When Loder had given Ask and Embla _litr goda_, an inner body formed in the image of the gods, a body which gives to their earthly tabernacle a human-divine type, they received from Honer the gift which is called _ódr_. In signification this word corresponds most closely to the Latin _mens_, the Greek _nous_ (cp. Vigfusson's Lexicon), and means that material which forms the kernel of a human personality, its ego, and whose manifestations are understanding, memory, fancy, and will.
Vigfusson has called attention to the fact that the epithet _langifótr_ and _aurkonungr_, "Longleg" and "Mire-king," applied to Honer, is applicable to the stork, and that this cannot be an accident, as the very name _Hænir_ suggests a bird, and is related to the Greek _kuknos_, and the Sanscrit _sakunas_ (_Corpus Poet. Bor._, i. p. cii.).[2] It should be borne in mind in this connection that the stork even to this day is regarded as a sacred and protected bird, and that among Scandinavians and Germans there still exists a nursery tale telling how the stork takes from some saga-pond the little fruits of man and brings them to their mothers. The tale which now belongs to the nursery has its root in the myth, where Honer gives our first parents that very gift which in a spiritual sense makes them human beings and contains the personal ego. It is both possible and probable that the conditions essential to the existence of every person were conceived as being analogous with the conditions attending the creation of the first human pair, and that the gifts which were then given by the gods to Ask and Embla were thought to be repeated in the case of each one of their descendants--that Honer consequently was believed to be continually active in the same manner as when the first human pair was created, giving to the mother-fruit the ego that is to be. The fruit itself out of which the child is developed was conceived as grown on the world-tree, which therefore is called _manna mjötudr_ (Fjölsvinnsmal, 22). Every fruit of this kind (_aldin_) that matured (and fell from the branches of the world-tree into the mythic pond [?]) is fetched by the winged servants of the gods, and is born _á eld_ into the maternal lap, after being mentally fructified by Honer.
