Odin travelled, sometimes, when he could make time for it amid his duties as King.
He heard whispers in the dark places, whispers from the dead, whispers of a son Frigga should one day bear him. Stormbringer, they called him. And another, they spoke of. But him they would not name and they would not explain. When Odin pressed they only laughed and flittered away from his grasping.
Stormbringer.
They whispered. And, then,
Do you know more now? Or not?
And laughing they would vanish.
They left Odin with a gnawing discontent riling his blood, and naught he could do to quench it. If they would not answer him, then they would not, and he could only return home by the BiFrost, made great. He'd ordered a housing for it built, with better controls that it might be aimed and employed with more precision and less danger.
Bor had grumbled that Odin should demand such, but, with Odin as King, there was naught he could do to prevent it. And once it was completed and Bor saw its use he laughed and he clapped a hand heavily on his son's shoulder.
Odin found another in his wanderings, a youth with the sight of an eagle who could see across Realms and wearied not of watching them unfold before his golden eyes.
"Would you have a true vantage point from which to watch?" Odin asked him.
Suspicious, the boy asked to see this point of which the Asgardian spoke and Odin took him to the newly built Observatory over the fall of the waves that tumbled ever off the edge of Asgard into the Void below.
When he turned to the boy, who stood to his left, tears of wonder were running down his dark cheeks.
That was how Heimdal came to pledge fealty to Asgard.
When Odin was home, sometimes Frigga would come to him. He did not know what she did with herself in the palace or where her duties as queen led her, and he did not ask. She would read to him sometimes from some book she'd brought up from the Archives. He showed her the libraries and she set to cleaning them. Sometimes she would bring a board and they would play. On fair nights, they would sometimes walk in the gardens that she had wrested back from the wild.
Bor was commonly gone, which would have been exactly as Odin liked it had Odin not known that the lives of Asgardian warriors were being wantonly spent during Bor's absence. Every Realm must be subjected to Asgard's rule. Which Odin understood. Having a ruler who could lead them to their betterment would be for the good of all. But Bor did nothing for the people he conquered. He bled them dry and abandoned their husk to rot. And the conquered bowed their necks under his ruling.
Odin had been among those people in his wandering. He heard their speech. His father would not hear him, so Odin worked against his will. He bestowed gifts on the conquered Realms. He bettered their roads. He relieved them of the taxes claimed by his father that they might have those goods to better themselves as they saw fit.
He re-built much of the city of Asgard, and he saw the people begin to lift their heads.
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In the mythology, Odin was always wandering off and around. Teaching people things like hospitality, raping their daughters, prepping for the end of the world, etc. Often he was going in search of knowledge – usually of magic. There are two – I think two – myths where he raises the spirit of a dead witch to learn the future. In one of the poems, this spirit's line at the end of ever verse is, "Do you know more now or not?"
As the myth-nerd that I am, I thought it would be cool to mix in.
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