Suttungr was the Norse giant who guarded the Mead of Poetry — the precious drink that grants the gift of verse and wisdom — hiding it deep within a mountain under the watch of his daughter, until Odin stole it away in one of the All-Father's most famous exploits. His loss of the mead is the myth of how poetry came to gods and men.
The Keeper of the Mead
Suttungr (Old Norse Suttungr) was a giant, the son of the giant Gilling. The Mead of Poetry had been brewed by dwarves from the blood of the wise being Kvasir mixed with honey — a drink that made anyone who tasted it a poet or a scholar. When those same dwarves killed Suttungr's father Gilling and mother, Suttungr seized them in vengeance and was bought off with the mead as recompense. He took the precious drink and hid it deep inside a mountain called Hnitbjörg, setting his daughter Gunnlöd to guard it. Thus the giant became the keeper of the most precious drink in the world, the very source of poetic and intellectual gifts, locked away in the heart of his mountain.
Odin's Theft of the Mead
Odin, in his endless hunger for wisdom and power, set out to win the mead. Disguised as a wanderer named Bölverk, he first tricked Suttungr's brother Baugi into helping him bore a hole through the mountain with an auger; then, transforming himself into a serpent, Odin slithered through the hole into the chamber where Gunnlöd guarded the mead. There he charmed or seduced her, and she agreed to let him take three drinks of the mead. But Odin's three drinks were mighty draughts: in three great gulps he emptied all three vessels, draining the entire Mead of Poetry. Then he transformed into an eagle and flew off toward Asgard with the mead inside him.
The Chase and the Gift of Poetry
Suttungr, discovering the theft, took his own eagle-form and gave furious chase across the sky. As Odin neared Asgard, the gods set out vessels to catch the mead; Odin, in eagle form, reached the walls and spat the mead out into the waiting containers. (A little was lost along the way — spilled or, in the cruder telling, expelled behind him — and this inferior portion became the share of bad poets and rhymesters.) The bulk of the mead, though, was saved in Asgard, and from it the gods grant the gift of poetry to those they favour. Suttungr, in some accounts, perished in the chase or was lost; his great treasure was gone forever.
The Giant Who Lost Poetry to the Gods
Suttungr endures as the giant guardian of the Mead of Poetry — the keeper of the source of all verse and wisdom, who lost it to the cunning of Odin. His tale is the Norse myth of the origin of poetry itself: how the precious drink passed from the dwarves to the giant to the gods, and how, through Odin's daring theft, the gift of poetry came at last into the world. Every poet, in the Norse view, drinks from the mead that Odin stole from Suttungr's mountain.
He locked the source of all poetry deep in his mountain under his daughter's guard — until Odin came as a serpent, drank it dry in three gulps, and flew it home to the gods as an eagle.