The Æsir–Vanir War

27. Then went the powers all to their judgment-seats, the all-holy gods, and thereon held council, whether the Æsir should avenge the crime, or all the gods receive atonement.

28. Broken was the outer wall of the Æsir’s burgh. The Vanir, foreseeing conflict, tramp o’er the plains. Odin cast [his spear], and mid the people hurled it: that was the first warfare in the world.

“Odin went out with a great army against the Vanaland people; but they were well prepared, and defended their land; so that victory was changeable, and they ravaged the lands of each other, and did great damage.”

Völuspá is brief. After the burning of Gullveig, the gods hold council on whether to avenge the crime or accept atonement. The wall of the Æsir’s burgh is broken, the Vanir advance across the plains, and Odin hurls his spear into the host: the first war in the world. The poem does not say how the war ended. Editors arrange these stanzas in different orders, so the sequence here is Thorpe’s.

Ynglinga saga makes it a war between peoples. Odin leads a great army against the Vanaland people, victory goes back and forth, and both sides ravage each other’s lands until they tire and make a truce, exchanging hostages.

In Skáldskaparmál the end of the war is a pledge: both sides spit into a jar, and from that the gods make Kvasir. Gylfaginning speaks of the exchange of Njörðr for Hœnir as what re-established peace. Neither of Snorri’s accounts names Gullveig as the cause.

Whether the three accounts are one tradition or separate ones is a scholarly question the sources themselves do not settle. Völuspá treats the war as a rift among the gods, Ynglinga saga as an ordinary war fought by armies, and Skáldskaparmál as a quarrel closed by a ritual pledge.

The thread that links the three is the peace: a hostage exchange in Ynglinga saga and Gylfaginning, a shared jar in Skáldskaparmál. These are told in The Hostage Exchange and in Kvasir and the Peace Pledge. The Vanir themselves are covered in The Vanir.