INTRO
 
Welcome to CHAPTER 29 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.

Today, we’re back with Frigg. We last saw her sitting in judgement over a divorce. In this chapter she’s in Gladsheim’s main hall awaiting word of what’s happened in the west with the Jotunn’s attack on Hals.

Let’s do this.
 
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Frigg
Frigg forced herself to stop drumming her fingers on the arm of her chair. She ached to stand, to move, to do anything other than sit here and wait for word of what was happening in Vithi. After four nights, she should have heard something. Odin’s ravens could make that flight in half the time—less, even. Not even the regular clamor in the hall—laughter, talking, shouting—ease her mood.
She glanced over at the dim nook into which the thralls had dragged Heimdall’s inert form and shook her head in disgust. He should have been able to tell her what was going on, but whatever Baldr had given him had knocked him out for nearly two nights. When he awakened, he’d stumbled back here and began drinking. And there he lay, snoring and twitching. 
She should make him sit by the casks of ale. At least then he’d be completely out of sight.
“If only Jarl Heimdall were sober, we might know what happened in Vithi,” Nanna said.
Frigg smiled wearily. “You read my thoughts, Nanna,”
Nanna had come to Gladsheim with her husband, Baldr, months earlier for aid in dealing with his night sickness. Over the last few weeks she’d spent much of her time as she usually did this time of year helping to plan and organize the Midwinter festival which marked the celebration of Aegir’s escape from Rán’s nets. Frigg’s own people, the Jotunn, also celebrated on Midwinter, but the dominance of the two figures—Rán and Aegir, who fought and fell in love as summer passed into winter and back again all through the long ages was different. 
“I would know if something happened to Baldr,” Nanna said, sounding more as if she was trying to convince herself.
Frigg patted Nanna’s hand, knowing exactly what her son’s wife was referring to. “We’ll figure it out.”
When Baldr was born on Midwinter’s Night, Frigg had used the power of that long, dark night to guard her son against all harm. She had bled for it, as had Odin, just as they gave of themselves every Midwinter to maintain the strength of that charm.
But if nothing could hurt her son, then why was he being plagued by these deathly dreams? And why did she see him aboard a flaming ship?
Her eyes roamed over the feasting, drinking mass of Aesir and Alvar in the great hall without actually seeing them. Their revelry was like the dull, distant pounding of surf. The earthiness of their close-packed bodies was accentuated by the wafting smell of roasting cow, boar and deer’s flesh, and the spices used to flavor the meat.
To her right, one seat down from Nanna, Idunn and Sif laughed at some bit of verse or song that Bragi, Idunn’s husband, was composing or rehearsing. The hall was so loud that she could only hear fragments of the harp’s voice. A bored-looking Tyr sat to her left. Ullr’s usual seat was vacant. After news of the Jotunn attack on Háls, he’d chosen to remain at the Fortress at the Breach which guarded the border with Utgard.
Frigg’s gaze next fell on the Jotunn envoy. Eldir shook his head slightly and looked away. No news from him, then.
What had happened in Vithi?
When she’d spoken with Eldir yesterday, the envoy said that he was, of course, aware of the attack and was awaiting further word from the Skrymir—who hoped to find some way to redress the Aesir’s losses and thus avoid a war.
No war? She almost laughed. Not with Odin back.
Her eyes flicked away. Odin. She forced her hand to remain unclenched. She must show nothing except strength and calm control.
It wasn’t enough that he’d been gone for more than twenty winters, leaving her to manage Gladsheim’s affairs. No support. No key advisors, beyond aged Fimafeng. Might as give a boy an axe and make him off to duel Thor. But she had survived. She had proven herself and those in this hall, and elsewhere, did accept her as Almother. 
But no sooner had she had called Odin back to deal with his own son’s sickness  than another problem arose and off he rushed leaving her alone. Again.
She felt the scowl on her face, and she knew it would be noticed before long, if it hadn’t already. So, she forced a smile to her lips and hoped the glinting gold all around the great hall might lend some sparkle to her eyes.
A raucous cry from a florid-faced man drew her attention back to the floor. He was massive, dwarfing even his companions as he stood, black beard bristling, dark eyes shining in a bluff face flushed with drink and good humor as he lifted his ale horn in a toast. Whatever he shouted was lost in the din.
“These new Einherjar,” Nanna whispered, leaning in toward Frigg, a slight frown on her face. “They seem so different from the older ones among their ranks, don’t you think?”
Frigg frowned and peered into the comparative gloom at the eastern side door, where a pair of veteran Einherjar sat, grizzled and scarred. They were speaking quietly with Ráta, one of the two baresarks Odin had left to guard her.
Ráta noticed Frigg’s gaze and quirked an eyebrow, but Frigg shook her head slightly.
“Different, indeed, Nanna, but those who earned the Einherjar distinction during the Last War are old now—no doubt many long for a new war before they depart for the Gjoll.”
Nanna nodded and gestured with her chin toward the florid-faced Einherjar, who was now gesticulating in a decidedly lewd manner. “But I don’t remember them carrying on like this one here.”
Frigg was about to reply when shadows darkened the space above. A heartbeat later, amid clattering wings, the empty chair to her left rocked slightly under the weight of Odin’s two large ravens. Their huge taloned feet gouged fresh cuts into the tall back of Odin’s chair. 
Their heads and beaks darted in quick, ferocious movements, and they called out in loud, hoarse, cough-like voices, that silenced the hall’s din.
He returns, croaked one.
Soon, said the other.
Frigg’s gaze darted to the Jotunn envoy. He wore no expression; his eyes were a stony blank.
Victorious, said the first raven, talons grinding against the yew chair.
Make way, said the second.
Frigg felt Nanna’s hand on her arm, gripping tight. She patted Nanna’s hand reassuringly without taking her eyes off the ravens. Would Odin double the spectacle by sending Freki and Geri in next?
“And what of Baldr?” Frigg asked quietly.
One of the raven’s black eyes gleamed golden, and it spoke. “Alive. Hale. My wife.”
“See, he’s well,” she said, giving Nanna a comforting smile even as relief flooded into the younger woman’s expression.
She beckoned for Gná. “Please inform all those jarls here, as well as Freyr and Freyja, who are most likely in their respective houses, that we will descend to Ithavoll in the morning.”
“At once, Hár Frigg,” Gná said, with a bow.
As the din returned to the hall, Frigg leaned toward Nanna and said, “We’ll have to postpone our trip down to the victualers. Who were we to visit?”
“The ale and wine sellers in the morning and the meat traders in the afternoon. They’re here tonight. I’ll go tell them now.”
“No, no, wait until I’m done, daughter.” She stood and smoothed her dress. “I must announce Odin’s imminent return, though it’s hardly necessary, given the entrance he makes even without entering. Well, sooner started, sooner done, eh?”
She stepped forward to the platform’s edge, tugging at one sleeve and then the other, staring out at the faces in the crowd. Most were well-off farmers and merchants here with their families. All Aesir knew how to fight, but maybe a tenth of those here had actually seen a bloodied axe or smelled the stench of battle. None of them had any desire for a new war with the Jotunn.
What they wanted, for themselves and their kin, would arrive a week from now. All these Aesir—jarls, drangr, and karls—would again gather here in Gladsheim’s main hall, as well as the handful of lesser halls throughout the city, for the Midwinter festival. For three nights and days, the streets would run with ale, food for all, games of skill and chance, music, and poetry, all of it to celebrate the longest night of the year. 
The culmination of the festivities would find Baldr, chest bared, standing high on a stump at the center of a ring of townsfolk. After he played the role of Aegir in the Midwinter ritual, everyone would be invited to hurl weapons at him. Baldr would stand, patiently smiling, as the weapons bounced off him and clattered to the ground. That was her people’s ancient blood magic at work, born of love and sacrifice and given freely every Midwinter to prevent his death.
A few faces from the nearest tables turned up to her with expectant expressions. The light from the torches, witchlamps, and braziers scattered throughout the hall—hanging from the beams above, resting on tables, or hammered high into the dozens of columns holding up the roof—conspired to lend auras of shimmering yellows and oranges around the faces of seemingly everyone in the crowd.
She sighed to herself. She still hadn’t said anything. She’d been silent so long now that she didn’t really need to address the revel. Everyone knew what it meant when Odin’s ravens clattered their way into the hall even if it hadn’t happened in a long time.
But if she didn’t play the role of Hár Frigg, Almother, adoring and loving wife of the Alfather, these wealthy, bored folk would wink and nudge and whisper of a rift between herself and Odin.
And what did that matter, really? Many of those here had been children when Odin had left. In another twenty winters, they’d be wizened wrecks, while she would remain mostly as she was. Strong. Proud. Young.
And alone.
Her stomach twisted at the thought. And it didn’t help with what she had to do now. Sooner started, sooner done.
“Folk of Gladsheim, hear me!”
She waited for silence, consciously wearing a light, armoring smile. Her gaze moved from familiar faces in the crowd who turned to listen, to those less familiar to her, to those shrouded by distance and gloom. 
The hearth flames had mellowed, as had the light from the many sconces hung from the tree-thick posts. Witchlamps on every other table, were bright islands in an otherwise gloomy lake.
“Hear the Almother,” Nanna called out, her voice loud and clear, and oddly, for Nanna, happy.
Frigg half-turned to acknowledge her daughter—and that’s when her vision began, in flames above Nanna’s head. In those vision-fires, Nanna lay prostrate on a floor, shoulders heaving as if she wept.
Not now, please not now, Frigg thought.
She turned back to the hall, feeling her smile, her armor, slip. All the light, regardless of source, dropped to the floor where it puddled and pooled, doubling and redoubling in brightness till—as she drew in her next breath—flowed up every single person and turned every head in the hall into a torch.
She closed her eyes—not now, please, not now—but the vision-flames still burned above every head. Eyes open, eyes closed. It didn’t matter. Only she could see them. No one knew that she, Frigg, Almother, could see their dooms in those dancing flames. 
The hall looked like a windblown lake of fire. So much pain and death and grief, smiling faces heedless of what lay before them—spitted on spears, filled with arrows, swept overboard, crushed in the slavering jaws of snow bears, trapped in burning houses and more. So much more.
Perhaps sensing something wrong, Gulfinn and Ráta drifted closer from where they’d been leaning in the crisscrossing shadows of the hall’s columns. She shook her head and they stopped. They could protect her from a beast in the hall, but there was no defense against these visions.
When they had first come to her as a child, her father’s shaman had told her to embrace what she saw. They were a gift from the wild disir, he said, glimpses of the doom the Norns themselves cut and painted for all folk everywhere.
She’d abused the gift, as children often do, because she resented seeing death and pain wherever she looked. She had lashed out, telling friends how they’d die, even the old shaman himself. He’d just smiled sadly, nodded, and said she would learn his final lesson on her own. 
A winter later while standing on the shore of the Thund watching the shaman’s burial ship burn its way through the mists, she realized what he meant. All she’d done was bring more fear and sadness into the world. She hadn’t ever been able change what would happen—only how it happened, and usually not even that. Better to stay silent.
It was the juxtaposition of the now with the yet-to-come she found so disturbing, particularly in these times when people lived with such heart. That golden Alvar over at one of the traders’ tables laughed among friends even as a forest burned behind him and he fell to his death.
Pitching her voice louder still, she called out, “Hear me.”
Finally, comparative silence returned to the hall, upturned faces afloat in the sea of vision-flames.
“As most of you are aware, except sharp-eyed Heimdall,” she said, gesturing toward the dark corner where Heimdall snored, “the Alfather’s ravens have returned. They spoke of victory in Vithi, but how could it be otherwise when the Sigfather and his Einherjar take the field?”
That earned a roar of approval, punctuated by the dull hammering of fists and knife butts, further denting the tables. The big florid Einherjar again leaped to his feet, arms raised, and exhorted those around him to greater cheers, even as his death fluttered down in a rain of black-feathered arrows.
Annoyance writ plain on his scarred face, Gulfinn drifted closer, clearly ready to hurl the man from the hall. In the moment her eye lit on the baresark, she saw Gulfinn falling...
... backward, a table and bench splintering soundlessly. His mouth parted in what had to be a shout. A black-haired wrist appeared that ended, not in a hand, but in a sickening white-bone spike. Less than a heartbeat later, that spike was buried in Gulfinn’s chest. Blood fountained from his mouth...
The vision-flames flared she hissed in a breath and, just like that, all the vision-flames in the entire hall winked out. Nanna touched her elbow and offered her a small cup of wine.
She took the cup, smiled her thanks, then faced the crowd. Those nearby had noticed her lapse, but those farther back had not.
She gestured for the white-robed thralls to move through the hall with fresh flagons of wine and beer and raised her cup. “A toast to the Alfather—a fitting repeat of his own words, spoken many times in this hall: No great thing need be given; often, little purchases great praise. With half a loaf and a half-filled cup a full friend I’ve made.”
She drained her cup in one quick, cool, sweet swallow. “In a week’s time, Midwinter will be upon us. At that time, all those who present themselves at any hall in Gladsheim will receive a full portion—and may friendships made then last twice as long and run twice as deep!”
For they may need to rely on them soon.
The crowd’s noise rose again as they saluted her in turn. She kept her smile as she walked slowly back toward her seat next to Nanna. Was the hall she’d seen in Gulfinn’s vision this one? It had looked familiar. And what of the black-feathered arrows that killed the big, cavorting Einherjar. Surely that meant battle loomed. But who had shot those arrows, the Jotunn?
She pressed herself hard into the high back of her chair.
Nanna whispered, her voice sweet and concerned. “Mother? Are you all right? You’re white as milk.”
She smiled tiredly and touched her daughter’s shoulder with one hand. “More visions. They’re becoming nearly as frequent as when I was a child.”
Nanna seemed to shrink inward. “Who this time? Or is it the same one…”
“No, it wasn’t about Baldr,” she said. Not directly, at least. Who else would Nanna weep over—only Baldr and her kin. “I think I’ll sit here a little longer and then retire for the night. It’s been a long day already, and Ithavoll will make tomorrow longer still.”
At the council, should she hint at her visions of death and war? It seemed the right thing to do, given that their only remaining foe were the Jotunn.
She drummed her fingers against the arm of her chair. Why would the Skrymir want another war with the Aesir? He couldn’t win. He had to know that. The Jotunn had only a few warbands, and all they did was roam Utgard’s wastes looking for a way out. Obviously, some of the Jotunn tribe leaders wanted war; otherwise, Háls would still be standing. And just as obviously, they must have hidden that warband away in Utgard’s many caves.
But why now? Until three nights ago, she would have sworn that her efforts these past twenty winters, along with Baldr’s, had borne fragile fruit. In the last eighteen winters alone, Baldr had made twice-yearly embassies to Utgard. In the wake of those trips, tenuous trade had developed between the Jotunn and the Aesir. It was the first time such a thing had ever happened.
And it was the first time since she’d been wife to the Alfather that a generation of Aesir had not been at war.
In many ways, Odin’s absence these past twenty winters had been a good thing. Most of those sitting in this hall had never seen an axe bared in anger. And over the past handful of winters, trade had steadily increased as the Aesir developed a craving for Jotunn trinkets: horns from snow bear, furs, spices.
Baldr had made it all happen. She’d made sure that was known. From what she could tell, the Jotunn had come to love Baldr even as they feared his father.
If she could get Odin to step down as Alfather could Baldr effect a lasting peace?
She snorted. Odin would never abdicate, particularly now. He’d want blood for the attack on Háls.
But she also knew that he hated mediating border disputes between farmers or whose flock grazed in so-and-so’s field when it wasn’t their turn much less sitting in judgment over thefts and murders. Or divorces.
All of that was much more common in the Gladsheim of today compared to the one he’d left behind.
No, Odin wanted to explore, to discover new things—seidr, creatures, lands, peoples.
And what did she want? To no longer be alone, certainly. She also wanted her husband back. Despite his long absence, she loved him. And, if she were honest, that was partly why she’d gotten so angry when he’d left for Vithi.
But if Baldr became Alfather, well, maybe that was a way forward for both of them.
So how would she get Odin to abdicate?

OUTRO
Well, folks, that was CHAPTER 29 of Kinsmen Die. I hope you enjoyed it. 

We were with Frigg who presided over a nightly feast in Gladsheim’s great hall. There are many such halls in Gladsheim, but this is the biggest and best of them.

There are couple things I wanted to highlight about this chapter. 

The Midwinter ritual in which the Aesir gather together and huck stuff at Baldr and how, because he was made invulnerable and impervious, stands there and takes it.

How she protected Baldr via an ancient blood magic ritual and how she and Odin continue powering that spell.

There’s a few things going on here. My text here is alluding to the myths told in the Prose Edda along with various stanzas in some of the poems in the Poetic Edda.

Here’s the text from Gylfaginning, which is one of the sections in the Prose Edda.

“And Frigg took oaths…that fire and water should spare Baldr, likewise iron and metal of all kinds, stones, earth, trees, sicknesses, beasts, birds, venom, serpents. And when that was done and made known, then it was a diversion of Baldr's and the Æsir, that he should stand up in the Thing, and all the others should some shoot at him, some hew at him, some beat him with stones; but whatsoever was done hurt him not at all, and that seemed to them all a very worshipful thing.”

That’s basically where I got the idea for the Midwinter ritual and, obviously, why Baldr in one of the prior chapters got knocked around but suffered no injury.

And it also why it is so troubling to Frigg that Baldr is “corpse-like” during his “bad dreams” which we saw firsthand in chapter one.

We also see Frigg’s visions in more detail, how they appear and what she sees when they arrive. 

The whole idea of Frigg’s visions are based on a couple lines from the Lokasenna in which Freyja says to Loki

Freyja spake:
29. xx … and I’m only quoting the last two lines of the stanza
The fate of all does Frigg know well,
Though herself she says it not."

What I tried to do was provide some backstory for Frigg — not only that she can see what I call “the yet to come” (and more on that in an upcoming episode) but why she keeps her mouth shut about what she sees. And that theme will develop further.

Next week we’re back with Odin for his arrival back in Gladsheim. 

Before then, if you have the time and inclination, please take a few moments to rate and/or review the podcast — that provides valuable feedback for me and helps boost the show’s visibility. As does sharing it.

And if you’re so inclined, shoot me an email at mattbishopwrites@gmail.com.

I’d love to hear from you.
  
As always, I’m going to read from the Havamal, sayings of the High One, Odin himself.

As usual, I’ll be reading from Bellows and Larrington. 

Bellows, Verse 29

Often he speaks who never is still
With words that win no faith;
The babbling tongue, if a bridle it find not,
Oft for itself sings ill.

Larrington, Verse 29
Quite enough baseless blather comes from the man never silent;
a quick tongue, unless it’s held in check, often talks itself into trouble.

Thanks for listening.