THE SCENE: The Christian writer Saxo Grammaticus recasts Odin and his wife Frigg as a couple of unhappily married aristocrats who used gold, vandalism, theft, murder, magic, and sexual impropriety to inflict their petty vengeances on each other.
THE TEXT: At that time there was a man called Odin who was believed throughout Europe, though falsely, to be a god. The kings of the north, eager to honour his divinity with more enthusiastic worship, executed a representation of him in gold, the arms thickly encircled with heavy bracelets. Delighting in his celebrity, Odin avidly greeted the donor’s affection. His wife, Frigg, desiring to walk abroad more bedizened, brought in smiths to strip the statue of its gold. Odin had them hanged and then, setting the image on a plinth, by a marvelous feat of workmanship made it respond with a voice to human touch. Subordinating her husband’s divine honours to the splendor of her own apparel, Frigg submitted herself to the lust of one of her servants; by his cunning the effigy was demolished and the gold which had been devoted to public idolatry went to serve her personal pleasure. Consequently Odin, wounded by both his wife’s offences, grieved as heavily over the damage to his likeness as the harm to his bed. Stung by this double embarrassment he took to exile replete with an honest shame, thinking that he would thereby obliterate the stain of his disgrace.
– Gesta Danorum, Saxo Grammaticus, 12th Century AD
