Strove to win:
Contumely of every kind
That wily girl
Heaped upon me;
Nor of that damsel gained I aught.
This is clearly the same story as is related by Saxo Grammaticus, as follows: Odin loves a maiden, whose name is Rind, and who has a stubborn disposition. Odin tried to revenge the death of his son Balder. Then he was told by Rosthiof that he with Rind, the daughter of the king of the Ruthenians, would beget another son, who would revenge his brother’s death. Odin put on his broad-brimmed hat and went into the service of the king, and won the friendship of the king, for as commander he put a whole army to flight. He revealed his love to the king, but when he asked the maiden for a kiss, she struck his ear. The next year he came as a smith, called himself Rosterus, and offered the maiden a magnificent bracelet and beautiful rings; but she gave his ear another blow. The third time he came as a young warrior, but she thrust him away from her so violently that he fell head first to the ground. Finally he came as a woman, called himself Vecha, and said he was a doctress. As Rind’s servant-maid, he washed her feet in the evening, and when she became sick he promised to cure her, but the remedy was so bitter that she must first be bound. He represented to her father that it, even against her wish, must operate with all its dissolving power, and permeate all her limbs before she could be restored to health. Thus he won the maiden, as some think, with the secret consent of her father. But the gods banished Odin from Byzantium, and accepted in his place a certain Oller, whom they even gave Odin’s name. This Oller had a bone, which he had so charmed by incantations that he could traverse the ocean with it as in a ship. Oller was banished again by the gods, and betook himself to Sweden; but Odin returned in his divine dignity and requested his son Bous, whom Rind bad borne, and who showed a great proclivity for war, to revenge the death of his brother. Saxo Grammaticus relates this as confidently as if it were the most genuine history, not having the faintest suspicion as to its mythical character.
Saxo’s Rosthiof is mentioned in the Elder Edda as Hross-thiofr (horse-thief), of Hrimner’s (the frost’s rime’s) race. Saxo’s Vecha is Odin, who in the Elder Edda is called Vak. The latter portion of the myth is not given in Hávamál, and were it not for faithful Saxo we should scarcely understand that portion of the Elder Edda which was quoted above. But with the light that he sheds upon it there is no longer any doubt. Rind is the earth, not generally speaking, but the earth who after the death of Balder is consigned to the power of winter. Does not the English word rind remind us of the hard-frozen crust of the earth? Defiantly and long she resists the love of Odin; in vain be proffers her the ornaments of summer; in vain he reminds her of his warlike deeds, the Norseman’s most cherished enterprise in the summer-season. By his all-powerful witchcraft he must dissolve and as it were melt her stubborn mind. Finally she gives birth to Vale, the strong warrior.
In the incantation of Groa, in the Elder Edda, this is the first song that the mother sings to her son:
I will sing to thee first
One that is thought most useful,