God's Dreaming Song of Shaping

God dreams himself into the creatures of the world, called into being through riddles chanted on the World Tree, enigmas asking, "What am I?". God dreams into the beings, grasps their mysteries, knows the secrets of shedding skins, wanderings along the voluptuous body of his bride feeling her secret grottoes and fescinnine outcroppings, meanders as a husband does amongst the beloved.

Óðinn skipti hömum. Lá þá búkurinn sem sofinn eða dauður en hann var þá fugl eða dýr, fiskur eða ormur og fór á einni svipstund á fjarlæg lönd að sínum erindum eða annarra manna (Ynglingasaga 7), "Odin shifted skins. His body would lay there as if asleep or dead, and he was then bird or beast, fish or wyrm and fared in the twinkling of an eye to far-off lands, on his own errands or those of other men."

In Gestumblindi's Riddles, Odin sings of spiders, grass growing up from the earth, swans in their nests laying eggs, herbs and hearth-fire, fog and flocks of birds, waves, clouds and cows, ravens, fish, and waterfalls, hail and rain, beetles, hawks, the sun, pigs and eagles. Each told in wondrous enigmas, a song of the mysteries of creation, hymns wrapped in riddles and secrets, setting forth precedent that men ought ponder every wight beneath the World-Tree, that hangs in its limbs as surely as the seeker after secrets. Thus weaving tangles of luscious praises, we all may invoke the woven fabric of creation, and sing the earth's song as the High Heavenly One does every day.


All translations copyright 2009 by Siegfried Goodfellow