Welcome to CHAPTER 56 of the Kinsmen Die podcast, home of fantasy fiction based on Norse mythology that’s written and read by me, Matt Bishop.

In this podcast I read my first novel, Kinsmen Die, one chapter at a time. And, with each episode, when it makes sense, I provide some commentary about the source materials I’ve referenced in the text.

Vidar, Garilon, and the war band with them tracked the Jotunn warband into the mines beneath the mountains near the town of Hals which had been sacked. He was expecting to find their secret staging ground for that attack.

What Vidar is doing is part of the larger mystery — for the Aesir — of how the Jotunn got to Hals in the first place as that town is way on the other side of Asgard from where Utgard connects. That’s why Odin and Frigg and the others focused in on the trade route that runs from Jotunheim, the main city in Utgard, to Ifington (which is where Hodr is) and then to Gladsheim, the main city in Asgard. That route is hundreds of miles long and runs through populated areas.

Readers know, from the conversations between Skrymir and Loki, and Skrymir and Vafthrudnir, how the Jotunn got to Hals — through a doorway. Readers have also seen what those doorways look like, through Vafthrudnir and that attack on the snow bear nest.

So in this chapter, Vidar catches up to where everybody else is. Let’s get started.

Chapter Fifty-Six
Vidar
“This is not the answer I expected to find,” Vidar said, gesturing with his chin toward the shimmering barrier in front of him. A blizzard raged a sword’s length in front of him, but without the wind or the cold.
“It’s where the Jotunn trail ends, Jarl,” Garilon said. “Doesn’t make any sense to me at all.”
They had never caught up with the Jotunn who’d fled into the mine. Probably because they knew where they were going, whereas he’d made his warband move slowly, fearing traps or even an ambush.
Vidar stepped back from the swirling white-gray of the barrier in front of him. He ran his hand along a wide, smooth vein of exposed skymetal in the tunnel wall. He brought his witchlamp up close to the long, wavy line where skymetal met stone. No seam, no roughness. It was as if an axe had cleaved through bone and flesh—but here, bone was metal and flesh the rock.
“Very strange,” he said.
He gestured for Garilon to join him. Together they walked down the smooth-walled passage, their footfalls echoing before them, till they reached its intersection with the mine shaft. Mikill and Smar stood guard on either side of the opening.
He brought the witchlamp close to where the smooth passage met the one cut by the miners, though he hardly needed to. Even at a distance, he could tell the difference. The wall cut by the miners was ragged and rough, tool marks evident on the stone.
The smoothness of the tunnel made him think of the Alvar-made shaper he’d seen Odin use to bend back Yggdrasil’s living wood. Where the Alvar had mastered using seidr to control things that lived, the Svartalvar had mastered similar control of stone and metal. It was one of the many reasons they had been feared, hated, ostracized, and finally exiled by the Alvar and Vanir—with the help of the Aesir.
He walked quickly back down the tunnel to where the skymetal vein lay exposed, smooth and glossy amid the surrounding stone. He ran his hand across the surface. No snags. He laid his cheek against the cool stone and peered down along the face. No chisel marks whatsoever.
What if the ironwood and metal device he’d been trying to make work, so obviously crafted by Svartalvar hands, could shape stone and metal just like the Alvar’s shaper affected wood?
The Jotunn with the device had been discovered near an outcropping. Maybe they had planned to tunnel into it and burrow under the stone on which Gladsheim was built?
He turned and stared at the shimmering doorway, not really seeing it. He and his family used a tunnel into Gladsheim’s hill to reach Yggdrasil. Had it been dug, shaped like this one, or was it natural? If it was natural, perhaps there was a whole system of caves beneath the hill.
And that Jotunn patrol during the Last War had been found north of Gladsheim’s walls. Had they intended to tunnel beneath the wall? And when they were surprised, they tried to destroy the device to stop anyone from figuring out what it did.
Then he remembered the climbing gear found along with the Jotunn. Maybe it was going to be used for descending, not ascending—which might explain why his father hadn’t found anything when he’d climbed up the outcropping.
He spun and walked back to where the smooth tunnel met the ragged mine shaft. He stepped out into the mine shaft, Garilon a few steps behind, and pointed into the blackness. “What did the scouts report about this shaft?”
“Nothing, Jarl. They’re not back yet.”
Vidar contemplated the darkness. “All the other scouts are back?”
“Yes, Jarl.”
“Send the most rested group down this shaft to fetch them. I want everyone back here.”
With a quick nod and a gesture, Garilon relayed the orders.
“What are you thinking, Jarl?”
Vidar didn’t answer. He strode back down the too-smooth tunnel until he stood directly before the white blur. He looked at it from several different angles, crouching and looking up, looking sideways along it. The view didn’t change—still that white, snowstorm blur.
All around the circumference of the portal, the mountain’s bones bore the sharp marks of having been worked with wide chisels. He crab-stepped along in front of the barrier, staring at the floor, then rising to his feet to examine the wall and the ceiling as best as he could see above his head.
Why use chisels when they had the stone-shaper to hand? Assuming that’s what the ironwood device was.
Hands on hips, he stared at the barrier. Except for within a knife’s length of the barrier, the tunnel rock was as smooth as if water had flowed over it for centuries. They must have used both chisels and device.
But what was this barrier? How did it get here and how had the Jotunn found it?
He reached out to touch the white, swirling wall.
“Jarl!”
Vidar nodded sheepishly at Garilon. “You’re right, of course. Hand me a spear, please.”
He pushed it through the barrier with no more resistance than he might feel plunging the spear into a lake. Though it was dark on the other side, the spear had that bent-seeming quality of something viewed through water. He grunted and pulled the spear back.
The blade was frosted, icy cold to the touch. A bit of snow clung to the shaft. He ground the spear’s butt against the stone, and stared at the swirling barrier. No, that wasn’t right. The barrier wasn’t swirling; it was clear. He was seeing snow behind it.
Moving quickly, he thrust his hand through the barrier.
“Jarl!”
“It’s all right. I’m fine. It’s cold. Very cold on the other side.” He rotated his wrist, flexed his hand, and waggled his fingers. The same bent quality of water distorted the sight, but he felt nothing wrong. Just cold.
He took a breath, and then he stepped through.
Snow blinded him; cold attacked. He began shivering immediately. There was a vague sense of rock above him, but it felt more open ahead. He wrapped his arms around his chest and shuffled forward a few steps, feeling resistance around his lower legs. He was knee-deep in snow.
Another shuffling pair of steps forward, and the blowing snow parted long enough to glimpse a wide, white expanse beyond a stony roof. Then the wind whipped the snow back into his eyes.
He was shivering harder now. A thought struck him, and he spun around.
What if he couldn’t just step back through?
He staggered back toward the barrier and saw Garilon beyond it, shouting down the smooth tunnel. He lunged back through the portal and landed on the hard rock, shaking and covered in snow.
Of course he could get back. What an idiot. How else had the Jotunn gotten here?
That thought almost drowned out Garilon’s shout: “Quick, bring some cloaks!”
Then the kjolr thudded to his knees beside him. “Jarl, are you all right?”
He managed a nod and forced a smile past his chattering teeth. He had been completely wrong. There had been no spies among the folks of Háls—well, probably not. But this... doorway... explained why they hadn’t found tracks or supplies or anything that might have betrayed the Jotunn presence.
“Beg your pardon, Jarl, but that was foolish,” Garilon said.
He didn’t bother trying to shrug, even though the shivering was slowing down. He could feel his smile growing. “The good news first? Or the bad?”
“The good news.”
Vidar’s trembling grin widened. “That’s Utgard.”

***

Vidar leaned in close to the barrier again. The air on this side didn’t feel cold no matter how close he got to the barrier.
“If that being Utgard is the good news, Jarl, then what’s the bad news?” Garilon’s question hung in the air like smoke drifting up from a fire.
He met Garilon’s eye. “We need to step across or through or however you want to say it and make sure I’m right. I know it sounds dangerous, but we have to. I have to.”
He couldn’t very well run back to Gladsheim without learning more. And, besides, this... threshold... was fascinating. How far did it extend through the rock around them? What had he stepped through between here and there?
“But how can that be Utgard?” Garilon asked, indicating the barrier with a quick jerk of his chin and taking a few steps back as he did. “We’re deep beneath a mountain outside Háls, which is a night’s fast ride northwest of Vithi, which is several nights’ ride west of Gladsheim, which is itself several nights’ ride south of Ifington and the Fortress of the Breach. And, the waters of the Thund lie between us and Utgard’s ice cliffs and glaciers.”
“I don’t have an answer for you. That’s why we must go through.” Vidar spread his hands wide. “And consider that the Jotunn trail leads here—not just those few we’ve been chasing, but their entire warband. Inexplicable though this doorway is, its presence solves all the oddities we’ve been trying to explain using ships and the trade route. This must be how their warband got here. It’s how they sent provisions. And it explains why no one saw or heard them crossing the hundreds of leagues between the Breach and Háls.”
“It doesn’t explain how this tunnel got here, Jarl,” Garilon said. He stomped a booted foot against the smooth stone.
“That’s simpler. I suspect Svartalvar devices were involved in its creation.”
Garilon barked a laugh, then raised a hand. “Apologies, Jarl, I meant no offense. The Jotunn are one thing. Stepping into Utgard is another. But going ahead when the Svartalvar are involved...”
“Their devices, not them,” he said, silently adding an I hope. “We don’t need to worry about the Svartalvar. The Alfather took care of them. I suspect what we found—the device I was working on—is one of their shapers. What I don’t understand is how this doorway got here. Or how the Jotunn even knew it was here.”
Garilon’s expression clouded with confusion. “A shaper?”
“You haven’t seen my father use the one he has?”
“No, Jarl.”
He held up his hands about a knife’s length apart. “The Alvar fashion wands that shape living wood, making it flow and move like water. My guess is that the Svartalvar-crafted device I partially rebuilt did the same thing but for stone—which makes sense given their affinity with things dug from the earth.”
Jotunn possession of a Svartalvar shaper probably also meant that they’d been in contact with each other. And if they had one such device, they obviously had more else this tunnel would never have been made.
“Could this stone shaper be used to make that doorway?” Garilon asked, gesturing at the barrier.
Now that was a very good question. “I doubt it. For one thing, and as you suggested before, there’s no way this stone here connects directly anywhere in Utgard. Unless they tunneled all the way from there to here, which is absurd. And besides, I entered into a very short tunnel that leads directly outside—that’s snow causing that blurry whiteness. For another, the shaper my father uses doesn’t leave this barrier behind. He uses it to create a hollow space he can walk in. And then he closes it behind him. This stone shaper might work in the same way.”
Stone wasn’t alive, so perhaps the shaper could make the tunnel permanent. Maybe the Alvar wood shaper could, too, but his father had never used it that way.
“That all makes sense, I suppose, Jarl, but how did that doorway get there?”
He smiled and pointed triumphantly at Garilon. “Exactly. I have no idea. Except that I suspect I’ve encountered this phenomenon before without ever knowing it. Many times, actually.”
“What?”
“Have you ever ridden down to Ithavoll?”
Garilon shook his head. “No, never.”
“Atop Gladsheim’s hill, there’s a huge tree in Idunn’s glade, near the temple. Beneath the tree, there’s a path.”
“I’ve been to the temple and seen the tree,” Garilon said, nodding. “But never elsewhere.”
“Doesn’t matter. When the jarls meet at Ithavoll, we ride a path down into the hill itself, winding down and down until we emerge into an immense space. It’s as if we were to walk out of this mine into the mountains. It’s the same feeling. Yggdrasil grows in that place. But it can’t be underground, because it just can’t—it doesn’t make sense. And believe me, I’ve tried to make sense of it. I’ve stood on the ramp and studied the stars, even convinced Thor to fly me around Yggdrasil in his cart. We never even reached the curve in its trunk.”
He looked through the barrier and at the swirling snowstorm in what had to be Utgard. Unless it was somewhere else entirely. “But now that I see this barrier, I’m wondering if the same thing isn’t at work beneath Gladsheim.”
“I don’t understand how that helps us now, Jarl.”
“Eh?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t, except if I’m right, passing through this barrier is perfectly safe. Though I suppose I just demonstrated that.”
“Assuming there isn’t a Jotunn warband on the other side.”
“Well, there is that. But it’s been more than a week now. If they were going to attack, they’d have done so.”
“Unless they’re still marshaling.”
“All the more reason for us to go through, make sure that’s actually Utgard and track down where the Jotunn came from. That’s all good, solid information I can bring back.”
Garilon’s gaze shifted to the blurry white field beside them. He waved a hand in the air. “With respect, Jarl, how will you know it’s Utgard? Maybe it’s just a door to, I don’t know, higher up in these same mountains. Or some other place in Asgard where it’s snowing.”
Vidar dropped one hand to his distaff, drumming his thumb on its grip. “That is possible. But one look at the clear night sky and I’ll know either way. Even if it’s not Utgard, just a different part of Asgard, that’s vital information too. This doorway means the Jotunn can do something we can’t and know things we don’t.”
Garilon’s cheeks puffed out as he exhaled. He ran a hand across his head, rippling his graying hair.
“Talk to me, Garilon. What gives you pause?” A flicker of doubt ran through him. Should he have even asked his kjolr’s opinion? He wasn’t sure his father would have done the same.
“Your pardon, Jarl, but Utgard does. I’ve fought there, as you yourself have.”
He had, on several occasions. Vidar raised a hand. “I know what you did during the Last War. I’ve no wish to lead my warband into death. But if the Jotunn can march through this doorway, they could turn this mine into a stronghold. I don’t know why they haven’t already, actually. But if they’re planning it and we can stop it or provide warning to my father, that’s all the more reason to go through.”
“I understand that, Jarl. I do. It’s just that our warriors aren’t ready for what’s on the other side of this...whatever this is.” Garilon gestured with his chin at the shimmering wall. “They’re loyal, willing, and brave, but they mustered out of the army for a reason. And the younger ones, well, they know which end of a spear is which, but to march into Utgard...”
“They did well enough against the Jotunn who razed Háls.”
Garilon nodded. “They did, Jarl. You inspired them. But it was your magic that shielded them, and it was you who destroyed that warband.”
He didn’t miss Garilon’s unspoken words. They both knew what had actually killed all those Jotunn. As he looked inward at her, he knew it could happen again if he let his control slip—which he wouldn’t.
Vidar clenched his as he looked at the swirling gray-white doorway. “Maybe they’re not ready. But we’re here. It’d be weeks before anyone else could get here—and by then, it could all be over. I’ll go through alone if I must, but I’d rather have you and a willing warband at my back.”
“Going alone won’t happen, Jarl. When I took this post, you asked me to speak plainly. Your father often did.”
Vidar felt as if he’d been struck with a hammer. His father had sought other’s opinions? The Sigfather himself?
Garilon continued. “But if that’s Utgard, the weather alone might kill us within a day, and we’d have learned nothing. Or worse yet, we’d have learned whatever it is but not be able to make it back.”
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. If it comes to it, we’ll raise such a din with Vithi’s horn that Heimdall won’t have a choice but to pay attention.”
“May I suggest then, Jarl, that we fortify where the mine shaft meets the cavern? That way, we’ll have someplace to fall back to should things get rough on the other side.”
Vidar nodded. “That makes sense. And pick four warriors to send back to the surface. They can then dispatch four from up top to relay word back to Vithi and then to Gladsheim.”
Just in case.
“And you have my promise,” he added, “I won’t squander our lives.”
But to himself alone he said, and I will do everything I can to learn how this doorway works and what actually lies over there.

OUTRO
Well, folks, that was CHAPTER 56 of Kinsmen Die. I hope you enjoyed it.

Vidar found the doorway the Jotunn used for their sneak attack on Hals. He also now believes that the oddly shaped device he was experimenting with allows the user to shape stone just like Odin used a “shaper” to mold Yggdrasil’s root.

But, the readers know that Vidar is wrong b/c we’ve seen the Jotunn general Beli use a similarly described device to find doorways. That was back in Chapter 39.

Next week, we’re back with Odin.

Until then, if you have the time and inclination, please rate and/or review the podcast — that helps boost the show’s visibility. As does sharing it.
  
As always, I’m going to read from both the Bellows and Larrington translations of the Havamal, the sayings of the High One, Odin himself.

Bellows, Verse 56

A measure of wisdom each man shall have,
But never too much let him know;
Let no man the fate before him see,
For so is he freest from sorrow.


Larrington, Verse 56
Averagely wise a man ought to be, never too wise;
let no one know his fate beforehand, for he’ll have the most carefree spirit.

Again, I don’t care for how Larrington translated this stanza. It lacks the impact that Bellows delivered.

OK, so, let me simplify it even further. And I’m about to spoil the myths themselves not my book, so tune out now if you’d rather know a little less and maybe be a little happier.


These lines are basically saying that if you learn your fate — the time and manner of your death, as an extreme example — you would lead a less happy life.

We all know that we will die. But we don’t know when or how.

Odin is the only Aesir who strove to become so wise that, in so doing, he not only learned that he would die, but how. But he never learned WHEN. If you know the myths, then you know how and when Odin dies — he is devoured by the wolf Fenrir at Ragnarok.  And remember, Fenrir is Loki’s son…and in my books, Fenrir is chained to a rock in the middle of nowhere.

But Odin doesn’t know WHEN Ragnarok happens. Maybe he chose not to learn that; maybe the when was hidden from him. The myths don’t say.

One of my challenges as the author imposing an overarching narrative on myths that don’t necessarily have that linearity…not that we know of, at least…was to figure out a plausible storyline…a plausible arc for Odin that shows him going down that rabbit hole of discovering that he will die and then learning more and more about it. 

So for me, this sequence of stanzas, and Stanza 56 in particular, sound like an older, wiser Odin saying “I know how I’m going to die, and it’s made me sadder, not happier, so don’t do what I did, be content being averagely wise.”

And if the Odin who speaks, or writes, these lines is older, then Ragnarok has not yet happened. Though maybe it did after he passed on his knowledge. There’s also an argument that perhaps knowing one’s manner of death would eventually lead to making peace with it. Maybe that’s why Odin’s lines sound somber rather than angry.

It could also be argued that knowing the manner of one’s death might lead to becoming reckless. I know I won’t die from falling off a building, so I no longer fear that.

There is also this idea that one’s death is orlog…which kinda sorta means “fated.” It is related to the word “Urdr” as in the Well of Urdr, which we’ve seen Odin interact with. And it is the Norns who set that fate, which we’ve seen them doing. Odin doesn’t like that much, so much so that his son Hodr says “Aesir set their own doom” — I use doom b/c fate sounds too Greek.

So let’s start combining some of this together.
- death day is fated
- the Norse hate cowardice and embraced that sense of “a noble name will never die if it is remembered” — which is another sequence of stanzas in the Havamal.

A warrior knows he will die, but he doesn’t know when or how. But he knows that if he dies in battle, he will join Odin in Valhol as an Einherjar. So, he goes into a battle completely fearless because he’s either going to live or die. If he dies, he joins Odin. If he lives, then it wasn’t his time to die.

But if shrinks from battle and dies anyway — because the Norns decreed that he would die on that day —  then he loses that chance to join Odin.

So what does that mean for Odin and his story arc? Well, stay tuned, but we’ve already seen that Odin hates the Norns and that he doesn’t believe they have power over him. He also eats the fruit of Yggdrasil to prolong his life. 

In my book so far he has not yet seen the manner of his death…though if you were paying attention and knew the myths, I’ve already foreshadowed it. So, what will he do when he learns the manner of his death? We shall see.

Thanks for listening.