Odin at the Well of Mimir

Look closely at the face of Odin, father of all the gods in Asgard, and you will notice something strange. Below his broad forehead and his hair gone white, only one eye still looks out at the world. On the other side there is a quiet, empty socket.

On the long winter nights of the far north, people still tell how that eye was not lost in any battle. It was given up on a still afternoon, beside a well that lay beneath Yggdrasil, the world tree. It was traded for what Odin wanted more than any treasure in all the worlds: knowledge.

Odin was the mightiest god in Asgard. He wore golden armor and a war helmet with the wings of an eagle. He had lived longer than anyone could remember, and he knew more than anyone had ever dared to ask. Every day his two ravens, Hugin and Munin, flew across all the worlds and came back to perch on his shoulders. They whispered everything they had heard, the doings of humans, the doings of giants, the doings of the gods themselves. And still it was not enough. In Odin's heart there was always an empty place that nothing could fill. There were things about what lay ahead, about what had not yet happened, that even the father of the gods had never seen clearly. That restlessness grew with every season, until Odin could not sit on his throne for a single day more.

He remembered a place he had once heard spoken of. Yggdrasil has three enormous roots, and one of them reaches deep toward Jotunheim, the land of the giants. Beneath that root lies a well that people call the Well of Wisdom. The wise old Mimir sat guarding it day after day. Each morning he drew a mouthful of its water and drank, and each time his wisdom grew a little deeper. The old belief held that anyone who drank a single mouthful from that well would come to understand even the things that had not yet happened.

Odin decided to go himself, and to send no other god in his place. He took off his golden armor and set aside his helmet with the eagle wings. He put on a plain cloak of dark blue and took up a traveler's staff. On that road, no one called him father of the gods anymore. He called himself only Vegtam, the Wanderer, so that he could pass through the worlds without being recognized, even by those who had known him for a long time.

The road from Asgard to Jotunheim was long and rough. Vegtam crossed the plains of humankind, forests of pine wrapped in mist, and rivers so cold they cut to the bone. The deeper he went into the land of the giants, the grayer the ground became and the harder the wind howled. A lone traveler walked steadily across that silent country, his cloak faded by the mist, with no familiar face anywhere. He went alone, with no attendants and no companion following behind.

At last he reached the place. The Well of Wisdom lay hidden in the shadow of the giant root. Its surface was as still as a gray mirror, without a single ripple, so still that Vegtam could see his own face clearly reflected there. Beside the well sat old Mimir, unmoving. His deep eyes seemed to have looked through more seasons than anyone could count.

Vegtam asked for one mouthful of water from the well. Mimir looked up and knew at once that this was no ordinary traveler, however plain the cloak might be. He answered in a slow, firm voice. This well had never turned anyone away, he said, but it had never given anything away for free either. The price of one mouthful, he said, was Odin's own right eye.

A long silence stretched between the two of them. There was only the sound of the wind brushing softly through the root overhead. Odin looked down at the water and saw his own face, both eyes still whole, perhaps for the last time. He knew that once the price was paid, there would be no way to take it back. But he also knew that the knowledge this well held was worth more than anything he could lose. After a long, wordless moment, Odin nodded and accepted the price.

Mimir filled a great horn with water and placed it in Odin's own hands. The god raised the horn to his lips and drank in one long, slow draught, letting every cool drop from the Well of Wisdom sink into him. When he had finished, Odin set the horn down. Then he quietly did what he had promised. He gave Mimir his right eye, just as the price had been set.

From that day on, Odin's eye has remained in the still water beneath Yggdrasil. Now and then it gives off a faint gleam in the dark, a quiet sign of the price that one god was willing to pay.

When Odin rose and left the side of the well, he was not the same as before. His one remaining eye now held a look it had never held, as if it could see even the things hidden behind the mists of time. He did not tell all that he had seen, not even to the gods closest to him. But from that day on, every word Odin spoke carried a weight that no one had ever noticed in it before.

The road back to Asgard was as long as the road there. Yet he walked with steady steps, the traveler's staff still in his hand, the dark blue cloak stirring in the wind. When the gates of the city came into view ahead, he took off the plain cloak. He put his golden armor back on and his helmet with the eagle wings, and he returned to being the father of the gods, as he had been before. Only one thing would never be the same again.

The gods standing on the city walls watched their father walk in. No one needed to explain anything. They understood at once what had happened. From that day, whenever they looked at Odin's face, every one of them could plainly see the eye that was gone. And no one wondered any longer why he knew so much about the things to come.

In the lands of the north, generation after generation, people still speak of that single eye whenever they talk of Odin. Deep beneath Yggdrasil, where the well is as still as it ever was, the old stories say the other eye still lies there, shining quietly in the dark. It is still waiting for someone curious enough to understand why the father of the gods was once willing to pay so great a price. He paid it only to know one more thing he had never known before.