The Christmas Journey of Olaf Åsteson

We remember the tale of Olaf Åsteson, who slept twelve days and nights. For it happened one winter that a terrible cold came upon his Norwegian village, and a memory came to him. Though his limbs shivered and his feeling waned, he was warmed by the recollection of a story from childhood that told of a cave through a passage in a nearby mountain where a seeker might have his questions answered: “Ask out loud what ye will, oh wanderer,” so had the story gone, “and lie down in the stony darkness for to sleep. Then will knowledge come to you in dreams.” The cavern of that mountain was one of the vessels in which Odin had stored the Mead of Wisdom, which that venerable one had gained from the inner world, so the old timers once taught.