Iðunn

In both sources, she is described as the wife of the skaldic god Bragi, and in the Prose Edda, also as a keeper of apples and granter of eternal youthfulness.

The Prose Edda relates how Loki was once forced by the jötunn Þjazi to lure Iðunn out of Asgard and into a wood with the promise of apples even fairer than her own.

When Þjazi returns to find Iðunn gone, he assumes his eagle form once more and flies off in hot pursuit of Loki and his precious burden.

Unable to halt his frenzied onrush, Þjazi plunges headlong through the fire, falling to the ground with his feathers aflame, whereupon the gods attack and kill him.

[1] As the modern English alphabet lacks the eth (ð) character, Iðunn is sometimes anglicized as Idhunn, Idunn, Idun, or Ithun.

Idunn said: I'm not saying words of blame to Loki, in Ægir's hall I quietened Bragi, made talkative with beer; and all living things love him.

Stanza 6 reads: In the dales dwells, the prescient Dís, from Yggdrasil's ash sunk down, of alfen race, Idun by name, the youngest of Ivaldi's elder children.

Here, Iðunn is described as Bragi's wife and keeper of an eski (a wooden box made of ash wood and often used for carrying personal possessions) within which she keeps apples.

With a laugh, High responds that misfortune once came close, that he could tell Gangleri about it, but first he must hear the names of more of the Æsir, and he continues providing information about gods.

[11] In the book Skáldskaparmál, Idunn is mentioned in its first chapter (numbered as 55) as one of eight ásynjur (goddesses) sitting in their thrones at a banquet in Asgard for Ægir.

The eagle agrees, but only on the condition that Loki make a solemn vow to lure Iðunn, bearing her apples of youth, from the safety of Asgard.

[13] Þjazi, arriving home to discover Iðunn gone, resumes his eagle shape and flies off in pursuit of Loki, his mighty wings stirring up a storm as he does so.

The Æsir, seeing a falcon flying with a nut clutched in its claws and hotly pursued by an eagle, make haste to pile up a great heap of wood shavings and set it alight.

A passage of the 10th-century poem Haustlöng where the skald Þjóðólfr of Hvinir gives a lengthy description of a richly detailed shield he has received that features a depiction of the abduction of Iðunn.

[18] Rerir's wife's consumption of the apple results in a six-year pregnancy and the caesarean section birth of their son—the hero Völsung.

Further, Davidson notes that the potentially Germanic goddess Nehalennia is sometimes depicted with apples and parallels exist in early Irish stories.

Davidson concludes that in the figure of Iðunn "we must have a dim reflection of an old symbol: that of the guardian goddess of the life-giving fruit of the other world.

[21] In his study of the skaldic poem Haustlöng, Richard North comments that "[Iðunn] is probably to be understood as an aspect of Freyja, a goddess whom the gods rely on for their youth and beauty [...]".

The 19th-century composer Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen opera cycle features Freia, a version of the goddess Freyja combined with Iðunn.

The publication of the United States–based Germanic neopagan group The Troth (Idunna, edited by Diana L. Paxson) derives its name from that of the goddess.