Representation of the goddess Idun, sculpture realized by Herman Wilhelm Bissen in 1858, now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Idun (Norse Iðunn) was the goddess who guarded the apples which guaranteed the eternal youth of the gods. Her name seems to derive etymologically from the suffix –unn (“to love”), thus meaning “She who renews, rejuvenates” or “ever young”. “She keeps in a chest the apples that the Gods must bite when they grow old, and then become they all young again, and so must it be all until the end of the world” (Snorri, Gylfaginning, 26). In a narrative Snorri’s Edda, the giant Thjazi take the shape o fan eagle and, having met the three gods Odin, Hœnir and Loki, provokes them. When Loki tries to strike at the eagle with his staff, he remains stacked to the bird, which flies away with Loki in tow. In order to be released, he agrees to bring to the giant the goddess Idun and her apples. The goddess is lured into a forest and is carried off by the giant, again in the shape of an eagle. Without their apples, the gods grow old and gray, and at last they force Loki to remedy to his own fault and take Idun back. He wears Freyja’s falcon coat and, turned into a bird, flies off with Idun ghanged into a nut, and takes her back to Ásgard, the realm of the gods, while the giant pursues him in the form of an eagle, but is at last brunt and killed by the other gods (Snorri, Skáldskaparmál, 1).
The apples had an important function also in the Celtic tradition. The mythic Otherworld, in which Arthur is transported at the end of his existence, accompanied by a group of mysterious women, was called Avalon, the Island of Apples. Symbol of harmony and immortality, of abundance and lovely attraction, the apple was regarded as a magical object, guarantee of good fortune and prosperity (Monaghan 2004).

[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ydun_%28H.W._Bissen%29.JPG]