While there are many famous Norse gods about whom significant information survives, there are also many gods that are only mentioned in passing.
We must piece together the stories of these gods from fragments of information, and they have not made their way into the modern imagination in the same way as Odin, Thor, and Loki.
One of these gods is Hoenir, who is actually mentioned frequently in the surviving sources, but with little detail.
The frequency of his appearance hints that he might have been a very significant figure in Norse mythology, possibly even one of the famous brothers of Odin.
Hoenir and the Creation of Mankind
According to the Norse creation myth, after Odin and his brothers killed the primordial giant Ymir, they gave shape to the world using the remains of the beast, using his body to shape the land and his blood to create the sea.
One of the principal realms that they created was Midgard, at the center of creation.
The gods then created human beings to occupy this new world.
Two versions of the creation of mankind survive, in the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, both featuring Odin and two other gods in a classic divine triad.
In both versions, Odin finds two tree trunks, from an ash and elm tree respectively, and carves them into the shape of a man and a woman called Ask and Embla.
The gods then bestow on the pair various gifts to make them into men.
In the Volupsa within the Poetic Edda, the triad of gods are Odin, Hoenir, and Lofur. It says that Odin gave them soul, Hoenir gave them sense, and Lofur gave them heat and a good hue.
The Prose Edda tells the same story in the Gylfagining, but it is Odin and his brothers Vili and Ve who create man.
Without being too specific, it says that one of the gods gave them breath, another movement and intelligence, and the third gave them shape, speech, hearing, and sight.
The gods also gave them clothing and names.
Based on this, it is suggested that Hoenir may be an alternative name for either Vili or Ve, one of the brothers of Odin.
It was not uncommon for the gods to be known by multiple names, and Vili and Ve completely disappeared from Norse mythology after the story of creation.
Consequently, this seems a likely but unprovable explanation.
Hoenir and the Aesir-Vanir War
Hoenir next appears in another story from early in the chronology of Norse mythology.
According to the surviving corpus, after creation but before the construction of the walls of Asgard, the Aesir gods went to war with the Vanir, another tribe of gods with a distinct culture.
While the Aesir gods believed in law and order, the Vanir were more free-spirited nature deities.
The war ended in a truce, with the two sides agreeing to exchange hostages.
While the Vanir gods Njord, Freyr, and Freyja were sent to Asgard to live among the Aesir, Hoenir and Mimir were sent to Vanaheim to live among the Vanir.
According to the story, as it survives in the Ynglinga saga, Hoenir was large and handsome and seemed to have all the qualities to make him a great leader, so the Vanir made him their chief.
But Hoenir relied on the advice of Mimir, considered the most intelligent of all the gods, to advise his new people. The Vanir soon became suspicious of Mimir always whispering in Hoenir’s ear.
They also became frustrated when Hoenir only gave platitudes and empty words when Mimir was not present.
Consequently, the Vanir seized Mimir and beheaded him, sending his head back to Odin since they believed they had been cheated.
Odin then used magic to reanimate the head and install it in the Well of Wisdom so that he could still consult his friend for advice.
The story does not preserve what happened to Hoenir. While it might seem logical that he was killed, he appears in later stories.
It is also unclear whether he continued in Vanaheim or returned to Asgard.
Hoenir as Traveling Companion
Hoenir next appears in a story in the Haustlong, preserved in the Prose Edda.
The poem reports to describe a scene painted on a shield which leads to Loki helping the giant Thjazi kidnap Idun from Asgard.
Because Idun is the keeper of the apples of youth, this causes the gods to age and become weak.
Loki must then retrieve Idun to restore things to how they were.
This story begins with Odin, Loki, and Hoenir traveling together.
They try to cook an ox, but they are unable to start a fire.
They soon discover an eagle overhead laughing at them, saying that they will be unable to cook their meat unless they agree to give him a share of the meat.
They agree and they are able to cook the meat, but when the eagle flies down to get his portion, Loki tries to hit him with a stick.
The eagle grabs the stick and flies off with it, Loki still hanging on.
While in the air, the eagle reveals himself to be the giant Thjazi, and he will only let Loki down if he agrees to help him kidnap Idun.
Hoenir then appears in a similar traveling companion mode in the Reginsmal, which is an Eddic poem found in the Codex Regius.
This tells the story of the cursed ring Andvaranaut and how it came to be in the possession of the hero Sigurd.
The story starts with Odin, Loki, and Hoenir traveling together to meet the dwarven king Hreidmar.
On their journey, they pass a stream where they see a fish protecting an amazing collection of treasure. They also passed the most magnificent-looking Otter that they had ever seen.
Loki decides to kill the otter and present its skin to the king as a gift. But when the king sees the skin, he knows that it belongs to his son, who could shapeshift into an otter.
He demands that the gods pay for the death and that they completely cover the pelt with gold.
The achieve this, Loki must return to the lake and retrieve the treasure they saw earlier.
Among other things, he takes the cursed ring, which is then given to Hreidmar, starting the cycle of the curse.
Together these stories suggest that Odin, Loki, and Hoenir were regular traveling companions, though this provides little information about Hoenir.
It does not confirm his status as an Aesir god, since Loki was not an Aesir but a giant who made a blood brotherhood pact with Odin.
Does this imply a similar closeness between Hoenir and Odin ?
Hoenir also appears alongside Odin and Loki in another story in the Loka Tattur, which is a Faroese ballad, probably composed in the Middle Ages.
It describes a farmer losing a bet to a giant named Skrymir, who must pay with his son.
The farmer turns to the gods for help, asking first Odin, then Hoenir, and then Loki.
On the first night, Odin makes a field of grain grow overnight to conceal the boy, but the giant grazes his enormous hands over the field and almost detects the boy.
On the second night, Hoenir causes seven swans to fly overhead and conceals the boy as a feather on one of the swans.
But the giant seizes that very swan from the air and east it, with his feather surviving protruding from the swan’s mouth.
Loki makes the boy into a fish egg and hides him in the sea, but the giant catches the fish.
But he also set a trap for the giant, so when he discovered and chased the boy, he impaled himself on an iron spike.
Survivor of Ragnarök
There is one final cryptic reference to Hoenir in the surviving sources.
The Ragnarök prophecy tells the story of the death of the gods and the destruction of the universe.
But while some versions of the story end with existence sinking back into the world of chaos, others suggest that the world reemerges, with some of the gods surviving to rebuild existence.
In the version recorded in the Voluspa, it says that the gods Balder and Hodr, dead and in the underworld during Ragnarök, will emerge into this new world.
They will go to Idavollr, a field near Asgard that survives the destruction, where they will be reunited with Hoenir.
It is clear how Blader and Hodr survive the destruction because they are not in Asgard with the other gods because they have died and found themselves in Helheim.
But while they were dead, because they are gods they cannot fully die, so they emerge into the new world. But where was Hoenir ?
Was he still in Vanaheim, and did it survive the destruction of Ragnarök ?
And who was Hoenir to Balder and Hodr, both sons of Odin ?
Was he their uncle ?
These are fascinating questions, but we do not have the information to unravel them.
