Idun
Idun (Iðunn) is the Norse goddess who keeps the apples of youth, which the gods eat when they begin to grow old. Her attributes are the apples and the box of ash wood that Snorri’s Edda says she keeps them in.
Meaning
Idun is the goddess of youth in Norse myth, the wife of Bragi and the keeper of the golden apples that give the gods everlasting youth. Her Old Norse name, Iðunn, probably means “she who renews”, the Danish encyclopedia Lex says, and Dictionary.com gives the English pronunciation as EE-thoon. Nearly all that is known of her comes from Snorri Sturluson’s Edda, a handbook for poets preserved in manuscripts of the 13th and early 14th centuries; the National Museum of Denmark notes that both Eddas were written by Christian writers at the start of the Middle Ages, so the myths reach us late. In the Poetic Edda she is named in only one poem, Lokasenna, Henry Adams Bellows notes in his 1923 translation. Idun is honoured in modern Heathenry: The Troth calls her Idunna, and Sweden’s Nordiska Asa-samfundet places her at the centre of its autumn equinox rite.
Origin and history
Idun is older than Snorri’s book. Lex points out that she is already named in Haustlǫng, a pre-Christian skaldic poem that Snorri used for his account of her, and The Troth dates that poem to about 900. Store norske leksikon calls it the fullest and best-known telling of her myth. Snorri’s own words for her treasure are a “chest of ash”, and the gods must taste the apples “whensoever they grow old; and then they all become young”. The encyclopedia adds that in the Norse sources apples turn up almost only with Idun; the one other place is the poem Skírnismál, where Freyr sends apples as a gift to the giantess Gerd and she will not take them. No surviving source says how the box of apples came to be hers. Bellows glosses the apple as “the symbol of fruitfulness, and also of eternal youth”, and The Troth notes that apples and nuts were laid in graves, such as the apples and hazelnuts in the Oseberg ship.
How Thjazi stole the apples
In Snorri’s Edda it is Bragi who tells the story, sitting beside Ægir at a feast. Odin, Loki and Hœnir are travelling and cannot get their ox to cook; Store norske leksikon explains that the giant Thjazi, sitting in a tree in the shape of an eagle, is working magic on it. Thjazi carries Loki off and will not let him go until he swears to bring Idun out of Asgard with her apples. Loki lures her into a wood, Arthur Brodeur’s 1916 translation says, “saying that he had found such apples as would seem to her of great virtue”, and Thjazi swoops down and flies off with her. Without her the gods “became hoary and old”. Threatened with death, Loki borrows Freyja’s hawk plumage, finds Idun alone in the giant’s house, turns her “into the shape of a nut” and flies home with her in his claws. Thjazi follows as an eagle; the gods pile plane-shavings below the walls of Asgard and set them alight, the eagle’s feathers catch fire, and they kill him. His daughter Skadi then arms herself and comes to Asgard to avenge him. The poets’ names for Idun follow from the tale: Snorri lists “Wife of Bragi, and Keeper of the Apples”, and “Spoil of the Giant Thjazi”.
Idun in Lokasenna
In Lokasenna, Loki insults the gods one after another at Ægir’s feast, Store norske leksikon summarises. When Bragi threatens him, Idun tries to calm her husband, and Loki turns on her: “Be silent, Ithun! thou art, I say, / Of women most lustful in love”, for she had wound her arms about her brother’s slayer. Bellows notes that no one knows who Idun’s brother was, “much less who slew him”. She answers that she will not trade spiteful words with Loki, and quiets Bragi, “who is hot with beer”.
A goddess borrowed from the south?
Lex sets out the case and then answers it. The story of Thjazi resembles vegetation myths such as the ancient myth of Ishtar, in which a fertility goddess must stay in the underworld for part of the year, and Idun’s apples have ancient parallels, such as the dragon-guarded tree in the garden of the Hesperides in Greek myth. On that basis many have taken Idun as a foreign element in Norse myth, a beauty from a lush southern garden, as Lex puts it. Against that, the encyclopedia notes, she is already named in Haustlǫng, which was composed before the conversion.
Idun in Heathenry today
The Troth, a Heathen organisation based in Philadelphia, writes that it is “pretty astonishing just how important Idunna has become to a major Heathen organization when so very little is actually known about her or her worship in ancient times”. The form Idunna, with its added -a, has been used in Troth circles for so long that the organisation has adopted it, “with apologies to Germanicists everywhere”. In Sweden, Nordiska Asa-samfundet puts Idun and Frey at the centre of its autumn rite at the equinox, when day and night are again in balance; it writes that Idun, with her fruits of youth and renewal, stands for the continuity of life and the power that keeps and renews it, and that she is the only goddess who knows how the apples are grown.
Read next
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- The same shape in Buddhist symbolsMandalaA mandala is a sacred diagram of the universe in Hindu and Buddhist tantra, usually a circle enclosing a square palace with a gate in each side and a deity at its centre. Tibetan Buddhists paint it, build it in metal and lay it out in coloured sand for initiation and meditation.
See also
Bragi, Loki, Skadi, Odin, Frigg, Thor.
Sources
- The Prose Edda (Brodeur translation), Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (trans.), 1916, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Internet Archive), Gylfaginning, chapter XXVI; Skáldskaparmál, chapters I and XXII
- The Poetic Edda (Bellows translation), Henry Adams Bellows (trans.), 1923, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Project Gutenberg), Introduction; Lokasenna, stanzas 17–18 and notes; Skirnismol, note on stanza 19
- The old religion, National Museum of Denmark, Written sources
- Idun (Lex), Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon
- Idunn – norrøn mytologi (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon
- Idunna (Iðunn, Idunn), The Troth
- Årsriter, Nordiska Asa-samfundet
- Gudinnor, Nordiska Asa-samfundet
- Idun (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com
The same shape elsewhere
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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