Who is Rind?
What we know from myth, history, and inspiration
Rind, the daughter of the
much-traveled giant Billing, Master of the Vanir Trade, is very much a
throwback to her frost-giant bloodlines. While her father has become accustomed
to the shore and the ocean, she prefers to live in his winter hall in the snowy
northeastern mountain range of Jotunheim. Rind is a potent sorceress, cold and
reserved; she works with weather and snow and frost, but her particular talent
is the ability (like that of Unn the Undine) to move through time in limited
ways.
Rind bore a son, Vali, to Odin, largely against her will; he was conceived just after Baldur's death, and grew old enough to avenge his brother by nightfall of that day. Rind's story, or the tattered scraps of it, raises many questions. Why did Odin need to sire a new son to be his brother's avenger? Why did he force himself on Rind, rather than simply choosing his wife or one of his willing mistresses? Why did Vali slay his blind, helpless brother Hoder when everyone knew Baldur's death was Loki's doing? The story is confusing.... so I asked Rind herself, and she kept me up all night with her anguished, angered tale, which is chronicled in "Vengeance's Son" elsewhere on this site.
Saxo Grammaticus, who casts the Aesir not as gods but as historical mortals who made themselves rulers through superior magic, tells a story about a mortal Odin and Rind that may be a vague, garbled echo of the immortal version. In this version, Rind is a young girl who is the daughter of King Billing, Lord of the Ruthenians (translated loosely to Russians, who were at that time a Nordic colony). Odin is cast as a mortal sorcerer and king who sees the young girl and desires her. He comes to her in disguise as a great warrior, but she refuses him. He comes to her in a second disguise as a craftsman with fine wares, but she scorns him again. Angered, he casts a spell on the girl to make her desperately ill, then presents himself to her father as an old wisewoman, saying that he can cure the princess's sickness. Her father consents to the treatment, which Odin tells him will be painful, and so the young girl must be physically bound to her bed. Once this is done and they are alone, Odin reveals himself, strikes the helpless Rind with a magic wand that paralyzes her, and rapes her. According to Saxo, the Aesir were so horrified by his act that they ousted him from the throne and put Ullr in his place.
Certainly the rape of Rind stands as one of the most blatant times that Odin discards honor and even ethics for his view of the long-term greater good. Scholars have tried to rationalize the story of Odin striking Rind with a paralyzing magic wand and forcing himself on her as a seasonal myth of the spring's fertilizing rains melting the winter frost, but it is an odd seasonal myth that casts the coming of spring as the rape of an innocent maiden. Some Asatru-folk have tried to justify Vali's act as necessary for Baldur's ghost to be laid to rest, but if Loki was truly the one responsible, then the murder of Hoder does little to solve the problem, and Rind is yet again left in the shadows with her pain and her own vengeance, which she takes into her own hands in a sort of victory.
These days, Rind has become a champion to some worshipers, who call upon her as a protectress of women, especially those who are raped or abused. She is a force that helps them to break away from their abusers and stand on their own feet.
Artwork by Nenya from the Giants' Tarot.