Idun keeps the gods’ greatest secret in a simple box: the apples that keep them young. Without them even Odin and Thor would age, grey and die – all the glory of Asgard hangs on one quiet goddess and her harvest.
Idun (Old Norse Iðunn) is the goddess of youth and renewal, keeper of the golden apples and wife of the poet-god Bragi. She rarely steps to the fore – but without her the world of the Æsir stands still.
The gods are not immortal by nature. Their eternal youth they owe to Idun’s apples, which they bite whenever age draws near. As long as Idun guards her box, Asgard stays young – a remarkably fragile foundation for a world of gods.
“She keeps in her box those apples the gods must bite when they grow old; then they all become young again – and so it shall be until Ragnarök.”— after Snorri, Gylfaginning 26 (public-domain translation)
This very dependence makes Idun a target. The giant Þjazi forces Loki to hand over Idun and her apples. No sooner is she gone than the gods grey and wrinkle – a rare image of ageing deities. They force Loki to undo the wrong: in the falcon cloak he flies to giant-land, turns Idun into a nut and carries her home, while Þjazi chases as an eagle and burns up at Asgard’s wall.
Idun’s husband is Bragi, god of poetry and eloquence – the honourable term for a skald may be named after him. Renewal and poetry, youth and the word: a fitting pair in a culture that kept its memory in verse.
Because Idun embodies new life – renewal, greening, the victory of life over death – some see in her the real „spring goddess". The etymologically related word Iðgrœnn means „to grow green again", and the Anglo-Saxon form Eodgeonga is sometimes linked with Bede’s Eostre. This is not certain – the supposed „Ostara" is largely a construction of Jacob Grimm. We follow this up separately: Ostara, Várblót & Sigrblót.
Lokasenna, Haustlöng (Poetic Edda / skaldic), English public domain: Henry Adams Bellows (1923). Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál. Scholarship: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; John Lindow, Norse Mythology (2001).