Gunnlod was the giantess who guarded the Mead of Poetry deep within a mountain — the daughter of Suttungr, who was seduced (or won over) by Odin in his quest to steal the precious mead, and who let the disguised god drink it all in three great draughts. Her tender, ambiguous part in the theft of poetry is one of the most poignant threads in that famous myth.
The Guardian of the Mead
Gunnlod (Old Norse Gunnlöð) was a jötunn, the daughter of the giant Suttungr, who possessed the Mead of Poetry — the wondrous drink, brewed from the blood of the wise being Kvasir, that grants the gift of poetry and wisdom to any who taste it. Suttungr hid this most precious of all drinks deep inside a mountain called Hnitbjörg, and he set his daughter Gunnlod to guard it, deep in the rock, the keeper of the source of all verse.
The Coming of Odin
Odin, hungering as ever for wisdom and power, came to win the mead. Disguised as a wanderer, he tricked his way to the mountain, bored a hole through the rock with an auger, transformed himself into a serpent, and slithered through into the chamber where Gunnlod kept her watch over the mead. There, in the heart of the mountain, the disguised god came to the giantess who guarded the drink.
Three Nights, Three Draughts
What passed between Odin and Gunnlod is told with a tenderness rare in the myths. Odin stayed with Gunnlod for three nights, and she — whether seduced by him, or moved by love, or won by his words — agreed to grant him three drinks of the precious mead. The verses give Gunnlod a voice of her own, suggesting she gave the mead freely out of love and trust, lying in Odin's embrace. But Odin's three drinks were a deception: in three vast gulps he drained all three vessels, emptying the entire Mead of Poetry, and then transformed into an eagle and flew away to Asgard with the mead inside him — leaving Gunnlod behind, her trust betrayed, her father's treasure gone.
The Giantess Betrayed
Gunnlod endures as one of the most affecting figures in Norse myth — the giantess who guarded the source of poetry and who, through love or trust, let it slip away to the gods, only to be abandoned by the god she had welcomed. In some readings she is a tragic figure, used and left behind in the heart of her mountain; Odin himself, in one verse, seems to acknowledge a pang of guilt at how he repaid her. She embodies the bittersweet truth at the heart of the myth of poetry's origin: that the gift of verse came to the world through a giantess's trust and a god's betrayal, love and theft inextricably entwined.
She guarded the source of all poetry in the heart of her mountain and gave it, for love, to a disguised god — who drank it dry in three gulps and flew away, leaving her with empty vessels and a broken trust.