Bestla

In {[Norse mythology]}, Bestla (/ˈbɛstlə/ BEST-lə) is the mother of the gods Odin, Vili and Vé by way of Borr, the sister of an unnamed being who assisted Odin, and the daughter or, depending on source, granddaughter of the jötunn Bölþorn. Bestla is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, and in the poetry of skalds.

Some scholars have theorized that Bestla’s unnamed brother is Mímir.

Attestations

In the Poetic Edda, Bestla receives a single mention. This sole attestation appears in the poem Hávamál 140, where Odin recounts his gaining of nine magical songs from Bestla’s unnamed brother—in other words, Odin’s maternal uncle:

In his translation of the Poetic Edda, Henry Adams Bellows comments that the placement of the stanza at the point in which it appears in Hávamál appears to be the result of manuscript interpolation and that its meaning is obscure.

In the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, the enthroned figure of High tells Gangleri (described as king Gylfi in disguise) of the genealogy of the god Odin. High recounts that Odin, Vili, and Vé are the children of Borr and Bestla, and that Bestla is the daughter of Bölþorn, who High says is a jötunn. Bestla receives a second mention in the Prose Edda book Skáldskaparmál, where a work by the skald Einarr refers to Odin as "Bestla's son".

Bestla (moon)

Bestla (/ˈbɛstlə/ BEST-lə) or Saturn XXXIX (provisional designation S/2004 S 18) is a retrograde irregular moon of Saturn. Its discovery was announced by Scott S. Sheppard, David C. Jewitt, Jan Kleyna, and Brian G. Marsden on 4 May 2005, from observations taken between 13 December 2004 and 5 March 2005.

Description

Bestla is about 7 kilometres in diameter, and orbits Saturn at an average distance of 20,192,000 km in 1088 days, at an inclination of 147° to the ecliptic (151° to Saturn's equator), in a retrograde direction and with an eccentricity of 0.5145. Early observations from 2005 suggested that Bestla had a very high eccentricity of 0.77. Like many of the outer irregular moons of the giant planets, Bestla's eccentricity may vary as a result of the Kozai mechanism.

Name

This moon was named in April 2007 after Bestla, a frost giantess from Norse mythology, who is a mother of Odin.

References

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