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What advice can a severed head really offer you? It’s not like he can go anywhere. I guess this is just the sort of thing you do when you don’t have libraries or the internet.

We talked about Odin and Mimir and war between the Aesir and Vanir last friday. This comic was supposed to be up this Tuesday when all of that was a little bit fresher in your minds, but I had to go out to Boston for my very last appearance at school ever to make sure that I get to graduate. Turns out I do! Hooray!

If you’ve forgotten about last Friday’s blog post, refresh your memory over here.

Mimir’s head, while a little grisly to us, is a powerful symbol (though it is one among many) representing the hidden knowledge that Odin was said to possess. The head, stuck somewhere between the world of the living and the world of the dead, was able to access information from both realms of existence, a valuable tool for a god that prized knowledge and cunning over brute force. There is a great deal of this sort of thing to be found in the character of Odin. He is a figure that straddles the line between life and death, a figure steeped in secrets and riddles and magic known only to him. Stories like the tales of Mimir and of Kvasir serve to really drive that point home.

Odin was not like other Norse gods.

Though all of these deities enjoyed respect and regards in the Norse mind, Odin seems to be a little bit apart, perhaps even a little bit foreign. Respected and worshiped, but rarely loved the way some of the other gods are. Baldur, Thor, Freyja, and even Loki all seem to enjoy a little more closeness in the heart of the Norse. Odin was one to be respected but also feared.

You can’t really blame anyone for being a little scared of a dude that carries around (and talks to) a severed head, who hung himself from a tree as a sacrifice to himself, and who rides around on a coal black horse with eight legs.

There’s just something a little creepy going on there.

It’s really a wonder that anyone talked to him at all!

Anyway, we’ll get away from Mimir’s head next week, I promise!