Keeper of the apples that preserve the gods' youth. Iðunn's abduction by the giant Thjazi, and Loki's mission to rescue her, form one of the pivotal episodes of Norse myth explaining how the gods nearly lost their immortality.
Iðunn is the Aesir goddess entrusted with a box of apples that the gods eat to remain forever young. According to Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, without these apples the gods themselves would age and wither like ordinary beings, making Iðunn's custody of them essential to the gods' continued vitality.
The Abduction by Thjazi
The central myth involving Iðunn, told in the Skaldskaparmal section of the Prose Edda, begins when Loki, traveling with Odin and Hoenir, is captured by the giant Thjazi disguised as an eagle. To secure his release, Loki promises to lure Iðunn and her apples outside Asgard. He tricks her into leaving with a story of finding apples even more wonderful than her own, whereupon Thjazi, in eagle form, seizes her and carries her back to his home in Jotunheim.
The Gods Grow Old
With Iðunn and her apples gone, the Aesir quickly begin to age and grey. Discovering Loki's role in her disappearance, the gods threaten him with death unless he rescues her. Loki borrows Freyja's falcon cloak, flies to Jotunheim, transforms Iðunn into a nut (or, in some tellings, a sparrow), and flies back to Asgard with Thjazi in pursuit as an eagle. The Aesir light a great fire at the wall of Asgard the moment Loki clears it; Thjazi, unable to stop in time, is caught in the flames and killed.
Marriage to Bragi
Iðunn is the wife of Bragi, the god of poetry. She appears alongside him in the Lokasenna, where Loki, in the course of insulting each god at Aegir's feast, accuses her of embracing her brother's slayer — a barbed and obscure charge that has not been fully resolved by scholars but underscores her place within the gods' web of kinship and reputation.
Origin Story
Iðunn was entrusted by the Aesir with the box of apples that preserved their youth. When Loki tricked her into leaving Asgard, the giant Thjazi abducted her in the form of an eagle, and the gods, growing old without her, forced Loki to rescue her and bring her and her apples back.
Both are goddesses associated with divine golden apples of extraordinary power, though the Greek Hesperides' apples grant a different kind of favor than Idun's rejuvenation
Source Notes
These records lack edition and translator details. Their wording has not been verified as a direct quotation.
Bragi's wife is Idun... she keeps in her box the apples which the gods must taste whensoever they grow old, and then they all become young.
Ancient Texts
Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson
c. 1220 CE·Old Norse
Skaldskaparmal preserves the full story of Idun's abduction by Thjazi and Loki's rescue
Recommended translations:Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (1916), Anthony Faulkes (1987)
Editorial notes for deeper study (not a full bibliography).
Sturluson, Snorri (trans. Anthony Faulkes). *Edda* (Everyman, 1987).
Browse representative texts and policies on the Sources page.
Worship & Cult
How Iðunn was venerated in ancient times
Sacred Temples
•No attested cult site
Worship Practices
No independent cult of Idun is attested in the surviving sources. She belongs to mythic narrative — the near-loss and recovery of the gods' immortality — rather than to documented ritual practice.
