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>Most previous scholars have taken sylgs heilags tafns to mean ‘blood’, either of the sacrificed Baldr (Skj B), of something sacrificed to Óðinn (Hofmann 1984, 319) or of Kvasir (Krause 1934a, 119). But an interpretation of heilagt tafn as Baldr or Kvasir is not possible (see above). (c) Kock (NN §1891) offers an entirely different explanation of sylgr, which he connects with heilags tafns and takes to mean ‘guzzler, devourer’ (‘devourer of the holy sacrifice’) as a reference to the funeral pyre. However, sylgr is a noun denoting the action of the strong verb svelga ‘swallow, drink’, and it is not an agent noun as Kock translates it (cf. Hofmann 1984, 315, Krause 1934a, 117 and Turville-Petre 1976, 69). However one interprets the phrase sylgs heilags tafns, the question remains how the gen. sylgs ought to be understood. Finnur Jónsson (Skj B; LP: sylgr) takes it as an absolute gen. used adverbially, meaning ‘toward, in the direction of’ (cf. NS §141), and the present edn follows him. No attempt to conjoin sylgs heilags tafns and sigrunni has so far yielded a convincing explanation. Krause (1934a, 119-20) interprets sigrunni sylgs heilags tafns as a kenning for Óðinn, ‘victory-tree [WARRIOR] of the drink of the holy sacrifice [= Kvasir > POETRY > = Óðinn]’. This interpretation is contradicted by the fact that Kvasir cannot be the ‘holy sacrifice’ (see above). Likewise, Hofmann’s (1984, 319-20) attempt to solve the problem by emending sigrunni to sigrenni is unconvincing

One thing that bears a strong resemblance to the Vedic myth is that Odin transforms himself into an eagle to steal the Mead of Poetry.

>Chased by Suttungr, Odin spits the mead of poetry into several vessels. Some of it accidentally goes out the other end. Illustration by Jakob Sigurðsson, an 18th-century Icelandic artist