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Hagen: K vasir. 135
story in the fact that Orion is not killed, but only made
drunk and bound by the satyrs, while Kvasir is said to
have been killed by the dwarfs. This brings us to a con-
sideration of our last point, namely the reason why Kvasir
has become connected with the story of the divine mead.
After reading Schücks analysis of the mead-legend I
felt that he wras probably right in his conclusion, that in
the original Norse myth some w
T
ise and divine being must
have been sacrificed by being drowned in the mead, hence
its sacred and potent character. And I think we oan now
discover why Kvasir has displaced this original god in the
mead. In the Latin story which I have just given in order
to explain the presence of the dwarfs in the Norse story,
the satyrs make Orion drunk. He was, of course made drunk
with some intoxicating drink, and I will assume that this
was also originally told of the Norse Orion, Kvasir. But
in the Norse imagination he could hardly have been made
drunk with wine: he must have been made drunk with
mead. Now, the words ’drunk’ and ’drown’ are closely akin
in Old Norse (drukkinnr ’drunk’: drukna, ’drown’j and this
apparently unimportant circumstance might easily have had
a very important consequence. It may easily be supposed
that somebody who received and transmitted the story failed
to catch the exact word and the exact meaning. Instead
of hearing ”drunk with mead”, he might easily have thought
that he heard ”drowned in mead”, and the story would thus
in a natural way be radically altered, illustrating again the
mighty power of the mere word over thought.
Now, if there already was in existence an older myth,
which explained the sacred and potent nature of a certain
mead by the story that a wise god had been drowned in
it, it can easily be seen that the Kvasir story was now in a
shape which rendered it especially liable to be absorbed by,
or identified with, this older story. If Kvasir was such a
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