Mythology · the Eddas
The Hammer, the Choosers, and the Bound Wolf
Three myths forged in iron, blood, and tide
Blood, Iron, and Tide takes its fire from the old Norse cosmos as the medieval Icelanders wrote it down — chiefly Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda and the older Poetic Edda. Three images run through it: a hammer born of a wager, the women who choose the slain, and the wolf the gods could not kill.
Why Mjölnir has a short handle
When Loki shears the golden hair of Thor's wife Sif, he must buy back his life with treasures. He goads two dwarf smiths, Brokkr and Eitri, into a wager — and then, as a biting fly, harasses the one working the bellows. The smith flinches once; that single flinch is why the great hammer Mjölnir came out with a handle too short. The same forge produced Odin's spear Gungnir and the ring Draupnir, but the gods judged the flawed hammer the greatest treasure of all: the wall against the giants.
The choosers of the slain
Valkyrja means 'chooser of the slain.' These are the figures who decide who falls in battle and carry half the worthy dead to Odin's hall, Valhalla, where they feast and fight until the last day. The Poetic Edda names them — Hildr, Þrúðr, Göll — and the saga poem Darraðarljóð shows them weaving a grim loom of war. They are not gentle angels; they are the iron edge of fate.
The wolf the gods could not kill
Fenrir, the wolf-child of Loki, grew so fast the gods feared a prophecy in him. He snapped their strongest chains, so the dwarves forged Gleipnir from six impossible things — the sound of a cat's step, a woman's beard, the roots of a mountain, the breath of a fish, and more. Fenrir would only be bound if a god laid a hand in his jaws as a pledge of good faith. The god Týr did. When the wolf could not break free, he took Týr's hand. At Ragnarök, Fenrir slips the chain at last — and swallows Odin himself.
The music it inspired
Blood, Iron, and Tide
The forging of Mjölnir, the dance of the Valkyries, Fenrir breaking his chains.
Each myth gets its own movement on the album: “The Forging of Mjolnir,” “Dance of the Valkyries,” and “Fenrir — The Breaker of Chains.”