on metal. As a result, you won’t find any circles or hard-to-carve curlicues in the runic alphabet.

Rather, runes are made up of vertical lines—one or more—with branches or twigs jutting out diagonally and occasionally horizontally, upwards, downwards, or in an easy-to-carve bend from them. They can be written both from left to right and from right to left, flipping their asymmetrical characters depending on the direction of writing.

Each rune, just like English, had (or has) both an upper and a lower case and each one represents a phoneme—you know phoneme, speech sound, right? Naturally, lots of regional and temporal variations existed in the shapes of these letters.

As I’m sure you know, the Vikings were particularly fond of runes and erected many, many inscribed runestones all over Scandinavia (primarily Sweden), many—if not all—of which are still standing.

As far as you humans go, no one really knows how and where runes originated, that’s still shrouded in mystery. The earliest inscription you have found, that is without a doubt runic, is the one reading harja (meaning “comb”, or “warrior”) on the Vimose comb from Denmark, dated to around 160 CE, which uses runes so confidently and maturely that scholars feel it must result from at least a hundred years experience with them. How exactly this tradition was pulled out of the hat, however, is subject to much debate and speculation. Inspiration from both the Greek and Roman alphabets, as well as a northern Italic or even Danish origin, has been suggested. You consider the Greek route perhaps the most likely in light of resemblances in script and propose that some variation of a Greek alphabet may have reached Germanic shores at some point.

Well, the truth is that the runes were acquired by Odin after sacrificing himself to himself by hanging from the windy tree for nine days and nights without food or drink. I think I’ve told you about this before.

Not long after this amazing acquisition, he taught the secret of the runes to us trolls. This would have been at least ten thousand years ago, by your reckoning. However, he did not give the runes to all trolls, only to the select few he considered wise.

Yes, he eventually tossed the humans a runic bone—for reasons I still don’t understand, but I’m sure Odin had them, he usually does, though not always—reasons, I mean.

A backward tribe at that time, the humans only used the runes to catalog their lives as they lived and fought and lived and fought.

The runes that he taught the wise trolls, on the other hand, were the language that the universe breathes and speaks. And if the universe ever feels like revealing its secrets, it will do so in runes.

Just shy of four hundred seasons—a hundred years by your clock—I was selected by our elders to learn this language, and by now, yes, I am very conversant with runes. I read them well, and I write them well, and I speak them well.

Which might be one of the reasons Odin chose to run into me, as he put it. True, we had three magnificent rune stones not far from our cave at the time, and he said he had come to re-inspect them, to determine for sure that these described nothing more than household items, as he put it, these runes engraved on the tall, flat, standing stones.

As it happened, I was walking by the tallest of them on my way to I don’t remember exactly where when he stepped out from behind it and said, Minta.

Now, I’m sure that you had envisioned all sorts of versions (probably fueled by your grandmother Olga) of God, mostly as an old man dressed in white robes, and with a long white beard. Friendly, like. Fatherly. Our Father and all that.

I nodded, sure. Of course.

Well, I had envisioned Odin, too. As a very tall, grave, troll-like, tree-like, one-eyed miracle. The only thing I had right was the one-eyed thing.

He was a little taller than me, perhaps a foot, but no more than that. He was not furry at all like us trolls. Much smaller mouth than us, and smaller, finer teeth. Ours are like a little rockslide as you know. Not his.

Yes, I said, thinking that I somehow had run into a very tall human who for some reason knew my name. Who are you, I asked him.

I am Odin, he said.

And here, I must tell you, he not only spoke this with his lungs and throat and tongue, he sang this in my head, well, more like laughed it in my head. I had never experienced anything like it, and then and there I knew that, yes, this was indeed Odin. Not the Odin of my imagination, but the real Odin nonetheless.

Odin, I said, and I made to curtsy but he said, oh, no need to, Minta. No need to.

What, I said, meaning to add are you doing here, or do you want, or on earth?

Can a God not visit his favorite people, he said.

Why, of course you can, I blushed—not that anyone aside from Odin could have noticed, trolls don’t blush visibly.

(I knew that).

Do you know your runes yet? He asked me.

By this time, I had gathered some of my scattered pluck and said, Probably not as good as you, but yes, I know them.

No one knows the runes as well as I do, he informed me, not really smiling but smiling nonetheless.

Of course not.

Then read me this, he said, pointing to the stone. First in runic then the meaning in your language.

I did. Truth is I could have done this without even looking at the stone. I knew it verbatim and had for many years.

Odin wasn’t fooled. You already knew this, he said. I blushed again.

Then he pulled out a folded parchment from his, well, coat I guess would be the word. Unfolded it and handed it to me.

The entire sheet was covered with runes. Older runes, I could tell. Harder to read and translate and interpret runes.

Now this, he said.

Not that I want to brag or anything (she never bragged, I was surprised she even knew the word), but I was and am very, very good at runes, and while it took me longer than I would have liked, I didn’t stumble, nor did I get them wrong, I read them all first in runic, then in our language. And while I hesitated at times it was not because I didn’t know what to say but because I didn’t know if I was very wise to say such things to Odin.

But I did.

This is what the parchment—not from any skin I had ever encountered—said:

Like the foolhardy God that you are, you have wasted nine good lives just for the sake of a language. But you’re not a complete idiot (that’s what it said, she stressed), since this language is the answer to all your questions, the key to all your quandaries, the path you can walk right out of here on. Holding this sheet up to the sun you can read the glowing runes beneath these written ones and from them learn all you need to know.

Since the sun was up, I made to hold it up to the light to see for myself, but Odin put a very strong hand on my arm and said, Read on. I did.

As long as you are in possession of this parchment you will remain the god supreme among gods. Should you even lose it, you can kiss your good-hood goodbye (yes, that’s what it said, exactly). You may share this, and the fire beneath at your pleasure, but you must never give the parchment away or lose it. We coded this universe in the script of these runes, and once we have tired of it, we’ll decode it in the same language. Whatever you do, do not attempt to decode it yourself, you did not dream this up, we did, and you would come to harm if you tried.

That’s where the writing ended.

Very good, said Odin. Now you can hold it up against the sun.

I did, and read, and understood, and remembered—and ever since then I’ve been able to appear and reappear and appear again anywhere at will. Amongst other things.

So, it’s not a troll thing? I said.

No, she said, it’s a Minta thing.

Ah.

Did Odin say anything else?

He said to remember it well, and to expect to see him again sometime, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in a thousand years.

Have you seen him since?

Yes.

Could you?

Another time.

Do you still remember the glowing runes?

Of course.

Can you tell me?

The last thing Odin said was, do not share this with anyone.

I see.

:

“I’ve just evicted my god,” I said. “How about you?”

“Oh, he’s still realer than real,” said Minta.

“I envy you,” I said. Then remembered, “So, what about troll heaven?”

“Another time.”

::