Odin remained within Vanaheim accompanied by his young wife.
But without, in the others of the Nine, events continued. News of them came slowly.
The Svartalfs were destroyed by the armies of the AllFather. Their treasure buried deep, where it might never be found.
Asgard was impressive in its military strength, the news-bringer would say, but its lord spared little love for ought else. Its queen was commonly left behind him as regent. She was as proud as she was cruel, and the people feared her.
Odin would laugh softly in his throat and ask news of other fronts, other realms.
Sometimes he would leave for long periods of time. He would travel. And he would learn.
By whatever means needed, he would grow stronger.
Then he would return to his little home in Billing's Dun, return to his wife. She wondered where it was he went, and occasionally she asked. But his journeyings were not a thing of which he wished to speak, and Frigga did not press him to know. He returned to their life in Vanaheim and he hunted with the men of the dun. He talked with them and laughed with them and helped in their planting and their harvesting.
He loved his young wife, and she him. Often they would ride together and they spoke of many things. She showed him the places she loved. Foremost among them the cliffs along the edges of the sea. They reminded Odin of his home. He did not tell her so.
A year or two after their own wedding, he helped his brother-by-marriage escort Gefjon, Frigga's sister, from the fire to the feast on the arm of a hunter from a neighboring dun. Frigga stayed with the women to ready the morning feast. And some moons after, he joined along with his young wife in the celebration of the birth of Gefjon's daughter, and a year or two afterward, a son.
Then, one day, a traveler came to Billing's Dun.
Odin was working in the fields when a boy found him, telling him that there was a stranger, a stranger from Asgard, who sought him by name.