Ceci n’est pas une pipe

We got to spend an extra day in Reykjavik this trip. There was a violent storm raging out at sea, so the captain got all the guests together and announced that, while the ship was built for conditions like these and he enjoyed a roller-coaster ride, he’d be kind to everyone on the ship and stay in port for an extra day until the storm had blown over. So, needless to say, I decided to visit one of the many museums in Reykjavik. The penis museum was the obvious choice.

Exhibits include specimens of penises from a wide variety of species, in all shapes and sizes, as well as phallic artwork and represenations of the penis in art and culture. One of the exhibits is a tapestry depicting a famous story in Norse mythology including a penis-related incident which had the Norse gods rolling around with laughter. It seems the Norse gods were more human than your average deity!

The Norse penis story is that of The Kidnapping of Idun, the protagonists of the penis incident being Loki, the god of mischief, and a goat. I’ll tell you below how the story goes.

The Kidnapping of Idun

One day, Thor, Loki and Hoenir, three of the Norse gods, were walking in the realm of the giants when they began feeling hungry. They came across a lush green valley where a herd of fat oxen was grazing, so they decided to kill an oxen and cook it. They buried the oxen in a bed of coals and waited for its meat to cook. After many hours, they uncovered it and tested whether the meat was cooked, but it still hung off the bones as raw as when they had buried it. So they dug it in again and waited, but however long they waited, the meat was not cooked. They realised that some kind of powerful magic was at work.

Eventually, they discovered a giant eagle up in the branches of the highest tree in the valley. The eagle laughed at them and said: „This is my meat and not yours to eat“. With that, he swooped down and was just about to carry off the whole oxen in its talons. Loki was so angry that he struck the bird with his spear, only to realise that the same powerful magic was now working on him: He was unable to let go of his spear, and the gigantic bird carried him high up into the air.

„I beg you, let me go“, Loki pleaded, „I shall give you whatever want if you just let me live“. „Anything I want?“, asked the eagle. „Anything!“, said Loki. „Then I want Idun and her apples,“ the eagle replied. „I am Thiazi, the giant,“ he said, „and if you do not bring me Idun in three days, I shall find and kill you!“. „I promise, you shall have her!“, Loki said. With that, the bird put Loki down and flew away.

Idun, as you may know, was the goddess of spring and rejuvenation. She was kind and beautiful, and carried with her at all times a box of golden apples, from which the gods had to eat in order to gain their immortality. Loki knew he would have to keep his promise or else the eagle would find and kill him, so he walked deep into a forest with Idun on the next day under a pretense. When Idun entered a clearing in the woods, the eagle swooped down and took her and her apples away.

Loki hoped that by the time the gods noticed that Idun had disappeared no-one would suspect him. It did not take long for the gods‘ hair to turn white, their backs to become bent, their skin shrivelled. But as their bodies grew old, their minds stayed sharp, and they soon suspected that Loki was involved in the disappearance of Idun. They ordered him to bring her back, or else they would torture him until Ragnarök, the day of the end of the world, would come. Loki agreed to find and bring home Idun, but asked Freya for her falcon coat and also told the gods to pile up wood shavings around the walls for Asgard, their home, as high as they could. He was given the coat, which turned him into a falcon, and he flew away from Asgard back to the realm of the giants to seek Idun.

When Loki arrived at Thiazi’s fortress, he saw the giant leaving with an enormous rowing boat. He was on his way out to sea to fish. Loki took the opportunity to fly past every window of the castle until he found Idun, weeping in a small room. He entered the room, took off the falcon robe and regained his human form, and told Idun he was here to save her and her box of apples; with that, he put his hand on her head and turned her into a walnut. He then put the robe back on, grabbed the nut in one of his talons, and flew away towards Asgard.

But just as he was leaving, the giant spotted the falcon. He immediately recognised the falcon as a magical creature, and went to check whether Idun was still in her cell. Infuriated when he discovered she had been taken from him, he turned himself into the giant eagle again and followed the falcon with mighty flaps of his wings. As the birds approached Asgard, he had almost caught up with the falcon; one more flap of his wings and he would have caught and killed Loki and Idun.

The gods in Asgard saw the two birds approaching and realised what danger Idun was in. Now they knew why Loki had asked them to pile up the wood shavings: They set fire to them, and within an instant, just after the falcon had flown over the walls of Asgard, a huge blaze reached into the sky and scorched all the eagle’s feathers. The eagle, featherless, could no longer fly and slumped to the ground. Wounded, Thiazi had difficulty changing back into his giant form, and Thor swung his hammer at the bird, killing it.

When Loki landed, he took off the falcon robe and turned Idun and her apples back into their human form. The gods ate from the apples and regained their youth, and Loki was forgiven for his deed. This could have been the end of this story if not for Skaldi, Thiazi’s daughter.

Skaldi was infuriated at the death of her beloved father. She put on her armour, picked up her weapons, and made her way to Asgard to seek revenge. She banged furiously on the doors of Asgard; the gods were frightened and offered to compensate for her loss. „I am lonely without my father“, she said. „We offer that you may pick any one of the gods as your husband“, the gods suggested. „I am sad without my father. How will I ever laugh again?“, she wailed. „We promise that we will make you laugh again“, the gods said. „But the world will not remember my father,“ she replied. „We will make sure he is remembered for all times“, the gods offered. With that, Skaldi was satisfied – especially as she had set her sights on Baldur, the most handsome of all the gods.

„You may choose your husband freely from all the gods“, Odin, the All-Father of the gods, explained to Skandi, „but the condition is that you choose without seeing their faces. You may only see their feet.“ So all the gods lined up with bare feet behind a curtain, and Skandi walked past the feet, finding one pair after another ugly. Then finally, she saw a pair of feet that was beautifully shaped, with soft white skin. „Such beautiful feet must surely belong to Baldur, the most handsome of the gods“, she thought. „This is the god I want as my husband!“, she exclaimed. The curtain was raised, and to her surprise, the feet belonged to Njord, the god of the seas. As he stood with his feet in the ocean, they were clean and smooth. The two were married on the spot, but this did not give Skaldi her smile back as this had not been the husband she wanted.

The gods said to Loki: „This is all your fault, so you now have to make Skaldi laugh again! We must keep our promises.“ Loki thought hard about how to go about this, and eventually, went out to the stables and picked a large billy goat. He brought the goat back into the wedding hall and tied a piece of rope tightly around the goat’s beard. The other end of the rope he tied around his private parts. He gave the rope a quick tug with his hand, and with that, the most hilarious game of tug-of-war ensued. The gods laughed and cheered and even placed bets on whose appendage would be the first to be torn off. The billy goat, annoyed at having its bear tugged hard, pulled back ferociously on the rope, and Loki squealed and screamed as his private parts suffered. Eventually, the rope snapped, and Loki fell into Skaldi’s lap. While, at first, the show had only been able to slightly raise the corners of her mouth, when Loki fell, she could not help but burst out laughing until tears came from her eyes.

Now, there was only one promise left. Odin took Skaldi and walked out with her to the pyre that had been built for her father’s body. Next to the pyre were two glowing spheres. „These“, Odin explained to her, „are your father’s eyes.“ He took the spheres and threw them into the sky, where they still shine as two stars until this day. And with this, her father’s memory was preserved for eternity. All three promises to Skaldi had been fulfilled and she no longer sought revenge.

This would normally be the point of happily-ever-after, but apparently, Skandi and Njord did not live that happily ever after – their marriage soon ran into problems. They tried living in the mountains, but Njord missed the seas and their creatures and loathed the song of the wolves. They tried living in the ocean, but Skaldi missed the mountains and found the screeching of the seabirds unbearable. Eventually, they became a truly modern couple: Married, but living apart. But that’s a different story.