Authors: Leif Ravnsen
Mentors: Rick McDonald
Insitution: Utah Valley University
Most of our knowledge about Medieval Norse Myth is filtered through post-conversion Christian scholars that had little interest in maintaining pagan belief structures. Odin, god of kingship and poetry takes center stage in poet-politician Snorri Sturluson's Edda; Tyr and Ullr were just as prominent in their own regional worship centers, yet are scarcely attested themselves. In that great gap between what once was known and what remains, we can reclaim some measure of lost knowledge by contextualizing and reinterpreting the surviving material. Hildolf, Battle-wolf, is rarely examined and even dismissed by one prominent scholar as simply another aspect of Odin. Their bias assumes that being listed among the names of Odin's sons equates to being Odin, which has no logical basis upon examination. Free of this intellectual dead end, Hildolf can be put in his proper cosmological place. He governs the crossing of the river boundary between Asgard and Jotunheim, protects the lands of gods and men from bandits and thieves, his home is called "Counsel-island," and a disguised Odin describes him as "wise in counsel." Asgard has invested a warrior-mediator at the boundary of the realm, and in this position Hildolf shifts the commonly perceived relationship between gods and giants, civilization and wilderness, and man and animal toward something more holistic. Hildolf is also placed between Odin and Thor, representing a middle path between their respective warrior types of raider and protector. In this fractured time of partisanship and othering, we now have another symbol to help guide us toward collaboration, with those outside of us and within ourselves.