Odin’s Ravens’ Song (Thorpe’s tr.).
Seeing that she did not return, Odin bade Bragi, Heimdall, and another of the gods go in search of her, giving them a white wolfskin to envelop her in, so that she should not suffer from the cold, and bidding them make every effort to rouse her from the stupor which his prescience told him had taken possession of her.
“A wolf’s skin they gave her,
In which herself she clad.”
Odin’s Ravens’ Song (Thorpe’s tr.).
Idun passively allowed the gods to wrap her in the warm wolfskin, but she persistently refused to speak or move, and from her strange manner her husband sadly suspected that she had had a vision of great ills. The tears ran continuously down her pallid cheeks, and Bragi, overcome by her unhappiness, at length bade the other gods return to Asgard without him, vowing that he would remain beside his wife until she was ready to leave Hel’s dismal realm. The sight of her woe oppressed him so sorely that he had no heart for his usual merry songs, and the strings of his harp were mute while he remained in the underworld.
“That voice-like zephyr o’er flow’r meads creeping,
Like Bragi’s music his harp strings sweeping.”
Viking Tales of the North (R. B. Anderson).
In this myth Idun’s fall from Yggdrasil is symbolical of the autumnal falling of the leaves, which lie limp and helpless on the cold bare ground until they are hidden from sight under the snow, represented by the wolfskin, which Odin, the sky, sends down to keep them warm; and the cessation of the birds’ songs is further typified by Bragi’s silent harp.