She is also the sister of an unnamed man who assisted Odin, and the daughter (or granddaughter depending on the source) of the jötunn Bölþorn.
In Skáldskaparmál (The Language of Poetry), a poem by the skald Einarr Helgarson refers to Odin as "Bestla's son".
[4] On the basis of the Hávamál stanza handled above (wherein Odin learns nine magic songs from the unnamed brother of Bestla), some scholars have theorized that Bestla's brother may in fact be the wise being Mímir, from whose severed head the god Odin gains wisdom.
[4] Waltraud Hunke has argued that Bestla should be regarded as the bark of the world tree on which Odin was perhaps born, alluding to Hávamál (141): "then I started to grow fruitful".
[4] In his translation of the Poetic Edda, Henry Adams Bellows comments that such the position of the stanza 140 in Hávamál appears to be the result of manuscript interpolation, and that its meaning is obscure.