Notes on Saga in Norse Mythology

Anonymous asked:

Hello, dear Fjorn. You are so delightful. Are you familiar with the goddess Sága? She’s a favorite of mine, but there’s never enough solid info on her. 🤔 How does one become Odin’s favorite drinking buddy?

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I am likely as familiar with her as you are, since there are but few sources and references about her to be found. I see that you have referred to stanza 7, line 3 of Grímnismál (The Sayings of Grimnir), where it says that “there [in Sokkvabekk] Odin and Saga drink every day,”¹ which is her only direct reference in the Poetic Edda.

Other than that, she is referred to again in the Prose Edda, but meagerly so. In Gylfaginning, her name appears only once, on page 29 of Anthony Faulkes’ translation:

“Second is Saga. She dwells at Sokkvabekk, and that is a big place.”²

Thus, we get just as little about her there as we did in the Poetic Edda. She is simply an Ásynjur (a Goddess of the Æsir), whose name means “Seeress” and lives in a place called Sokkvabrekk (which, according to Hollander, means “Hall of Slain Warriors”).³

There are a few complications regarding her however, since some scholarship (such as Lee M. Hollander and Carolyne Larrington) suspects Sága to be another name for Frigg, similar to how Odin himself goes by many names. Given her relationship with Odin, and the possible name for her dwelling, this theory is worth considering. I, for one, am inclined to agree with them, although it would not be impossible for her to have once been a separate goddess that came to be conflated with Frigg (the authors who wrote this material, that we cling so desperately onto, were greatly disconnected from the lore they recorded, after all). 

There is, for what it may be worth, a reference to “Saga’s headland” in Helgakviða Hundingsbana I (The First Lay of Helgi the Hunding-Slayer), stanza 39:

“Nine wolves on Saga’s headland
we engendered; I alone was their father.”⁴

But what that means is difficult to say. We simply do not have enough information to be certain about anything, unfortunately. 

As for becoming Odin’s drinking buddy, perhaps follow his advice in Hávamál regarding drinking. Or, if he is ever your guest, just make sure to be a good Host! Either way, I would suspect the answer for that dwells somewhere in Hávamál, my friend.

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ENDNOTES

1. Carolyne Larrington trans., The Poetic Edda (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 49.
2. Snorri Sturluson, Edda, translated by Anthony Faulkes (London: Everyman, 1995), 29. She does get mentioned again in Skáldskaparmál, on page 157, but the reference there is simply her name among a list of other Ásynjur.
3. Lee M. Hollander trans., The Poetic Edda (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), 55.
4. Larrington, 115.