Leeds Studies in English
Article:
Margaret Clunies Ross, 'Two of Þórr's Great Fights according to
Hymiskviða', Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 20 (1989), 7-27
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Leeds Studies in English
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University of Leeds
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Two of porr's Great Fights according to HymiskviSa
Margaret Clunies Ross
Both in his writings, notably in 'Beowulf s Three Great Fights' (1955)1, and in his
teaching over the years, Leslie Rogers has always promoted a view of Beowulf as
an Anglo-Saxon poem in which the structural seams show, even though its
Christian poet was guided by a moral purpose in reworking older heroic material.
He has also consistently advocated the possibility of a relatively late date for
Beowulf, in his 1955 article following Schucking's dating of about 900, long
before the present decade in which it has become fashionable to propose a date in
the Viking Age, possibly as late as the reign of Cnut.2 Palaeographical studies of
the Beowulf manuscript3 have strengthened the hand of those who suggest that the
poem as we have it is contemporary with the manuscript itself, which Neil Ker
assigned to the late tenth or the beginning of the eleventh century.4
Perhaps it was Leslie's knowledge of things Norse that gave him a nose for
the nature of Beowulf's composition and for the possibility of its Viking Age date.
At any rate, the hypotheses he espoused are of considerable interest to students of
medieval Scandinavian literature, both of the Viking Age and of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries. As most of the extant literature comes to us in Icelandic
manuscripts from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, even though it may have
had older antecedents, we look with renewed interest on an eleventh-century
Beowulf composed in a Viking context, or even, as Roberta Frank argues, in an
Alfredian or post-Alfredian Viking context.5 Both a relatively late date and a
Scandinavian context allow us to compare Beowulf s reinterpretation of
pre-Christian literature in the light of a Christian view of history with the way in
which Icelandic poets and story-tellers of the Middle Ages reinterpreted their
inherited traditions. On both the syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels one can see
similarities between the Beowulf poet's handling of his disparate material and the
changes wrought by Icelandic poets on their traditional myths in response to shifts
Margaret Clunies Ross
in ideology and mentality that had occurred in the conversion period and the two
hundred years that followed (c. 1000-1200).
The corpus of Icelandic poems known as the Elder or Poetic Edda offers us a
group of mythological and heroic texts of uncertain age whose subject matter is
traditional and Germanic, like Beowulf's. Like Beowulf also, these poems are in
the common Germanic alliterative verse-form. Most are extant in a single
manuscript from c. 1270, the Codex Regius (GkS 2365 4 t0 ) which used to be in the
Royal Library, Copenhagen, until its return to Iceland in 1971. The text of the
Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson (composed c. 1225) also contains poetry in eddic
verse-forms, and one of the manuscripts of Snorra Edda (AM 748 1 4 t0 ), which
dates from the early fourteenth century, contains part of a collection of eddic poems,
most of which are also in the Codex Regius.
One of the eddic poems in both the Codex Regius and AM 748 1 4 t 0 is
Hymiskvida. It is not possible to date the work, except in the context of the two
manuscripts that contain it, but most scholars have been inclined to view it as the
literary product of the latest period of composition in the eddic mode in Iceland,
without being able to define this period precisely. 6 However, the poet of
Hymiskvi5a has worked together several myths which are probably quite a lot older
than the text as we now have it and, like the Beowulf poet, has created a new
synthesis and therefore a new interpretation of earlier narratives.
Just as Beowulf juxtaposes three great fights of its hero and suggests their
interrelationship on the paradigmatic level, so Hymiskvida joins two major exploits
of the god porr, his acquisition of a brewing cauldron from the giant Hymir on
behalf of the gods and his fight with the World Serpent, MiSgar&sormr. We have
no other example of the myth of porr's fetching of the brewing cauldron, so cannot
judge the extent of the Hymiskvida poet's innovation, but there are a number of
extant versions of the god's struggle with Mi8gar5sormr, both from the Viking Age
and from the thirteenth century, in verbal and visual media. Meulengracht S0rensen
has recently undertaken a comparative analysis of all these variants and has made
suggestions about the development of the myth in the Viking Age, which this article
takes up. 7 However, it is only in Hymiskvida, as far as we know, that the myth of
porr's fishing for the World Serpent has become part of the cauldron-fetching
narrative, in which it functions as one of several tests of the questing deity, with
significantly altered meaning from that which it has in independent narration.
A poem like Hymiskvida, whose composite nature comes apart relatively
easily under analysis, provides an interesting test of the extent to which earlier
mythic meanings might be subverted by literary artists of the thirteenth century in
8
Two ofporr's Great Fights
the interests of a different semiotic code. In the case of the MiSgar5sormr myth,
other variants give us a reasonable idea of the range of meanings it had for
Scandinavian people of the Viking Age and the following centuries and some
indication of changed interpretations of the myth in response to changes in
mentalite, mainly occasioned by the ideological challenge of Christianity to native
modes of thought. If we assume, as is usually done, that mentalite is relatively
resistant to rapid change to the extent that it is an unreflective mental phenomenon,8
then the degree to which the meaning of an established myth may be changed or
downgraded may give us some measure of general changes in people's ways of
thinking that must have been necessary to allow such a subversion of myth to take
place. In the field of early Norse studies, where most texts in their extant form date
from the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries, composite texts like Hymiskvida offer a
cautiously useful guide to changes in mentaliti which are not otherwise recoverable.
Old Norse eddic poetry presupposes a pagan world, even though some of the
compilatory prose link passages of the Codex Regius indicate both compiler's and
audience's distance from its beliefs and imagined activities. 9 The group of
mythological poems in the codex, of which Hymiskvida is one, projects a society in
which deities and other supernatural beings such as giants, dwarves, and elves,
together with a group of monsters that includes the World Serpent, are the normal
inhabitants of the world. These texts do not exclude the human race from their
consideration, but the status and fate of humanity is peripheral to and contingent on
the supernatural beings' activities. Some of the poems deal with the early period of
the world's history, in which supernatural beings performed acts of creation and
instituted a social and intellectual order. Another focus of these poems is upon the
disintegration of divine society and its destruction by a group of monsters and firegiants at Ragnarok. Other poems again narrate or allude to hostilities between the
gods and the giant race, and Hymiskvida presupposes such a situation.
Meletinskij has described how the Old Norse mythological world-picture
comprises two spatial codes, the horizontal and the vertical, and two corresponding
temporal sub-systems of cosmology, which he called the 'cosmogonic' and the
'eschatological'.10 It was the vertical model of the world that incorporated explicit
reference to chronology, for it concerned the relationship between life and death
both for the individual and for society. The horizontal model, on the other hand,
concerned itself with oppositions between the two major social and intellectual
forces in the cosmos, the gods and the giants and monsters. It assumed a state of
constancy rather than change; although one side might temporarily gain the upper
9
Margaret Clunies Ross
hand, the model inscribes a steady state in which both exchange and exploitation
between the two parties continue to occur.
The vertical model of Norse cosmology, as it incorporated a notion of the
world's creation and destruction, was much closer than the horizontal model to
Christian concepts of world history. A study of the variant versions of the story of
porr's struggle with Mi5gar8sormr indicates how a myth whose primary location lay
in the horizontal model could be reinterpreted as if it were more concerned with the
vertical dimension, in particular with concepts of eschatology and the destruction of
the world in a final holocaust. Many scholars have pointed out the relationship
between this myth and Christian notions of Satan's rivalry with Christ at the
Harrowing of Hell, a relationship facilitated by the positional equivalences between
Christ and porr and Satan and Mi5gar5sormr in the two systems.11 Meulengracht
S0rensen has proposed that the earliest versions of the myth, in skaldic poetry of the
Viking Age and picture stones of the same period or possibly earlier, express a
balance between two mighty cosmic forces, represented by the hammer-wielding
porr on one hand and by the World Serpent in the ocean on the other.12
Arguably, then, the early Scandinavian versions of this myth, which certainly
have Indo-European cognates,13 belong firmly on the horizontal plane. In versions
of the myth from the conversion period (c. 1000), however, a vertical orientation
becomes evident, for in them porr actually kills the World Serpent, who is
represented as a negative force. In Snorri Sturluson's Edda, a synthesizing
mythology from the early thirteenth century, the fishing expedition may be read in
the context of that whole work as porr's attempt to avert Ragnarok. Hymiskvida
also shows a familiarity with the eschatological dimension of the story, which the
poet alludes to by means of kennings for his protagonists, but, as we shall see, his
recasting of porr's struggle with Mi5garSsormr in the form of a test of the god's
worthiness to gain a magic object necessarily requires him to downplay the cosmic
implications of the myth.
porr's fishing for MiSgarSsormr belongs to a group of myths in which the god
enters into conflicts with giants or monsters, usually travelling away from the divine
home, AsgarSr, to meet his rivals.14 All these encounters take place upon the
horizontal plane of the cosmos. Another group of Norse myths which are also
predicated on the horizontal model are myths that take the form of quests,
undertaken by the gods to appropriate a desired object. An example of this type is
OSinn's quest for the mead of poetry. It is probably not possible to make a
watertight distinction between myths of the quest type and those in which p6rr is
involved as policeman of divine society, because he frequently acts to recover what
10
Two ofporr's Great Fights
the giants have stolen from the gods. Thus the element of questing is built into most
of these myths, though the direction of desire is variable, sometimes emanating
from the gods to the giants' world and sometimes coming from the reverse
direction. In a few cases, for example porr's visit to the giant Geirr06r, it is not
clear from existing variants why porr undertakes a journey to giantland, though even
here there is a strong possibility that a quest for his hammer is involved.15
The main narrative of HymiskviSa belongs to the quest group. The gods
recognize that they lack an important necessity of social life, ale, and a vessel in
which to brew it, and so they put pressure on the sea-giant, JEgvc, to prepare ale for
their feasts. jEgir declines on the ground that he does not have a big enough
cauldron, and so porr, accompanied by Tyr, travels to the home of Tyr's father, the
giant Hymir, to obtain an appropriately sized brewing vessel. In order to secure the
cauldron, porr must pass a series of tests which form the main body of the poem.
This narrative is not known from any other Norse source, but £sgir's
association with the gods' feasting is acknowledged in both the eddic poem
Lokasenna and in Snorra Edda (Skdldskaparmdl, 42). 16 In the Codex Regius of the
Elder Edda, Lokasenna forms a sequel to Hymiskvida, and Klingenberg has argued
that the two poems are linked quite fundamentally through the transcendent idea of
Ragnarok and especially through the notion of Loki and his brood as the ultimate
cause of the gods' destruction.17 I believe, and I think the argument of this paper
will clarify the matter, that Klingenberg has placed on centre stage concepts that the
Hymiskvida poet had relegated to the wings. Yet he is on firmer ground with
respect to the compiler of the Regius manuscript and, in all probability, with
Lokasenna, where Ragnarok is an overt leitmotif. In this context it is also worth
noting that whoever assembled the eddic poems in AM 748 1 placed the Prose
Introduction to Volundarkvi&a immediately after Hymiskvida. Hence, for at least
one medieval Icelandic compiler, there was no compelling link between Hymiskvida
and Lokasenna.
Comparative and structural studies of Indo-European mythology indicate that
the story of the gods' acquisition of Hymir's ale-cauldron belongs to a complex of
myths often referred to as 'the cycle of the mead'18 or 'the ambrosial cycle'.19 The
best known manifestations of the mead myth are in Indian, Iranian, Greek, and
Scandinavian sources, which, with variations, all deal with the origin of the
precious, intoxicating liquid and with how, after conflict, it becomes the exclusive
possession of the gods. In many cases the gods' representative wins the mead from
members of distant social groups who inhabit an 'other world'. The custodians of
the divine fluid in the Norse tradition are dwarves and giants; those who wrest it
11
Margaret Clunies Ross
from them are gods, and in the best-known mead story in Norse, it is 65inn who
acquires it from a giant. The mead itself is symbolically polyvalent in the corpus of
Norse myths, 20 but its central values have to do with immortality and with the
intellectual gifts of wisdom and the capacity to compose poetry.
Female figures play an important mediating role in the mead myths, whether
they are victims like the giant Suttungr's daughter, GunnlcxS (Hdvamdl, 104-10;
Snorra Edda, Skdldskaparmdl, 5-6), or willing helpers, like Tyr's mother in
HymiskviSa. Indeed, maternal relatives of the gods generally assist them to acquire
the mead, while paternal relatives are unhelpful or hostile. In one version of the
Norse mead myth, 05inn received a draught of mead from his mother's brother,
named as Bolfjorn's son (Hdvamdl, 140; Snorra Edda, Gylfaginning, 5). We may
contrast the suspicious and hostile behaviour of Hymir towards his son Tyr and the
latter's companion J)6rr in Hymiskvi6a.
Although female figures and maternal relatives of the gods play an important
part in assisting them to acquire the mead, they do not play any part in its production
or use. That remains a largely male affair (Oosten, p. 64). Indeed, as Schj0dt has
suggested (pp. 92-93), the most detailed mead myth in Old Norse, Snorri
Sturluson's narrative of the transformation of Kvasir in Skdldskaparmdl, represents
OSinn's winning of the mead as a kind of pseudo-procreation. But, instead of
bringing forth physical life as women characteristically do, the questing male gods
bring forth and repotentiate the life of the intellect from the giant world where it lies
unused. So Ooinn, by spewing out the mead he has drunk in giantland, makes it
available as an active, creative power to gods and men.
The story of Hymir's ale-cauldron conforms to the 'cycle of the mead mythtype in many respects. The usual dichotomy between the worlds of gods and giants
obtains; the object of the gods' desire is an alcoholic liquid and the container in
which it is to be brewed. The cauldron in Hymiskvida is owned by Hymir, the skill
of ale brewing apparently commanded by /Egir. Though we deal here with two
giants rather than one, each is marked as 'other' and hostile, each resists the gods'
plan to capitalize on his skills or possessions, and each ultimately fails to outsmart
the gods and their representatives, porr and Tyr.
Tyr, like Loki, is the product of a union between a giant and a female who,
while her family ties are unstated, may reasonably be assumed to be at least
sympathetic to the gods if not a member of their group. Most unions between gods
and giants in Norse mythology operate in the reverse direction, with a divine male
cohabiting with a giantess. Meulengracht S0rensen has shown how a 'wrong way
marriage' and its offspring is often symbolically associated with ideas of
12
Two of porr's Great Fights
disharmony and the anti-social.21 In Loki's case his ambivalent status in the gods'
world is reflected in the roles he often plays in myths, as go-between, scapegoat, or
feminized shape-shifter. In HymiskviSa, Tyr also mediates between the world of
the gods and giantland, for it is he who discloses the cauldron's whereabouts and
capacities to porr (strs 4-6). However, he sides firmly with his father's enemies
and himself has to undergo the final test of strength Hymir sets for the two gods
(str. 33). Indeed, unlike porr, he fails to carry the giant cauldron out of Hymir's
hall. Tyr's mother also plays a significant role in helping the gods; she intervenes to
save them from Hymir's shattering glance (strs 9-12) and later provides porr with
the information he needs to smash the magic cup against the giant's skull (strs 3031).
HymiskviSa does not clarify the symbolic power of the cauldron nor of the ale
it brews, except to indicate that it is implicated in the establishment of complete
cultural conviviality (str. 1) and the celebration of an orderly annual round of
festivals (str. 39). Apparently the gods do not themselves possess the skills
necessary to brew their own ale. As a group of hunters they need to exploit the
resources of the other world peopled by giants to gain access to alcoholic liquor and
its social advantages. The giants are represented as practising a mixed economy of
hunting, fishing, and pastoralism. As with several symbolic values of this narrative
poem, its paradigmatic dimension focuses some of the concepts developed by its
somewhat ersatz syntagm. The symbolic values associated with the brewing
cauldron and its product are among Hymiskvi6a's central paradigms.
The syntagm of HymiskviSa
The Hymiskvida poet incorporated two important Norse myths into his text,
which are not linked in any other known work, and he united them within an overall
structure that can best be described as a quest for a magic object, in this case the
brewing cauldron. The porr-MiSgarSsormr encounter functions as only one, and
arguably not the most important, of a series of tests of porr's strength, a quality for
which he was globally renowned in Old Norse myth. Klingenberg has
characterized Hymiskvida as 'an episodic series of porr's exploits — the
enumeration of arduous feats',22 but has paid no attention to the sequencing of these
episodes which, as a schema, conform to the structure of the European wondertale,
as it has been analyzed by Vladimir Propp. 23 Earlier scholars, such as von der
Leyen 24 and von Sydow,25 observed the close connexions between Hymiskvida
13
Margaret Clunies Ross
and folktales on the level of individual motifs, but were not concerned with the
coherence of the poem's wondertale structure with respect to its observance of the
correct sequence of functions, the expected relationships between its protagonists,
and the themes it develops.
The wondertale form seems to have emerged at some time during the early
Middle Ages in Europe as a transformation of pre-existing mythic structures. The
process of transformation ensured both the continued life of old myths and their
incorporation into literary structures which came to be regarded as not incompatible
with Christian ideology. Beowulf is again a case in point; here several tales about a
monster-fighting hero were brought together in such a way as to fit a Proppian
wondertale syntagm without straining or major omissions. 26 Within early Norse
literature, Lindow has demonstrated the presence of international folktale structures
in an early pdttr,21 while Harris has done the same for two sagas and a story in
Snorra Edda.2S A number of Snorri Sturluson's mythic narratives in his Edda can
be shown to conform to a wondertale format.29
Unlike Beowulf, which fits neatly into the wondertale syntagm, Hymiskvi5a
uses it as a kind of walking stick. Although the poem's burlesque qualities help it
along, it is easy to see that it contains material extraneous to the wondertale syntagm
(strs 4—5, 37-38) and offers a number of instances in which characters perform
functions not accounted for in a Proppian structure. An example is Tyr's mediating
role at the beginning of the poem, when he supplies porr with information on the
cauldron's whereabouts (strs 4-5), and later when he mediates in a more general
way between the societies of gods and giants by virtue of his kinship with both.
Again, some functions are displaced (e.g., G, str. 7), one pair (M and N) is
repeated many times, and others are passed over but must be assumed (e.g., D 2 -E,
str. 8). Table 1 displays Hymiskvida's wondertale structure in schematic form, and
the comments in the right-hand column direct the reader to apparent anomalies.
14
Two ofporr's
Great Fights
Table 1 — HymiskviSa's Wondertale Syntagm
Strophes
1-2
Summary Description
Function
[The Initial Situation in AsgarSr.]
Comments
[The Preparatory Part
of the syntagm is
missing.]
Lack of a Brewing Cauldron.
Aa-VniLack.
JEgti despatches porr to fetch
Cauldron.
B2-JX The Hero is
despatched.
jEgir's motive is
given as vengeance
(3/3),
not
a
wondertale motive,
but nevertheless he
functions
as
Mandateur.
[4-5]
[Gods are ignorant of whereabouts
of cauldron. Tyr supplies
information that Hymir owns it.]
4-6
p<5rr and Tyr accept their mission to
obtain cauldron from Hymir.
C-X Beginning of
counter-action.
porr and Tyr depart from AsgarSr
[leaving their goats with farmer
Egill].
t-XI Departure.
[Egill material is not
part of wondertale
syntagm.]
The heroes journey to gianUand.
G-XV Journey.
This function is out
of its normal place
in the syntagm.
The heroes are presumably
interrogated by the two women at
Hymir's house.
D2-XU First
Function of the
Provider.
Hymir's beautiful
lover, who is also
Tyr's mother (8/8),
acts as Provider.
[Not
part
of
wondertale syntagm.]
[E-XHI The Hero's
Reaction.]
The beautiful woman offers help to
the heroes and hides them from
Hymir's shattering glance.
10-14
Hymir returns home from hunting
and discovers his natural enemy,
p6rr, there, together with his own
son, Tyr.
15
F^-XIV Help
Received.
c.f. strophe 30.
Difficult
to
accommodate to
syntagm; at some
point, heroes should
state their request for
cauldron
before
Hymir subjects them
to tests.
Margaret Clunies Ross
Strophes
Summary Description
Function
Comments
Ordeal by food and drink.
M-XXV Difficult
Task.
p6rr eats two oxen supplied from
Hymir's herd.
N-XXVITask
accomplished.
16-18
porr must find suitable bait for
fishing expedition.
M
18-19
porr gets a bull's head from Hymir's
herd.
N
20
Hymir tests p6rr's strength at
rowing far out to sea.
M
p6rr outrows Hymir.
N
21-24
Fishing competition: Hymir
catches two whales but pdrr hooks
MiSgarSsormr.
M
N
26-27
Hymir subjects porr to the test of
carrying the boat and its contents
home.
M
porr does so.
N
p6rr subjected to apparent test of
strength: break glass goblet.
M
He fails to break it.
N-
30
Hymir's mistress tells p(3rr to break
the goblet against Hymir's skull.
F^-XIV Help received.
31
p6rr breaks the goblet against
Hymir's skull.
N+
32
Hymir agrees to surrender cauldron,
14-16
28-29
16
Here follows the
paired functions MN, 7 times repeated.
This contest could
also be classed as
H - X V I Combat
between the Hero and
his Antagonist, but
here functions as an
M-N pairing.
This test is unlike
the others, in that
goblet cannot be
shattered by strength
alone, hence return
to F^ and Function
of Provider, who
advises that Hymir's
head is only thing
that will break it.
[Request and promise
are nowhere stated.]
Two ofporr's
Strophes
33-34
35-36
Great Fights
Summary Description
Function
on condition that heroes pass final
test of strength: carry cauldron out
of hall. Tyr fails to move it twice,
porr carries it away on his head.
p6rr and Tyr travel back to Asgar8r.
They are pursued by a troop of
giants, including Hymir.
porr kills all the giants with his
hammer, MjQllnir.
[37-38]
Reference to laming of p6rr's goat,
Loki's role in this, and the price
Egill had to pay p6rr (hand over
both his children).
39
The gods obtain the ale-cauldron.
M
N- (x2)
N+
4-XX Return.
Pr-XXI Pursuit
Rs-XXTI
Rescue/Escape
assimilated to H
Combat.
[Presumed to be an
allusion to material
otherwise known
from prefatory part
of pdrr's journey to
Utgar5a-Loki, as told
in Snorra
Edda,
Gylfaginning 2631.]
K-XIX Reparation
assimilated to F,
Magic
Object
Received.
17
Comments
Margaret Clunies Ross
Themes and Paradigms
of myth
in HymiskviSa — towards
a
reinterpretation
If the syntagm of Hymiskvida is something of a patchwork, the poem's
dominant paradigms offer us a key to the way in which its thirteenth-century
audience may have understood this composite narrative. On a stylistic level, some
of the main paradigms are marked by the consistent use of kennings. In an eddic
poem, kennings constitute a marked discourse register, as they are usually found as
consistently used elements only in skaldic verse. Peter Hallberg has contrasted the
Hymiskvida poet's use of kennings 'to refer to the narrative itself in a rather narrow
sense' with the way in which kennings are used in Voluspd to deepen that poem's
central eschatological theme.30
This difference between the use of kennings in two eddic poems with respect
to eschatology is to be explained in terms of their respective development along the
horizontal and vertical mythological planes. We have seen how Hymiskvida's
horizontal wondertale syntagm degrades the cosmogonic and eschatological
dimensions of its components. With reference to the myth of porr's struggle with
the World Serpent, we find that the cluster of periphrases in strophes 22-24 inscribe
MiSgarSsormr's position in the cosmos (22/7-8) and the hostility that exists between
him and the gods (22/6; 23/3), especially porr (22/3), as well as his kinship with
another of Loki's monstrous offspring, the wolf Fenrir (23/8). Yet these kennings,
with their clearly eschatological implications, work in Hymiskvida not by
contributing to its main narrative but by providing a kind of shorthand reference to
other versions of the myth. Further, the poem's terms of reference to MiSgarSsormr
simultaneously vilify and degrade him: he is the being that all the gods hate (22/6)
and a mere fish (sdfiscr, 'that fish1, 24/6).
The chronological placement of Hymiskvida''s narrative is also perfunctorily
indicated. The opening scene in which the gods begin their search for a brewing
cauldron happens in early times (dr, 1/1); Hymir, like many giants, is old and grey
(13/6; 16/1-2); the ancient earth (in forna fold, 24/3-4) shudders at porr's and
MiSgarSsormr's cosmic struggle. But these adverbials and epithets are quite
conventional and play no vital part in the narrative as a whole, which has no specific
chronological entailment. Like the allusions to the narrative of porr's lame goat and
its sequel in strophes 7 and 37-38, these semantic elements demonstrate the selfconscious poet's knowledge of other stories which have some relevance to the one
he has chosen to tell. Hymiskvida is unlike Voluspd, in which a set of allusive
narratives, cast as visions, are directly related in a chronologically conceived
18
Two ofporr's Great Fights
framework of world history and bear fundamentally upon its eschatological
denouement.
Yet, although the chronological and eschatological references in HymiskviSa
are shallow, not all the poem's imagery is similarly lacking in complexity and depth.
Its head-kennings, for example, as Hallberg noted (pp. 63-64), are grotesque but
also central to one of the poem's main paradigms. They utilize the resources of
skaldic diction to define a head in terms of something that grows or sprouts from
it.31 In this poem heads are both prominent, signifying power and intellectual
capacity in line with one of the dominant themes of the 'cycle of mead' myths, and
also potentially vulnerable. In the various tests of strength porr undergoes he is
obliged to hit heads and hunt with heads. He eats two of Hymir's oxen after they
have been decapitated (15/1-4), goes fishing for Mi5gar5sormr with an ox's
'stronghold of two horns' for bait (19/3-4), and hits MiSgarSsormr's 'high
mountain of head hair' (23/5-8) with his hammer. After he has received helpful
advice from Hymir's mistress, he shatters a glass goblet by throwing it against the
giant's skull. Finally, having succeeded in lifting up the great cauldron he has come
to acquire for the gods, he makes off with it on top of his head (34/5-6).
In many of the Old Norse myths in which porr fights with giants he kills them
by smashing their skulls with his hammer, Mjollnir. The HymiskviSa poet alludes
to one of his victims when he refers to Hymir as Hrungnis spialli, 'Hrungnir's
friend' (16/2), and endorses porr's generally destructive attitude to giants when
Hymir is made to call him briotr berg-Dana, 'smasher of rock-Danes' (17/7). porr
also acts in character towards the end of the poem, when he kills 'all the lavawhales' (hraunhvala alia, 36/5-6) with Mjollnir after they have pursued him and Tyr
as they make their way back to Asgar6r with the cauldron. The poet does not say so
explicitly, but we infer from the fact that Hymir is said to be one of this manyheaded crew (35/5-8) that porr killed him too, even though he was unable to injure
him physically within his own hall.
Within the hall porr is not concerned to kill the giant but to obtain his most
precious possession, the ale-cauldron. Nevertheless, the poet's consistent use of
head-imagery and certain details of the storyline suggest that porr's winning of the
cauldron is equivalent to his capture of Hymir's head and its intellectual powers.
The events inside the hall propose an equivalence between the cauldron and Hymir's
head, both of which have to be kept intact during porr's visit. The giant's mistress,
in her role as Provider, protects porr and Tyr from her lover's shattering glance but
cannot prevent him destroying seven out of eight cauldrons hanging at the end of the
hall and a hall-beam and pillar into the bargain. Later, when porr tries to break the
19
Margaret Clunies Ross
giant's goblet in the penultimate test of his strength, he also causes considerable
damage to the hall, but is only able to break the goblet against Hymir's skull, which
itself remains intact:
heill var karli hialmstofn ofan,
enn vinferill, valr, rifnaSi. (31/5-8)
The fellow's helmet-stem stayed whole above, but the round
wine vessel shattered.
Thus the two things in the hall that remain whole are the cauldron and Hymir's
head. The inherently fragile goblet is magically safe unless it meets an object of
greater power, the giant's head. Breaking the goblet allows release of the cauldron,
for Hymir is thereby compromised. Hence porr's quest for Hymir's cauldron is a
kind of head-hunting expedition, in terms of the poem's paradigms, and the way in
which porr removes it from the hall, up on top of his own head with the rings that
suspend it jangling at his heels, reinforces the symbolic value of his trophy.
The paradigm that equates Hymir's cauldron with his head is consonant with
the values of supernatural power and knowledge accorded to giant sources of
numinous wisdom in other versions of the 'cycle of the mead'. As in the myth of
OSinn's theft of the mead of poetry, the gods do not possess this source of
knowledge but must steal or otherwise obtain it from the giant world. In the giant
world the power of the supernatural knowledge remains latent; it takes a male agent
from the world of the gods to bring it out into 'this world' where it becomes
intellectually productive (Schj0dt, pp. 91-92).
Several other paradigms in Hymiskvida support the notion of the brewing
cauldron as a source of cultural sophistication for the gods. One of these has to do
with food and drink, their provision and preparation. Here we find a LeviStraussian opposition between the raw and the cooked, which in this poem includes
the brewed. A cauldron is, as the poem reminds us, a 'liquid boiler' (logvellir,
6/2). According to Hymiskvida both gods and giants live in a society in which most
of their food is obtained by hunting and fishing. The gods live by hunting (1/1-2),
and Hymir, in a memorable description, comes home at night from hunting with his
beard hung with icicles (10/4). One of the tests pdrr undergoes is a fishing contest
with Hymir. Yet Hymir and perhaps the shadowy Egill, to whom porr entrusts his
goats, are also herdsmen. Hymir keeps a herd of oxen and supplies from it both a
meal for the travelling gods and also the bait for porr's fishing expedition. His
20
Two ofporr's Great Fights
possession of eight cauldrons indicates his household's concern with the tasks of
cooking and brewing. lEgix also has a range of cauldrons at home (1/8), though he
claims none of them is big enough to satisfy the gods' gargantuan appetites.
The poem establishes a contrast between Hymir's world, in which both
hunting and herding supply the necessities of life, and the world of the gods, in
which the gods, who live by hunting alone, are great consumers of food and drink
(1/3) but appear not to have mastered the skills of herding and brewing. They form,
in terms of the poem, a hunter-gatherer aristocracy exploiting the resources of a
subordinate group of pastoralists. They desire the products of a more elaborate
economy which they are unable or unwilling to produce for themselves. They are
opportunists, living by their wits (6/3-4), their physical strength, and their mobility.
Numerous periphrases for \>6rv reinforce the last two qualities (c.f. 1/1; 3/2; 19/2;
19/5-8; 20/2; 31/1-2; 33/2). Even the gods' resort to divination, as a means of
discovering the whereabouts of a suitable cauldron, is another manifestation of their
capacity to exploit alternatives.32
The divine qualities of quickwittedness, strength, and mobility are further
expressed through the well-known travel pattern of Norse mythology,33 in which
divine protagonists journey away from Asgar5r, over some kind of limen (here the
dwelling of Egill) and beyond to the other world where their giant antagonists and
the objects they seek are to be found. Hymiskvida repeats the travel pattern within
the narrative of the fishing expedition. Here a land-sea dichotomy is heavily
underlined by the diversity of kennings for Hymir's ship, where the base-words are
terms for land animals (e.g., 20/1; 26/5; 27/4), and played on in the main narrative
as well (e.g., 27/8; 33/4; 36/5). Such grotesqueries depend on the conventional
skaldic pairing of opposed terms, such as sea and land, water transport and land
transport as the basis for many kenning types.
A final point concerns Hymiskvi8a's excursus on the visit to Egill (str. 7), the
reference to porr's half-dead goat, and the recompense porr extracted from him for
letting the animal go lame, even though Loki is said to have been the cause of it. It
is generally acknowledged that the poet has alluded to a story which is otherwise
known only as the preparatory part to Snorri Sturluson's narrative of pdrr's visit to
UtgarSa-Loki in Gylfaginning, 26-31. Here porr and Loki visit a farmer on the first
night of a long journey, porr slaughters his goats to provide dinner for the
household but is later able to revive them, having first instructed the family to
preserve the skins and bones. Disregarding instruction, the farmer's son breaks a
bone to get at the marrow, and the result is that one of the goats becomes lame in a
hind leg. porr then takes the farmer's two children, pjalfi and Roskva, as his
21
Margaret Clunies Ross
servants in recompense for the son's misdemeanour, but Loki is not implicated in it
as far as we can judge from Snorri's narrative.
The Hymiskvida poet's direct appeal to his audience's knowledge of this story
(38/1—4), which, as a rhetorical device, is unparalleled in eddic verse, suggests not
only their familiarity with its broad outlines but also their ability to recognize
deviations from its standard form. The question is, why did the poet include this
material along with the reference to Loki? Klingenberg has argued (p. 140) that it
was because he wanted to place Hymiskvida, like Lokasenna, in the larger,
eschatological context of the enmity between Loki and porr. While this suggestion
may have some plausibility in the context of the Codex Regius, the strophe occurs
in the same place in Hymiskvida in AM 748 1, where there is no connexion with
Lokasenna. It is more plausible that the reference to Loki is a reflex of the poet's
awareness of the structural and thematic similarities between his version of the
cauldron quest and the story of porr's visit to Utgar5a-Loki.
Loki has a role to play in that myth, and it follows a similar structural pattern
to the cauldron quest, porr and Loki go on a journey and leave their goats with a
farmer; they then proceed to giantland where they are subjected to a series of tests of
strength. This myth attributes to porr no obvious reason for his journey; he is
unaware of the nature of the tests and of the chthonic power of his opponent. It
turns out that Loki vies with the power of wildfire, pjalfi with the swiftness of
Thought, while porr attempts to drink the sea, lift up the World Serpent, and wrestle
with Old Age. The Utgar5a-Loki contest shows a thematic relationship with the
other main Hymiskvida myth, porr's struggle with Mi6gar6sormr, in that both
represent the god's encounter with a natural force in which the outcome is the
reinforcement of a sense of checks and balances rather than the successful passing
of tests and the acquisition of a numinous object. In fact, one could regard the
Utgar5a-Loki myth as an elaboration of the idea at the centre of the story of porr's
fishing expedition.
Thirteenth-century evidence that Icelanders saw it that way comes not only
from Hymiskvida but from the fact that the £ssir from Troy in Gylfaginning are
made to perceive the links between the two by having the fishing expedition follow
the UtgarSa-Loki story as a kind of sequel to it. The discussants of Gylfaginning
present the fishing expedition as porr's attempt to redress the humiliation he suffered
at the hands of Utgar6a-Loki, but this interpretation is somewhat compromised by
the Ass narrator's endorsement of the version of the myth that allows the World
Serpent to survive and live still in the ocean. It is possible that Snorri got the idea of
juxtaposing porr's visit to Utgar6a-Loki with the god's fishing expedition from his
22
Two of parr's Great Fights
knowledge of a version of Hymiskvi5a in which there was already an allusion to the
episode of the laming of the goat. If so, in his usual manner he has built upon
inherent similarities of theme and structure between the two myths to produce a
discourse about porr's relationship to chthonic beings that suggests a coherent pagan
counterpart to Christian eschatology.
Hymiskvida, on the other hand, veers away from the vertical model of Norse
myth with its chronological dimension that could be aligned with Christian concepts
of mutability and impairment of the world. Its reinforcement of the horizontal
model by its adoption of the wondertale syntagm, so that porr's fishing expedition
could be incorporated into the ale-cauldron myth, strengthens and gives renewed life
to a fundamentally atemporal view of human concerns for order and the social and
intellectual control of numinous forces. The poet's decision to adopt a comic, if not
burlesque, presentation of his material reminds one of other eddic poems such as
prymskviSa and the modality of many modern Scandinavian folktales which have
preserved some of the concerns of the horizontal model of Old Norse mythology
largely untouched by the doctrines of Christianity.
23
Margaret Clunies Ross
NOTES
1
Review of English Studies, n.s. 6 (1955), 339-55.
2
The Dating of Beowulf, edited by Colin Chase (Toronto, Buffalo, and London, 1981).
Tilman Westphalen, Beowulf 3150-55: Textkritik und Editionsgeschichte (Munich,
1967); Kevin S. Kiernan, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript (New Brunswick, New Jersey,
1981).
4
N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957),
pp. 281-82.
Roberta Frank, 'Skaldic Verse and the Date of Beowulf, in The Dating of Beowulf,
edited by Colin Chase, pp. 123-39, and see, most recently, her 'Did Anglo-Saxon Audiences Have
a Skaldic Tooth?', Scandinavian Studies, 59 (1987), 338-55.
6
Franz Rolf Schroder, 'Das Hymirlied: Zur Frage verblassler Mythen in den GOtterliedern
derEdda'.Arfav/oV nordisk filologi, 71 (1955), 1-40.
Preben Meulengracht S0rensen, 'Thor's Fishing Expedition', in Words and Objects.
Towards a Dialogue Between Archaeology and History of Religion, edited by Gro Steinsland (Oslo,
1986), pp. 257-78.
8
Lars LOnnroth, 'The Effects of Conversion on Scandinavian Mentality, in The
Christianization of Scandinavia, edited by Birgit Sawyer, Peter Sawyer, and Ian Wood (Alingsas,
1987), pp. 27-29.
To cite one instance of several, the coda to Helgakvida Hundingsbana, II, reveals an
attitude of scepticism to ideas about reincarnation in the Helgi poems: see Edda. Die Lieder des
Codex Regius, edited by G. Neckel, revised by H. Kuhn, fifth edition, Heidelberg, 1983, p. 161.
All citations from eddic poetry are from this edition.
10
E. Meletinskij, 'Scandinavian Mythology as a System', Journal of Symbolic
Anthropology, 1-2 (1973), 43-58 and 57-78.
24
Two ofporr's
11
Great Fights
Otto Gschwantler, 'Christus, Thor und die Midgardschlange', in Festschrift fur Otto
Hofler, edited by H. Birkhan and O. Gschwantler (Vienna, 1968), pp. 145-68; E. O. G. TurvillePetre, Myth and Religion of the North. The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia (London, 1964),
pp. 75-76.
12
S0rensen, Thor's Fishing Expedition', pp. 274-75.
13
V. Ivanov and V. Toparov, 'Le Mythe Indo-Europten du dieu de l'orage poursuivant le
serpent: reconstruction du sch6ma', in Echanges et communications. Milanges offerts d Claude
Levi-Strauss, edited by Jean Pouillon and Pierre Maranda, 2 vols (The Hague and Paris, 1970), II,
1180-206.
14
Well-known members of this group are porr's encounter with Hrungnir (pj6661fr of
Hvin, Haustlong; Snorra Edda, Skdldskaparmdl, 25-26), his visit to Geirr05r (Eih'fr Go5runarson,
porsdrdpa; Snorra Edda, Skdldskaparmdl, 27), and his journey to the home of the giant prymr to get
back his stolen hammer (prymskviSa).
^
Margaret Clunies Ross, 'An Interpretation of the Myth of porr's Encounter with
Geirr05r and his Daughters', in Speculum norroenum: Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel
Turville-Petre, edited by Ursula Dronke, Gu8run P. Helgad6ttir, Gerd Wolfgang Weber, and Hans
Bekker-Nielsen (Odense, 1981), pp. 370-91.
16
All references to Snorri Sturluson's Edda are to chapters as numbered in Finnur
Jdnsson's edition (Copenhagen, 1931). Margaret Clunies Ross, in Skdldskarparmdl: Snorri
Sturluson's Ars Poetica and Medieval Theories of Language (Odense, 1987), pp. 138-40, discusses
the relationship between Lokasenna, its Prose Introduction, and Skdldskaparmdl, 42. ^Egir's role as
brewer of ale is mentioned in Egill Skallagrfmsson's poem Sonatorrek, strophe 19. E. O. G.
Turville-Petre, Scaldic Poetry (Oxford, 1976), pp. 39-40, discusses interpretations of the relevant
kenning.
17
Heinz Klingenberg, 'Types of Eddie Mythological Poetry', in Edda. A Collection of
Essays, edited by Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason (Winnipeg, 1983), pp. 134-64.
18
Franz Rolf Schroder, 'Das Hymirlied'; Jarich G. Oosten, The War of the Gods. The
Social Code in Indo-European Mythology (London, Boston, Melbourne, and Henley, 1985).
19
Georges Dum6zil, Le Festin d'immortalite (Paris, 1924).
25
Margaret Clunies Ross
20
Jens Peter Schj0dt, 'Livsdrik og Vidensdrik. Et problemkompleks i nordisk mytologi',
Religonsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift, 2 (1983), 85-102.
21
Preben Meulengracht S0rensen, 'StarkaSr, Loki og Egill Skallagrfmsson', in Sjotiu
ritger&r helgaSar Jakobi Benediktssyni 20. juli 1977, edited by Einar G. PeUirsson and Jonas
Kristjansson (Reykjavik, 1977), II, 759-68.
22
Heinz Klingenberg, 'Types of Eddie Mythological Poetry', p. 138; see also Gryte van
der Toorn-Piebenga, 'Om Strukturer og Motiver i Hymiskvi6a', Tijdschrift voor skandinavistiek, 6
(1985), 54-70.
23
Vladimir Propp, The Morphology of the Folktale, translated by L. Scott, second edition
(Austin and London, 1968).
24
2
Friedrich von der Leyen, Das Mdrchen in den Gottersagen der Edda (Berlin, 1899).
^
C. W. von Sydow, 'Jatten Hymes bagare', Danske Studier (Copenhagen, 1915),
pp. 113-50.
26
T. A. Shippey, 'The Fairy-Tale Structure of Beowulf, Notes and Queries, n.s. 16
(1969), 2-11; Daniel R. Barnes, 'Folktale Morphology and the Structure of Beowulf', Speculum,
45 (1970), 416-34.
27
John Lindow, 'HreiSars )>£ttr heimska and AT 326. An Old Icelandic Novella and an
International Folktale', Arv, 34 (1978), 152-79.
28
Joseph Harris, 'The Masterbuilder Tale in Snorri's Edda and Two Sagas', Arkiv for
nordisk filologi, 91 (1976), 66-101.
29
Margaret Clunies Ross and B. K. Martin, 'Narrative structures and intertextuality in
SnorraEdda: the example of J)6rr's encounter with Geirr06r', in Structure and Meaning in Old Norse
Literature, edited by John Lindow, Lars Lonnroth, and Gerd Wolfgang Weber (Odense, 1986), pp.
56-72.
30
Peter Hallberg, 'Elements of Imagery in the Poetic Edda', in Edda. A Collection of
Essays, edited by Robert J. Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason (Winnipeg, 1983), p. 63.
26
Two ofporr's
31
Great Fights
Rudolf Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden. Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik (Bonn
and Leipzig, 1921), pp. 126-29.
32
See Georges Devereux, 'Consid6rations psychanalytiques sur la divination', in La
Divination, edited by A. Caquot and M. Leibovici (Paris, 1968), II, 449-71.
33
Lars Lonnroth, 'Skirnismdl och den fornislSndska aktenskapsnormen', in Opuscula
Septentrionalia: Festskrift til Ole Widding, edited by Bent Chr. Jacobsen, Christian Lisse, Jonna
Louis-Jensen, and Eva Rode (Copenhagen, 1977), pp. 154-78.
27
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
LINDOW, JOHN, Addressing Thor , Scandinavian Studies, 60:2 (1988:Spring) p.119
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Thors
hamarr
University
of California
John Lindow,
at Berkeley
for unfettered
its reputation
violence, Old Norse mythology
Despite
arms only the three major gods, and although
are great
their weapons
seem
to
ones.
be
the
chief
treasures,
Odin,
ordinary
they hardly
god,
has the spear Gungnir,
which he can fling over an entire army and
cause it to be paralyzed with "battle fetters." Never does he thrust with
this spear or fling it at a single target. Freyr had a sword so good that
it fought by itself, but he gave it away to his servant Skirnir to convince
to woo Ger?r. Freyr was therefore
him to go to Giantland
apparently
so when he faced Surtr
Beli and definitely
when
he
killed
weaponless
at
Like
Ragnarpk.1
Odin's
then,
spear,
sword
Freyr's
was
never
used
as an ordinary weapon.
to the
the third major god according
Thor,
at Ragnarpk
order of the gods' appearance
and in the arrangement
in Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda?although
of their poems
Snorri
the
lists him first after Odin among
sir, and scholars are unanimous
as the most worshipped
in regarding Thor
god of the later Viking
with
Age?fights
weapons
used
his hammer.
in unusual
ways,
as
tool?used
object?a
a
Unlike
Odin's
Thor's
hammer
spear and Freyr's
is a somewhat
sword,
unusual
weapon.
in the mythology.
tool is the most valuable and famous weapon
to the myth of its origin as recounted
in Sk?ldskap
Indeed, according
arm?l in Snorri Sturluson's
it the best object
Edda, the gods judged
of the six created by dwarfs at Loki's behest: Sif's hair; Freyr's ship
which always has a fair wind and can be folded up like a
Ski?bla?nir,
This
hanky
and
put
jects were made
Draupnir,
made
surpass
Freyr's
in one's
pocket;
and
Odin's
spear
by the sons of Ivaldi?and
boar
Gullinborsti,
by another dwarf,
the craftsmanship
and
Gungnir?these
Odin's
Thor's
self-replicating
hammer?these
ob
ring
three
as a wager with Loki that he could
in the first three. While
Sindri
displayed
Sindri,
1When
at Freyr's
to give up his weapon,
he
marvel
Snorri has Gangleri
willingness
a
chieftain's
disdain
for the fertility god, a disdain
may be expressing
thirteenth-century
at Snorri's
to Sturla Sighvatsson
in an insult directed
which may
appear
instigation
in Sturlunga
of contemporary
incidents
saga, the compilation
sagas
during
reported
166 (1992),
from thirteenth-century
Iceland: Gu?run
Nordal,
Skirnir,
"Freyr fifldur,"
271-94
and Germanic
of English
1994 by the Board of Trustees
Journal
?
Philology?October
of the University
of
Illinois
Lindow
486
was
and his brother Brokkr was manning
the hammer,
the
forging
on
a
so
form
bit
took
the
of
and
Brokkr
Loki
bellows,
fly
fiercely
the
between
the eyes that blood blinded him and he stopped fanning
this delay, Sindri said, might have spoiled
flames for just a moment;
everything.
Here
mer
is what
and
Snorri
wrote
about
Por hamarinn
ok
gaf hann
sem
hann
vildi, hvat
fyrir
hann
til, Ip?myndi
yrpi honum
s
at
hann
kja heim
eigi myndi
? serk
ser;
l?till, at hafa m?tti
at
Pat var d?mr
skamt.
]3eira,
?
ok mest
vprn
fyrir hrimj)ursum.2
P?
sem
Then
he
Sindri's
of the ham
presentation
its characteristics.
at hann
mega
myndi
lj?sta sv? st?rt
hamarrinn
bila, ok ef
eigi myndi
sv?
aldri missa
ok aldri
flj?ga
langt,
var hann
ok ef ]3at vildi,
sv?
hpnd,
Ip?
en
var
var heldr
at
?,
lyti
pat
forskeptit
var beztr
hamarrinn
af pllum
gripunum
sag?i,
vaeri,
hann
to Thor
the hammer
gave
with
it, whatever
might
not fail; and
if he threw
it at
he
at
would
said
and
wanted
be
that he
before
could
hit
as hard
as
and
the hammer
him,
never
then he would
lose
something,
not come
to his hand;
if he
it would
back
and
it so far that
it, or throw
so small
become
that he
it in his
it would
have
desired
it, then
might
was rather
in it: the handle
short.
It was
the
this flaw
shirt; but there was
of
judgment
objects
Since
and
no
the
the
text
that
gods
greatest
the
defense
the
shows
hammer
was
hammer
was
in it
the
against
functioning
best
of
the
frost
as
all
the
precious
giants.
a
or
boomerang
assume
to fit in a pocket,3 we may perhaps
that Snorri
shrinking
to glorify
I
the hammer,
find
added
these details
although
myself
Snorri's rational sense here?he
explains how Thor got his
suspecting
too why there were min
it and perhaps
hammer back after throwing
that humans
could wear. The flaw of the short ham
iature hammers
for each of the
is mythologically
mer, however,
entirely appropriate,
some flaw: Odin lacks an eye, Tyr a hand,
with
endowed
is
major gods
to intensify
Freyr a sword, and so forth. The flaw serves apparently
the
god's
future,
power
Tyr
in
some
particularly
is extraordinarily
bold
relevant
(Snorri)
realm:
or deeply
Odin
sees
implicated
the
in
2 Snorri Sturluson:
in the text as SnE) (Copen
Edda, ed. Finnur J?nsson
(abbreviated
as
1926), p. 99. My translation,
throughout;
hagen: G. E. C. Gad,
3A
on a runic amulet
in
from Oland,
is the inscription
Sweden,
exception
possible
lines: Porr g ti hans meR pceim hamri sam ur
which
Bruce E. Nilsson
reads the following
to whom
him [seil. Bove,
the inscription
is ap
illu 'May Thor
protect
hafi kam, flo fran
came from the sea, (and which)
which
fled from
with that hammer
addressed]
parently
A Solution,"
from ?land:
Mediaeval
'Fish-Amulet'
evil': "The Runic
Scandinavia,
9
Nilsson
this otherwise
this quotation
pp. 238-39.
(1976),
explains
unparal
236-45,
as a reflection
return
from the bot
of the hammer's
leled expression
boomerang-like
it at the Midgard
tom of the sea, and the evil that lurks there, after Thor
serpent
flung
on his famous
fishing
expedition.
Thors
torts and contracts
can
he
a
obtain
(Dum?zil),4
from
spouse
Freyr's
among
the
sexual
potency
giants.
Indeed,
hamarr
is so great
creation
487
that
itself
was flawed,
the primordial
for one giant escaped
flood, but this too
was ultimately
for it gave rise to the entire cycle of the
beneficial,
with its cleansing
renewal at Ragnarpk. Thor's hammer has
mythology
a short handle,
in
and it is hard to imagine anything more
effective
his hands. Perhaps,
is flawed
insofar as it falls into
too, the hammer
the hands of the giants (Prymskvi?a) or must be left behind when
the
a
to
undertakes
Geirr0?r).
god
dangerous
expedition
(journey
can do. Unlike
Snorri uses the verb Ij?sta to say what the hammer
term used of hammers,
this verb refers
hnj?da, the technical
to blows struck, very often
in anger (and impersonally
for
of
natural
such
phenomena,
as
storms
and
darkness;
the
properly
the onset
metaphor
here parallels
such as "the storm struck"). The
English
expressions
or
or some other
with a weapon
blows may be struck with the fist
to
Snorri
it
the
makes
clear that
hammer
is
be a weapon,
object. Thus
a
he
it
and
ends by saying that
the
strong defense
provided
against
frost
giants,
powers
of
chaos.
it did. With
it Thor killed countless
In a duel
giants.
cast
the strongest
Thor
the
hammer
giant,
through
to
the whetstone
hurled by his opponent
and broke
the whetstone
In
Thor
the
killed
his
hammer
other
famous
duel,
pieces;
Hrungnir.
at the Midgard
line
serpent,
impaled on a fishing
flung the hammer
remote
the
of
and hauled
from
the
have
and
sea,
up
may
depths
to those who read the myth against Indo
killed him?this
according
And
indeed
with Hrungnir,
European
analogues?or
may
not
have;
the
best
mythographers
and
or Preben Meulengracht
S0rensen,5
accept
mythologers,
Thor killed the giant masterbuilder
of As
that both are possibilities.
to
kill
with
his
and
he
also
used
it
of
hammer,
groups
gard
giants, as
at the end of the poem Prymskvi?a; and by raising it aloft and threat
at
trickster's muckraking
ening Loki with it, he stopped the uninvited
like Snorri
^Egir's hall
in Lokasenna.
4 From
Dum?zil's
extensive
works on this point,
the most
among Georges
important
in his Gods of the Ancient
for Germanic
remains
the chapter on "Magic, War, and Justice"
UCLA
Center
for the Study of Comparative
Publi
Folklore
and Mythology,
Northmen,
and Los Angeles:
Univ. of California
See
cations,
Press,
3 (Berkeley
1973), pp. 26?48.
An Anthropological
Assessment
further C. Scott Littleton,
The New Comparative Mythology:
and Los Angeles:
Univ. of California
3d. ed. (Berkeley
of the Theories of Georges Dum?zil,
Press,
1982), esp. pp. 63-67.
5 Preben
in Words and Objects:
"Thor's Fishing
S0rensen,
Expedition,"
Meulengracht
and History
Insti
between Archaeology
ed. Gro Steinsland,
Towards a Dialogue
of Religion,
tute for Comparative
in Human
Research
Skrifter 6:71
Culture,
Oslo,
(Oslo etc.: Nor
?
Univ.
Press,
1986), 257
78.
wegian
Lindow
488
is no doubt,
There
as
a
a
weapon,
then,
used
weapon
that Thor's
against
hammer
the
other
functioned
primarily
of
group
major
players
the jptnar or giants as they are usually called inclu
in the mythology,
structural cognates,
such
his Indo-European
In
follows
this
he
sively.
or Indra, who
as Zeus, who killed the titans with a bolt of lightning,
to split the head of the vrtra. These
used the same weapon
parallels
the
for Mjpllnir,6 which regards
accord with the standard etymology
name
as
cognate
to
or
a
loan
from
forms
such
as
Russian
m?lniya
the hammer
of the thunder
(and cf. Latvian milna,
god
'lightning'
a
of
with Norse
Kock's
with
Axel
and
Perkun),
relationship
suggestion
'white color,' leading
Icelandic mjalli
mjgll 'dry new snow,' modern
A
to "the gleaming
with the verb
relationship
lightning weapon."7
which would
accord less well
mala 'grind' has also been suggested,8
sense insofar as
but might make
with the Indo-European
parallels
of
The meteorological
associations
Thor crushes his giant opponents.
accord splendidly
with the standard
the verb Ijosta would,
however,
etymologies.
not a tool, however
it
A bolt of lightning
is a natural phenomenon,
and the difficulty
of this parallel may be
is tamed in a mythology,
stone pos
in the boomerang-like
further
underscored
by drawing
to de Vries,9 by the Dagda
in Irish tradition;
if it
sessed, according
to locate it), it too derives directly from the
exists (I have been unable
man.
realm of nature and has not been fashioned
by the hand of
an
to
indirect cultural
function
the thunder
This
is not to deny
as it was thought to send the
of Indo-European
weapon
gods, insofar
rain that promoted
the growth of crops (itself the subject of numer
ous rituals, and clearly the focus of, for example,
the Baltic thunder
It is in
gods);10 but again the primary register is natural, not cultural.
of
the
nonviolent
functions
this light that we should probably
regard
in the mythology:
the giving of new life to his slaugh
Thor's hammer
6
Jan de Vries,
s. v.
Mjpllnir.
7Axel
Kock,
Altnordisches
etymologisches W?rterbuch,
2d ed.
(Leiden:
E. J. Brill,
1962),
For
Untersuchungen,"
Indogermanische
"Etymologisch-mythologische
110?11.
10(1899),
schungen,
8Olof
Svensk etymologisk ordbok, 3d ed. (Lund: Gleerup,
1966), s. v. Mjol
Hellquist,
recent general
treatment,
(l)ner. In the most
accepts both etymologies
Edgar C. Polom?
as
"Thor," Encyclopedia
14 (1987), 492.
of Religion,
possibilities:
Edgar C. Polom?,
9
11:Die
?ber den
Jan de Vries, Altgermanische
Religionsgeschichte,
G?tter?Vorstellungen
der germanischen
Kosmos?Der
des Heidentums,
3d ed., Grundriss
Philologie,
Untergang
12:2 (Berlin: W. de Cxruyter,
1970), p. 127.
10
der alten Letten, His
Haralds
Biezais, Die himmlische G?tterfamilie
See, for example,
& Wiksell,
toria Religionum,
and Stockholm:
5 (Uppsala
1972), pp. 92-179;
Almqvist
11
"P?rkons," Encyclopedia
Biezais,
246-47.
(1987),
of Religion,
Thor's
hamarr
489
as
eaten
to
in the tale of Thor's
goats,
reported
journey
as
in Prymskvi?a;
the hallowing
of the bride,
Utgar?a-Loki;
reported
in Gylfaginn
the blessing of the dead Baldr's funeral pyre, as reported
iden
the possible phallic aspects of the hammer,
ing (not to mention
Here
tified as early as 1855 by Mannhardt).11
too, perhaps,
belong the
as "Thor's hammers,"
of which
little amulets
known
about 50 ex
are
from
known
much
of
made
of
Scandinavia
silver,
amples, mostly
to be
from the end of the Viking Age. These were apparently meant
tered
and
worn
to one's
attached
as
derstood
or
clothing
conferring
hung
powers
protective
the
about
to
the
un
are
and
neck,
wearer.
More
gener
to the Christian
cross; that they hang
ally, they are read as reactions
a
to
could
be
read as an inversion
down
cross)
(when compared
upside
an earlier group of
the
existence
of
of the Christian
symbol. However,
some 400 or so miniature
all
of
them in iron and
hammers,
virtually
to iron neck rings (the so-called
attached
"Thor's hammer
rings")
from the earlier Viking Age, especially Sweden, makes
it seem far less
to the cross, even if it grew to
likely that the symbol owes its existence
of
be an anti-cross
the
end
during
paganism.12 This older group of
Thor's
what
hammers
that
is
with
(if
they are) is closely associated
cremation
and
group,
perhaps
nected
with
any
case,
the
to a lesser
hoards
earliest
extent
of
because
which
of
inhumation
its use
may
the
of
have
iron
had
hammers
expensive
a votive
and
the
whereas
burials,
the more
silver,
purpose.
rings
later
is con
Since,
antedates
in
the
(it is from the Valsg?rde
grave field and has been dated
Viking Age
to ca. 750),13 it is
that
Thor's
hammers
had a long history
plain
the
That
this
history may have been far
throughout
Viking
Age.
are
some figures
with
is
the
hammers
which
suggested
by
longer
11Wilhelm
und Sitten
Mannhardt,
"Fr?-Donar,"
Zeitschrift f?r deutsche Mythologie
kunde, 3 (1855), 86?107.
12Krister
18 (1974),
Kulturhistoriskt
"Torshamrar,"
Str?m,
lexikonf?r nordisk medeltid,
und
andere
heidnischen
des
Str?m,
503-06;
"Thorshammerringe
Gegenst?nde
in Systematische Analysen
der Gr?berfunde,
ed. Greta Arwidsson,
Birka: Untersu
Kults,"
2 : 1 (Stockholm:
und Studien,
vitterhets
historie
och antikvitets
chungen
Kungliga
/ Almqvist
& Wiksell,
akademien
Another
for the
1984), pp. 127-40.
piece of evidence
a seated
an
the Eyarland
bronze
"anti-cross,"
(Iceland)
namely
image of
figure holding
as
cross or hammer,
inverted
Thor
and his hammer,
long regarded
portraying
prob
to Christianity
to do with that
the conversion
and may well have nothing
ably postdates
from Eyarland,"
"The Bronze
in Specvlvm Norroenum:
deity: Kristj?n
Eldj?rn,
Image
Norse Studies inMemory
ed. Ursula
P. Helga
Gu?run
Dronke,
of Gabriel Turville-Petre,
and Hans
Bekker-Nielsen
Univ.
d?ttir, Gerd Wolfgang
Weber,
Press,
(n.p.: Odense
1981), pp.
13Greta
73-84.
Arwidsson,
Valsg?rde 6, Die Gr?berfunde
Universitatis
tiquitatum
Septentrionalium
Regiae
holm: Almqvist
8cWiksell,
1942).
von
1, Acta
Valsg?rde,
1
Upsaliensis,
(Uppsala
Musei An
and Stock
490
Lindow
in the Bronze Age rock carvings and by certain expressions
equipped
in the Gifterm?lsbalk
recent times, such as the reference
from more
of
the
Old
Swedish ?stg?ta
and
for
marriage)
weddings
(provisions
to a gift of linens for
to
refers
The
hamar
the
expression
siangf4
lagen
in light of the
be understood
therefore
the bridal bed and might
to
bridal
bless
hammer
of
Thor's
power
couples
implied by the end
a
such as placing
of Prymskvida.]5 Later Swedish
customs,
popular
bridal
have
also
adduced
in
been
the
hammer
bed,
large long-handled
as a
is indeed accepted
in this context,16 and if the entire complex
his hammer
from a tradition of
unified whole, Thor only borrowed
no
to which he returned
it when people
longer
amazing
longevity,
to the older standard view,17 lent
in him. He also, according
believed
to the Saamis, who knew of a divine Horagalles
it (along with himself)
on drums
whom
also
Tiermes/Diermes),
(< p?rrkarl;
they portrayed
and other votive objects with a hammer?sometimes,
indeed, with a
hammer
assured more
this long-lived
in each hand.18 That
hammer
14D. H.
. . ,
Codex Iuris Ostrogotici.
and D. G. J. Schlyter,
S. Collin
eds., ?stg?ta-lagen:
A.
P.
Iuris
Sueo-Gotorum
(Stockholm:
lagar
S?mling
Antiqui,
Corpus
afSweriges^amla
111. Translation
in Ake Holmb?ck
and Elias Wes
and commentary
Norstedt,
1830), p.
tolkade och f?rklarade
2d. ed., Svenska
och Upplandslagen,
sen, ?stg?talagen
landskapslagar
AWE/Geber,
1979), p. 112, 122.
f?r nutidens svenskar (Stockholm:
15This
The bridal bed in question
is that of two
may be problematic:
understanding
of
shall be two kinds of pillows. Neither
the law says is that the dowry
slaves, and what
was entitled,
a free woman
to which
and this seems to mean
that the
these is a bolster,
on a harder
and Schlyter,
slave bride
bed; cf. Collin
p. 288. Holm
slept
?stg?ta-lagen,
the term as stens?ng
och Upplandslagen,
back and Wessen,
p. 112, translate
?stg?talagen
'stone bed.'
16For
och hammers?ng,"
och
Folkminnen
Eric Elgqvist,
"Brudhammare
example,
21 (1934),
1-19.
folktankar,
17This
on the part of the Saamis,
has
saw
of borrowing
view, which
large amounts
the essays gathered
with
See, for examples,
scepticism.
increasing
lately been meeting
on Saami
Based on Papers Read at the Symposium
in Tore Ahlb?ck,
ed., Saami Religion:
on the i6th?i8th
at Abo, Finland,
Instituti Donneri
1984, Scripta
of August
Religion Held
12 (Stockholm:
and
& Wiksell
ani Aboensis,
[distr.],
1987), and in Ahlb?ck
Almqvist
eds., The Saami Shaman Drum: Based on Papers Read at the Symposium on the
Jan Bergman,
on the 19th?20th
Instituti
Saami Shaman Drum Held at Abo, Finland,
of August 1988, Scripta
& Wiksell
Donneriani
Aboensis,
[distr.],
14 (Stockholm:
1991). Axel Olrik's
Almqvist
were
in Saami pre-Christian
Nordic
for extensive
spe
religion
arguments
borrowings
Ian i f0r-kristen
"Nordiske
samisk religion?"
Johansen,
by 0ysteinn
cifically
repudiated
have had some
admitted
that Thor
who however
124-37,
might
Viking, 46 (1982),
in the History
Connections
"Scandinavian-Saami
influence.
Hakan
Religious
Rydving,
and Cultic Place Names: Based on Papers
in Old Norse and Finnish Religions
of Research,"
in Old Nordic Times and on Cultic
between Religions
Read at the Symposium on Encounters
on the 19th?21st
at Abo, Finland,
Place-Names
Held
1987, ed. Tore Ahlb?ck,
of August,
8c Wiksell
Donneriani
Instituti
Aboensis,
[distr.],
13 (Stockholm:
Almqvist
Scripta
assessment.
offers a general
1990), 358-73,
?
18Axel
Danske
"Nordisk
studier, 2 (1905),
Olrik,
57;
39
og lappisk gudsdyrkelse,"
1:Den
1
nordisk
Tor:
och
Unders?kningar
indoeuropeisk
religionshistoria,
Helge
Ljungberg,
Thors
than fertility is indicated by the more recent Icelandic
indicates
that a hammer
of Thor might
be erected
custom
marker?a
to
back
going
the
hamarr
491
evidence, which
as a boundary
settlement19?or
to
used
locate
a thief.
or
Whether
not
connects
continuity
Thor's
hammer
with
ancient
or
and with peasants marrying,
boundaries,
carvings
marking
a fact that the hammer was the
is
it
attribute
of
thieves,
only
tracking
the Norse gods to be crafted by human beings. No golden hair of Sif
was
or SkiSbla?nir
was
in a hoard, no miniature
deposited
Gungnir
worn
is thus unique
by people and buried with them. Thor's hammer
in at least two ways: mythologically,
it is a tool used as a
because
it is the only retained divine
because
and archaeologically,
weapon,
it is unique
in the linguistic record, for in Old
symbol. Furthermore,
rock
Norse
the
tendency
mented
word
hamarr
in
to refer mostly
sense
the
'hammer'
to the hammer
a
shows
remarkable
as will
of Thor,
be docu
below.
First,
common
crop,"
however,
meaning
one's
and
it is worth
in
the
sense
old
that
pointing
language,
this
is
out
that hamarr had
namely
the more
"rock,
usual
ridge,"
meaning
another
or
"out
is con
in the entries on hamarr in the various
by its initial placement
even
sense in cognates of the
if
is the primary
"hammer"
dictionaries,
in the other Germanic
word attested
be
languages. The connection
must be, as Kluge and Mitzka
tween the two meanings
state explicitly,
were made of stone.20 Whether
or not this is
that the first hammers
firmed
so,
the
dual
meaning
of
the
term,
or,
put
another
way,
the
existence
a
the two homonyms,
afforded
for punning.
This pos
possibility
was
a
verse
it
been
since
in
has
used
ascribed
sibility
recognized,
long
to Grettir and located in Chap.
16 of Grettis saga. Grettir has just killed
the h?skarl Skeggi, by grabbing Skeggi's ax inmid-stroke,
breaking off
and
the (metal) top part from the (wooden)
shaft,
sinking it into Skeg
of
i bild och myt,
nordiska ?skguden
och besl?ktade indoeuropeiska gudar; den nordiska ?skguden
A. B. Lundequistska
Universitets
?rsskrift
bokhandeln;
1947:9
(Uppsala:
Uppsala
Ernst Manker,
Die lappische Zau
O. Harrassowitz,
135-45;
1947), pp. 48-52,
Leipzig:
11: Die Trommel als Urkunde
bertrommel: Eine ethnologische monographie,
geistigen Lebens,
H. Geber,
Acta Lapponica,
Mus?et:
6 (Stockholm:
Nordiska
1950), pp. 68-73.
19
i Landn?ma
"Att helga
land: Studier
och det ?ldsta rituella besitt
Dag Str?mb?ck,
den 6 September 1928 av filosofiska
och
Festskrift
till?gnad Axel H?gerstr?m
ningstagandet,"
i Uppsala
and Stockholm:
& Wiksell,
1928),
juridiska f?reningarna
(Uppsala
Almqvist
?
220; rpt. in his Folklore ochfilologi: Valda uppsatser utgivna av kungl. Gustav Adolfs
pp. 198
av
Gustav Adolfs
akademien
Skrifter
akademien,
13.8.1970,
48 (Upp
utgivna
kungliga
sala: kungliga
Gustav Adolfs
akademien),
pp. 135-65.
20 Friedrich
and Walter Mitzka,
der deutschen Sprache,
Etymologisches W?rterbuch
Kluge
20th ed. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter,
1967), s.v. Hammer.
Lindow
492
gi's head. When
Skeggi's
ask whether
people
he
whereabouts,
replies
knows
Grettir
about
anything
a verse.21
with
Hygg ek at hlj?p til Skeggja
me?
hamar-trpll
ramri,
fpr
bl?Os var ? grpn Gri?i
?Oan,
fyr stundu
of haus h?num
gr?Sr,
s?
gein
ok
har?mynt
litt spar?i
(var ek hj? vi?reign
er klauf
v?gtenn,
J^eira)
enni.
a
a
at
with
that a hammer-troll
attack
(I think
leapt
Skeggi
powerful
a
was on the
for blood
short while
of battle;
ago;
lip of the Gri?r
hunger
over his skull and
little
her battle-teeth
when
she yawned
fiercely
spared
at their encounter.)
I was present
she split his forehead;
seems
What Grettir
killed Skeggi,
'hammer,'
to say is that a giantess
(a troll of the hamarr 'rock')
he means
is that an ax (a troll of the hamarr
but what
in
i.e.,
this
case,
the
top
part
an
of
entire
did
hammer)
the job.
and deliberate
of this obvious
Given
the existence
pun, we may
hamarr, which was pri
may infer a kind of continual
pun for Thor's
an ordinary
tool but which could if circumstances
allowed be
marily
as a prominent
as
to
of
the
that
be
part
imagined
large
landscape,
other
hamarr; this pun would be particularly
size was stressed. Such a pun would
physical
their
battles with the jptnar, not least when
as was
the
case,
for
with
example,
when Thor's
appropriate
inform Thor's
especially
size too was emphasized,
or
Hrungnir
the
serpent.
Midgard
It seems
not unlikely,
that Snorri played with the dual
for example,
in the Utgar?a-Loki
of Gylfaginning. When
Thor
meanings
episode
on the way to the latter's hall, Snorri makes
it
attacks Utgar?a-Loki
clear
that
mu?Yinn
skaptinu
the head
Thor's
s0kkr
dj?pt
. . ."
("he
[of
shaft"). Later
he
employed,
match
three
21The
weapon
sees,
is the
tool
? hpfu?it
that
the
(SnE,
p.
hammer's
"hann
47),
. . . s0kkr
p?
'mouth'
at hamars
ser,
hamarrinn
sinks
deeply
upp
at
into
. . . thereafter
the hammer
sinks in up to the
Skrymir]
the
is
when ?tgar?a-Loki
explaining
sj?nhverfingar he
out
of
Thor's
hammer
that
the
tracks
(hamarspor)
points
one for each blow (SnE, p. 53). Each of these
valleys,
text and translation
Den norsk-islandske
follow Finnur J?nsson,
skjaldedigtning
BII,
(hereafter
1912-15),
Gyldendal?Nordisk
Skj in the text) (Copenhagen:
forlag,
Islenzk
ed., Grettis saga Asmundarsonar,
fornrit,
7 (Reykjavik,
464. Gu?ni
J?nsson,
forms vary) and
instead of grpn in line 3 (the manuscript
1936), p. 47, chooses
gunnar
was on the ax (? Gri?i gunnar,
constructs
lit. 'on the giantess
the reading
"blood-hunger
of battle').
Thors
hamarr
493
which
indicates
(like the top part of a hammer),
valleys is four-sided
as a tool. The
that Snorri
is still thinking primarily
of the hammer
of
existence
creates
the
hamarr
however,
homonym,
a valley,
in the earth
a
means
physical
that
feature
the
hamarr
that often
'hammer'
sits below
a
'ridge.'
A clear example
in a passage
from
as
quoted
an
of the potential
the supplements
example
of
hamarr
or
is contained
punning
in
saga helga
Flateyjarb?k,
ambiguity
to Olafs
'stone,
ridge'
by
Fritzner.22
Johan
St. Olaf has been cleansing Norway
of pagan monuments:
"oil bl?t
braut hann ni?r ok oil goS sem ?>?r ... ok m?rg ?nnur bl?tskapar
skrimsl, bae?i hamra ok h?rga,
sk?ga, v?tn ok tr?, ok ?ll ?nnur bl?t
bae?i meiri
ok minni"
all idols and images,
such as
("he destroyed
. . . and
Thor
sacrificial
both
and
monsters,
many
ridges [hammers?]
altars [piles of stones], forests, lakes and trees and all other idols great
to the uninhabited
of Thor
and small"). The connection
and hence
areas
in
of
made
this
is
otherwise
nature,
passage,
outlying
dangerous
of
Thor's
the
the
line
of
of the
enemies,
jptnar; by
reasoning
typical
a
was
of
Thor
medieval
himself
Christianity
Flateyjarb?k,
perhaps
senses
in
the
word
both
of
hamarr.
hamar-trpll
I stated that hamarr 'hammer' is primarily
Above
used only for the
of Thor. This does not hold, at first glance,
hammer
for the skalds,
who used the word for Thor's hammer
four times and for ordinary
hammers
nine
The
attestations
nine
times,
according
that do
to Finnur
not
refer
J?nsson's
to Thor's
Lexicon
PoeticumP
hammer
occur
pri
in kennings
for armor: sarks, weeds,
and kyrtils worked with
marily
could all stand for armor. Besides
kali
hammers
these, Rognvaldr
on his arm a
a
rounded
the
hammer;
anonymous
poet
by
hung
ring
of the thirteenth-century
the
poem Liknarbraut
religious
imagined
on
in
nails
the
noise of the hammers
of
Christ
the
cross;
driving
palms
and
Einarr
smith
rior,
Gilsson,
composing
"tree of the hammer";
"tree
of
battle/weapons,"
a
given
this
century
or
the usual
is the
so
later,
skaldic
closest
the
called
formula
hammer
a certain
for war
comes
to being a weapon
outside
the hands of Thor. One
anywhere
directly
in Thor's hand
final skaldic attestation,
the
hammer
however,
puts
22
om
En samling af norske konge-sagaer
med indskudte mindre fortcellinger
Flateyjarb?k:
i og udenfor Norge samt annaler, ed. Gu?brandur
and C. R. Unger,
Vigf?sson
begivenheder
over det
P. T. Mailing,
m,
Fritzner,
1860-68),
3 vols.
(Christiania:
246. Johan
Ordbog
(Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget,
supplement
garnie norske sprog, 4th ed., 3 vols, plus
1973), s. v. hamarr.
23 Finnur
over det
Lexicon Poeticum Antiquae
J?nsson,
Linguae
Ordbog
Septentrionalis:
norsk-islandske
2d ed. (Copenhagen:
skjaldesprog, oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbj?rn Egilsson,
v. hamarr.
M0ller,
1931), s.
Lindow
494
verse in dr?ttkvcett from
and allows him to use it. It is an anonymous
to be dated, as Finnur
and
the Third Grammatical
Treatise,
probably
to
the
tenth
century.
J?nsson does,
A?r djuphuga?r
dolga
gegn
rammr
? gr
draepi
meS
?is
hamri
vagna
gagnsaell fa?ir Magna.
the deep-minded,
(Before
his hammer
struck with
(Skj BI,
victorious
brave,
courageous,
of the
the enemies
sea of
father
of
171)
Magni
carts.)
to Thor and his hammer
I also detect a possible oblique reference
in a kenning
related to the skaldic formula "worked with a hammer."
of the verb p fa 'to full' (of cloth;
of these use the participle
Three
these three kennings,
shrink it). Besides
i.e., to beat and sometimes
which occur in Hallfre?r
vandrae?askald's
Erf dr?pa for Ol?fr Trygg
vason (ca. 1001), the anonymous
Kr?kum?l
and in
(twelfth century),
the first lausavisa of Sturla B?r?arson
this verb is
(thirteenth
century),
to Lexicon
in skaldic poetry, according
used on only one other occasion
a
no
less
bard than Bragi, traditionally
Poeticum, namely by
regarded
as the first skald. Bragi makes use of the word in
14, the
Ragnarsdr?pa
first stanza dealing with Thor's battle with the Midgard
serpent
(Skj
BI.3).
]>at erum
synt,
at snimma
sonr Aldafp?rs vildi
afls vio ?ri Jxfif?an
jar?ar
is clear
(It
to me,
that
soon
the moisture-fulled
against
of
reist
the
son
engirdler
freista.
to test
of Alfp?r
wished
of earth.)
his
strength
to try his
stanza clearly says that Thor wanted
The
strength against
?ri
vid
the Midgard
serpent,
J?nsson,
p fdan jarear reist. Finnur
in my own rendering
in Skj I have followed
translation
whose
above,
with
"moisture-fulled
of
informs us that this means
earth,"
engirdler
?r 'drizzle' standing presumably
for the sea and pcefdr used here with
that
sense
other
meval
of
has
serpent
"full,"
been
namely
beaten
"to
by
weather
shrink."
or
The
waves,
rain-lashed
not
pri
a hammer,
in light of the formula hamri pcefdr, we can easily recall the ham
is indeed men
that Thor
is about to cast at the beast and which
the dat. hamri, thus
tioned as the first word of the next stanza?in
It may even be possible
that we are
the formula
explicitly.
recalling
on a homonym
a
or
sense
second
of
here
with
?r, which
pun
dealing
un
rune poem
the poet of the Norwegian
(late thirteenth-century)
but
mer
derstood
as
the
name
of
the
u-rune
and
characterized
as dross
or
slag
Thors
hamarr
495
metal
the modern
Icelandic gloss sup
([?r] er af Mu jame), although
the
Bl?ndal
associates
it
with
by
sparks that fly off impure
plied
Sigfus
iron when
it is being worked.24
Since in this case the hammer
appar
as an
the
but
metal,
ently did not do its job, it performed
impure
or sparks that it casts off when
it smashes
the heads of
fragments
giants
will
to
continue
the
threaten
serpent.
source of
In Eddie poetry, which
is presumably
the best narrative
the myths
and heroic
the only attested hammer
other than
legends,
Thor's
is the one wielded
after he has been
by the smith Vplundr
to an island by King NiSa?r.25
lamed and banished
Sat hann,
n? hann
The
situation
of
lexicography
various kinds of
and
j?rnsleggja,
latter.
20,
has
and
ceaselessly,
plots
against
ed. Neckel
he
and
beat
with
Kuhn,
p.
the
hammer;
120)
Ni?a?r.)
even more
in prose (or in the
remarkable
terms for
There
of
technical
are,
course,
prose?).
hammers
involved
in smelting and riveting:
sleggja,
similar words
for the former,
hnj?dhamarr for the
is perhaps
the
On
Fritzner
sleep,
sl? hamri;
hvatt Ni?a?i.
(Vglundarkvida
he
sat, nor did
(He
rather
he boldly
made
oc hann
? valt
svaf,
v?l gorSi hann heldr
simplex
a column
hamarr
and
as
a half,
"hammer,"
and
he
one
however,
cites
only
one
that
finds
prose
attesta
to Thor:
tion that is not relevant
the use of an expression
Uttill tis
manna
once in the
hamarr 'the hammer
of humility'
s?gur.26
Heilagra
to a hammer
That
of the simplex
is one more attestation
referring
other than Thor's than one finds in the dictionary
of Cleasby and Vig
a
not
to Thor
of
related
is glossed.27
f?sson, although
pair
compounds
of
Norse
to
Walter
Baetke's
Old
adds
the gloss
prose
dictionary
"auch
drink;
=
hamarsmark,"
the equal
the
so-called
sign suggests
sign
of
the
hammer
that the plain meaning
made
over
'hammer'
a
is not
significant.28
24
I s lands k-dans k ordbog: Islensk-d?nsk
oroab?k (Reykjavik:
t>?rarinn B.
Sigf?s Bl?ndal,
s.v. ?r.
H. Aschehoug,
and Kristiania:
t>orl?ksson;
1920-24),
Copenhagen
25 Eddie
are quoted
and
poems
by title and stanza from the edition of Gustav Neckel
Edda: die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkm?lern,
Hans Kuhn,
5th ed. (Hei
C. Winter?Universit?tsverlag,
1983).
delberg:
26The
occurs
manna
in Nikolaus
attestation
saga erkibyskups II (Heilagra
allegedly
m nd og kvinder, ed. C. R.
om
2 vols.,
[Chris
s?gur: legender og fort
llinger
hellige
linger,
tiania: B. M. Bentzen,
there. In any case,
1877], 11, 134, line 35) but it is not to be found
excrescence
it must
either a direct
translation
from Latin or a particular
of
represent
the so-called
florid style.
27 Richard
An Icelandic-English
and Gudmundur
Cleasby
Vigfusson,
dictionary,
A. Craigie
with supplement
Clarendon,
(Oxford:
by William
1957), s.v. hamarr.
28Walter
zur altnordischen
W?rterbuch
2d ed. (Darmstadt:
Baetke,
Prosaliteratur,
senschaftliche
1976), s. v. hamarr.
Buchgesellschaft,
2d ed.
Wis
Lindow
496
A computer-aided
search of an electronic
corpus of the fornaldar
texts
and objects, revealed only one
beloved of named weapons
s?gur,
to the fourth riddle put by Gestumblindi
hammer:
the solution
(i.e.,
to
in Chap. 9 of Hervarar
Odin),
saga okHeidreks kon
King Hei?rekr
to discern any full mythological
it would be difficult
ungs.29 Although
in
the subject of these riddles, even though it isOdin who
progression
we
is
may note that the answer to the first is beer, which
poses them,
with
his
what Odin
in
ecstatic
wisdom
drinks
connection
perfor
mances
and that they lead to an epiphany
of
in the Eddie poems,
same
to
that
the
unanswerable
Odin
Odin with
put
question
Vaf]3r?S
nir: What did Odin
say in the ear of the dead Baldr on the funeral
then, the second riddle refers to the riddler's travels over
pyre? When,
a bridge across a river, with birds on both sides of him, we might
take
to the hall of the human Gestum
to Odin's journey
it as reference
blindi (with whom he has changed places), and the birds might be his
ravens. The answer to the third riddle, the one immediately
preced
is that the traveler
lay in the shade and
ing the hammer-riddle,
this isOdin
his thirst with dew; perhaps
lying in the shade
quenched
as
of the world
tree, whence,
Vplusp? 19 points out, the dews come,
to in
white
he tasted of the mysterious
and perhaps
liquid referred
that stanza. The next two riddles refer to the tools of smithing,
gold
bellows
smith's hammer
(riddle 4) and ironsmith's
(riddle 5), and
however
the trail of a mythological
thereafter
vague,
progression,
turn
to
The
riddles
and
faint.
onions, games and house
grows
spiders
to
in the various manuscripts
hold animals,
and their order
begins
n?
Gestumblindi"
riddles
become
"Smaekkask
vary.
("your
g?turnar,
chides the god. In any case, we may
Hei?rekr
trifling, Gestumblindi"),
with the observation
satisfy ourselves
is
mentioned
by Odin
fornaldars?gur
there
special
are
no
place
ordinary
for Thor's
hammers.
This
hammer
that the only hammer
in the
in a discourse
of concealment;
whole
among
state
of
affairs
all the hammers
a
suggests
of
literary
tradition.
The roots of an explanation
for this lexical curiosity may, I believe,
be detected
in Gestumblindi's
riddle, but they begin in Vplusp?. After
the
the cosmos
from the primordial
void, the gods assign
creating
to their stations and thereby create the system for
celestial bodies
at the very begin
time (strophes
thus establishing
5?6),
reckoning
the
of
and
that
time
characterizes
the world
space
contiguity
ning
29 In the edition
of Christopher
ins vitra (London,
konungs
Heidreks
The
Tolkien,
etc.: T. Nelson,
Saga of King Heidrek
i960), pp. 32-44.
the Wise:
Saga
hamarr
Thors
view of this mythology.30
gins in strophe 7.
Hittuz
What
is now
aesir
? I?avelli,
f)eir er hprg oc hof
afla
h? timbro?o;
smi?o?o,
oc toi
gor?o.
sc?po
(Vglusp?
aesir met
(The
at
set
they
"temple;"
tools.)
?Oavpllr,
up
that be
au?
lpg?o,
tangir
and
is culture,
lacking
497
who
they
crafted
forges,
and
7, ed. Neckel
timbered
high
created
wealth,
Kuhn,
"cult-site"
the
and
tongs,
p.
2)
and
made
here is the set of tongs, presum
only tool specifically mentioned
of
the long line, but that the tools
the
?-alliteration
controlled
by
ably
ismade clear in the next stanza,
in question are those of goldsmithing
the Golden Age of the gods and its end.
which presents
The
? t?ni,
Tefl?o
var
))eim
teitir
vaettergis
unz
?3ri?r qv?mo
?m?tcar
mi?>c,
v?ro,
vant
|)ursa
?r
?r
gulli,
meyiar,
iptunheimom.
8, ed. Neckel
and
(Vglusp?
an obscure
(They
played
was
ing of gold
lacking
out of
erful,
Jotunheimar.)
in the enclosure,
game
until
three giant maidens
board
them
Kuhn,
p.
2)
were
noth
merry;
arrived,
very pow
Golden Age,
tools, specifi
then, was made possible by smithing
the most
is one of these tools, perhaps
cally for gold, and the hammer
In Snorri's paraphrase
of these lines it is the first tool
prominent.
The
mentioned
(SnE, p. 19):
er
afla ?, ok J)ar til
hamar
Ipeir lpg?u
ger?u
pe'ir
JDeir h?s,
ger?u
ok \>vi naest
smi?u?u
ok
af oil t?l pnnur;
tpng ok ste?ja
Ipeir
]3a?an
er
at ?>ll
malm
ok stein ok tr?, ok sv? gn?gliga
heitir,
J)ann m?lm,
gull
t>ar naest
ok
b?s-gpgn
ok pli rei?igpgn
[?eir af gulli, ok er su pld kpllu?
hpf?u
gullaldr.
(Next
made
and
they made
a hammer
next
that metal
furnishings
they
that
a
building
and
tongs
metal
worked
were
is called
of
gold;
in which
an
and
gold,
and
set up
they
forges,
and
anvil
from
them
stone
and
that
all
their
that
age
and
and
wood,
household
is called
the Golden
and
all
so
there
other
abundantly
implements
they
tools;
in
and
Age.)
and it
This Golden Age is ended by the arrival of three giantesses,
to recall that this is the first actual interaction
in Vglusp?
is important
:^?
in the Weltmodell
A. Ya. Gurevich,
of the Old
"Time
and Space
Scandinavian
2 (1969), 42-53;
Kirsten Hastrup,
Culture and History
Scandinavia,
Peoples," Mediaeval
inMedieval
Claren
Iceland: An Anthropological
(Oxford:
Analysis
of Structure and Change
don,
1985).
Lindow
498
even though the seeress
between
gods and giants,
from long ago who raised her and has mentioned
Ymir
before
heavens,
The
grass.
and
the
the
cosmos
was
by
known
gods,
but
sources
other
earth
the
the
and
was
there
to
according
the cosmos,
from
recalled giants
the existence
of
and
yawning
the
up of
lifting
before
existed,
gap
primordial
undertaken
creation
involved
stanza,
Ymir
the
waves
and
sea,
sand,
when
has
no
next
the
the homology
goes
of
unmentioned.
Thus
the Golden Age made
female giantesses
possible
by
interrupt
of tools, and specifically
the existence
the existence
of tools of gold
a male domain. Now as it happens, Thor has a
smithing,
special con
with
nection
for
giantesses,
him
or
to
according
who
poets
wor
actually
at
in the waning
least sang his praises
shipped
days of
was
at
in
Thor
Iceland,
paganism
especially good
slaying giantesses.31
to boast of these feats in a con
23 permits Thor himself
H?rbardslj?d
text which suggests
the cosmic nature of such giantslaying:
var
Ec
oc
austr
br?Sir
mikil myndi
vaetr
(I was
tain;
to the
the
race
east
of
and
giants
inMidgard.)
iptna bar?ag,
er til
biargs
bolv?sar,
myndi
I slew
would
aett iptna,
manna
gengo;
ef allir lif?i,
undir
mi?gar?i.
(H?rbar?Sslj?ft23, ed. Neckel
giants,
be
and Kuhn, p. 82)
to the moun
evil maidens,
who went
a man
if all lived, hardly
would
be
large,
at this point in the cosmogony,
Thus even if there were no hammer
we
to
be
the traditional
of
enemy
tempted
implicate Thor,
might
The
giantesses.
hammer
increases
only
that
as
temptation,
do
Thor's
and ruddy
To be sure,
both attributes
that smiths
great strength
complexion,
uses
in con
the
verbs
might
acquire.
Vplusp? poet
plural
but the gods are as yet little differ
nection with the proto-smithing,
entiated and none has been mentioned
the frame of
by name outside
the
first
stanza.
only Thor
the
common
possesses,
In any
case,
smithing
has a tool for his major
noun
and
hamarr
cognates
of
referring
hamarr,
is an
activity
attribute.
most
it may
requiring
That
often
be worth
and
tools,
tool is denoted
to
the
one
pointing
that
out,
by
Thor
mean
"anvil" in Greek and Slavic.32
With
this in mind, we may recall the lone figure who besides Thor
uses the noun hamarr 'hammer' in Eddie poetry, namely Vplundr,
the
most
of
Germanic
associ
legend. Although
proto-smith
scholarship
31
Thor,"
John Lindow,
"Addressing
32 De
Vries, Etymologisches
W?rterbuch,
Scandinavian
s.v. hamarr.
Studies,
60
(1988),
119-36.
Thor
s hamarr
499
ates smithing with Odin,33 the evidence uncovered
in this context sug
a
an
to
too
claim
that
Thor
has
such
association.
there
gests
Perhaps
in support of this claim.
is additional
evidence
is his laming, and it has been
Volundr's
attribute
primary physical
a
more
context
out
in
far
that limping
is associated
pointed
general
one
a
with smiths.34 No gods
but
has
limp,35
god
limping animal,
who obtained
his companion
the latter
namely Thor,
I>j?lfi when
from the bone of one of Thor's slaughtered
sucked the marrow
goats,
to revive the animal wholly
for Thor
thus making
it impossible
intact.
This evidence
is slight, to be sure, but itmay be corroborated
by the
Saami
materials,
for
smiths
in Germanic
are
associated
with
shaman
Saamis apparently
had no trouble
ism, and the shamanically-oriented
Thor
and
his
hammer
Indeed, one tantaliz
(or hammers).
borrowing
to
as Old Man Thor
of
be
evidence
read
that
suggest
ing piece
might
a
he
The
famous
of
lost Saami drum,
(Horagalles),
limped.
drawing
33 For
on
Hilda Ellis Davidson,
"The Smith and the Goddess:
Two Figures
example,
the Franks Casket
from Auzon,"
Fr?hmittelalterliche
Lotte
216?26;
Studien,
3 (1969),
on Dwarf-Names
in Old
"New Thoughts
Fr?hmittelalterliche
Motz,
Icelandic,"
Studien, 7
100-17.
(1973),
34 Ferdinand
"Der Hinkende
im braucht?mlichen
Sokolicek,
Spiel," Festschrift Otto
zum 65.
ed. Helmut
Birkhan
and Otto Gschwantler
(Vienna: Notring,
H?fler
Geburtstag,
1968), 423-32.
35 Bruce Lincolns
to reconstruct
of the evidence
revisionist
used by Dum?zil
reading
or
the parallelism
of a one-eyed
and one-handed
(Le borgne et le manchot)
god
king
for the loss of, or a wound
that a case could be made
to, a leg, too, by the one
argues
Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice
eyed: Bruce Lincoln,
(Chicago:
Univ.
of Chicago
Lincoln
cites Roman
and Irish
Press,
1991), pp. 246-48.
Although
on
of the Scandinavian
insistence
the primacy
Dum?zil's
evidence
lead
evidence,
might
one to wonder
about Odin's
the silence of that evidence.
More
leg, despite
interesting
in this context
is Lincoln's
observation
that serious consideration
of the Roman
evidence
the opposition
of the lower social orders?
"leads one to other data that focus upon
. . .?to domination
and common
soldiers
smiths,
artisans,
by kings"
(p. 248). That
was "a club-like
would
Stitt that Thor's
hammer
tool"
agree with the view of J. Michael
as
a club; see, for
of the more
view of Mjpllnir
(an extension
general
simply
example,
and London:
Univ.
[Baltimore
Jaan Puhvel,
Comparative Mythology
Johns
Hopkins
with
in which
cultures
Press,
1987], p. 201) and thus to be connected
Indo-European
"the warrior
often has associations
with the accoutrements
of the peasant
class, and this
. . .The
is true of the club in particular.
club is the weapon
of the duel,
and in the
was the weapon
a berserkr"
tradition
of choice
for fighting
Stitt,
literary
(J. Michael
and the Bear's Son: Epic, Saga, and Fairytale
in Northern
Germanic Tradition, The
Beowulf
Bates Lord Studies
Albert
in Oral Tradition,
8 (New York: Garland
1992),
Publishing,
im alten Iran: M?nnerbund,
Der Feudalismus
he quotes
Geo Widengren,
p. 200. Here
im Verh?ltnisse, Wissenschaftliche
Feudalismus
der Arbeits
Gefolgswesen,
Abhandlungen
f?r Forschung
des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen,
40 (K?ln and Opladen:
gemeinschaft
to
Westdeutscher
that "there
is a certain
1969: 61). Stitt goes on to note
Verlag,
logic
a club
a berserkr, since the latter were
to metal"
using
against
theoretically
impervious
connection
with fornaldarsaga
heroes
is interesting,
(p. 236, n. 14 [note to p. 200]). The
since they frequently,
like Thor,
fight with and slay female giants.
Lindow
500
called "Randulf
after the identity and date of the
1723" by Manker
in which
it is found, has numerous
author of the Naer0 manuscript
one
two
to
of
whom
have
appear
figures,
leg slightly shorter than the
the world shaman.36 I would
other: Hora Galles and Varalde Noyde,
since strange
lower legs are not
hardly care to push this evidence,
on
uncommon
the
Saami
shaman
drums
(and
the
environ
missionary
to the outside world
in which
known
the drums became
to the difficulty
of interpreting
the figures
tainly contributed
the argument
and
that Thor
them),37 but it may at least bolster
cer
on
ment
manism
coexisted
More
generally,
between
smiths,
among
comfortably
comparative
and
shamans,
evidence
warriors."38
the
sha
Saamis.
suggests
Relating
"close
this
connections
general
back
to the Germanic
it
context,
Stephen O. Glosecki
expressed
ground
is close indeed, for the old myths weave
this way: "The connection
in the total tapestry of tribal life.
shaman, smith, and warrior
together
a mythic
The
dimension.
With
their
three automatically
acquire
underworld
and initiatory
adventures,
magic powers,
spirit helpers,
one another, as
a
ordeals,
they tend to converge with
though they tap
one
Even
if
of
resources."39
thinks
first
of
limited pool
supernatural
Odin
place
in connection
as
the
superior
with
shamanism,
it is difficult
to deny Thor
his
warrior.
If Thor
with the tools and Golden Age disrupted
is associated
by
of
giantesses
Vplusp? 7 ?8, he ought to be associated with what follows,
if Thor
of dwarfs; put more generally,
the catalogue
is asso
namely
ciated with smithing, he ought to be associated with dwarfs,
the major
of the mythology.
And
smiths and craftsmen
indeed he is, in a way
more direct than that of any other god. Somehow
Thor's daughter
to a dwarf, and it is with this creature, Alviss,
became engaged
that
to the Eddie poem Alviss
in a contest of wits according
Thor engages
to
contest
be difficult
m?l?a
that otherwise
would
explain. Why
for his brawn than his brain, engage
in a
should Thor,
known more
so clearly to the realm of Odin,
contest of this type, which belongs
?
36
il, 187
Manker,
204.
Lappische Zaubertrommel,
37 See Hakan
Drums
Saami
and the Religious
Encounter
in the Eigh
"The
Rydving,
teenth and Nineteenth
The Saami Shaman Drum, ed. Ahlb?ck
and Bergman,
Centuries,"
pp. 28-51.
38Mircea
transi.
Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries
of Birth and Rebirth,
Shamanism:
R. Trask
& Torchbook,
Willard
(New York: Harper
1975), p. 86; cf. Eliade,
Univ.
Princeton
Archaic Techniques
Press,
Series,
76 (Princeton:
Bollingen
of Ecstasy,
1964), p. 470.
39
Lord
Bates
and Old English Poetry, The Albert
O. Glosecki,
Shamanism
Stephen
2 (New York: Garland
in Oral Tradition,
Studies
1989), p. 152.
Publishing,
Thor
unless
bodied
he
has
some
connection
special
in his primary
with
a connection
dwarfs,
501
em
the tool for working
the hammer,
attribute,
's hamarr
metals?40
with craftsmanship
the loca
this association
helps explain
Perhaps
in Codex Regius
of the Poetic Edda, between
tion of Vglundarkvida
focuses on the recovery
of the
the Thor
poems Prymskvida?which
it Thor may even have to revert to
hammer
and shows that without
Alv?ssm?l?which
focuses on an attempt by
the female domain?and
re
a lesser craftsman
to usurp privileges
and properly
ordinarily
an
tra
would supplement
the
served for his betters. Such
explanation
ditional
on
drawing
explanation
an
to
assignment
the
"lower
my
thology" of the elves and dwarf of the two poems.
lacks the notion of a crafted cos
Old Norse mythology
Although
in Kalevala,
like that implied by, say, the work of Ilmarinen
mos,
use
in
its principal
the my
Thor's hammer
is still related
throughout
times when the universe was created. As
thology to those primordial
was fashioned
from
Vafpr?dnism?l and Gr?mnism?l agree, the universe
Ymir.
the body of
var ipr? um scppu?,
Or Ymis holdi
enn
?r beinom
biorg,
ins hrimkalda
himinn ?r hausi
enn
?r
sveita
21,
(Vafpr?dnism?l
of Ymir
the flesh
(From
from
the
heaven
bones,
the sea.)
was
skull
?r
?r hausi
the
and
Kuhn,
mountains
fashioned,
frost-cold
and from
giant,
from
his
p. 48)
his
sweat
var ipr? um scppu?,
sveita
saer,
biprg ?r beinom,
enn
ed. Neckel
earth
the
of
Or Ymis holdi
enn
iptuns,
si?r.
ba?mr ?r h?ri,
himinn.
40The
in the poem's
last stanza parallels
the
that dooms
the dwarf
ray of sunshine
thunder
and the other
bolt of lightning
that Thor
gods hurl; and thus recalls an old
sun
the ax of Mediterranean
surmise
of Oscar Montelius
equating
gods with Thor's
21 (1910), 60-78
Axe and Thor's
hammer:
"The Sun-God's
Hammer,"
Folk-Lore,
(En
tid
Svenska forminnesf?reningens
of "Solgudens
hammare,"
yxa och Tors
glish version
10 [1900],
on the
is that Alviss
salient difference
The
is, one assumes
277-96).
skrift,
to bits but rather
not smashed
to stone.
is turned
basis of the comparative
evidence,
see Heinz
use the sun as a weapon;
demonstration
does
Thor
Klingenberg's
Certainly
of the poem:
"Alv?ssm?l: Das Lied vom ?berweisen
of the sun as the "missing
category"
In this context
the Jut
113-42.
48 (1967),
Monatsschrift,
Zwerg," Germanisch-Romanische
for "an old stone axe" may also be relevant:
landic term dv rgehammer
'dwarfs' hammer'
H. F. Feilberg,
til en ordbog over det jyske almuesmal,
Thiele,
4 vols. (Copenhagen:
Bidrag
1, s. v. dv rgehammer.
1866?1914),
Lindow
502
?r hans
Enn
mi?gar?
enn ?r hans
br?m
ger?o
sonom;
v?ro
manna
heila
bli?
{)au
regin
in
har?mo?go
scy pll scppu?.
the flesh
(From
a tree
of Ymir
the
was
earth
ed. Neckel
40-41,
(Gr?mnism?l
his hair,
and
the heaven
from
for
made
the joyous
Midgard
gods
were
all made.)
clouds
the powerful
and
Kuhn,
p. 65)
from
his sweat
the sea,
fashioned,
from
his skull. And
from
his brows
the
sons
of men;
and
from
his
brain
into (indeed
entered
the cosmic
this cosmogony
initiated)
was
to
and
between
clear
Snorri
(SnE,
p. 14):
gods
giants
struggle
"Synir B?rs dr?pu Ymi jptun." That was the first slaying of a giant,
and it allowed the
sir to fashion the cosmos, with its central portion,
That
marked
Midgard,
as
off
for men
safe
and
as we
protected,
have
seen,
and his hammer. Whenever,
then, a giant is slain, the uni
by Thor
verse is
and
the
off as safe
recreated,
portion marked
mythologically
from the powers of chaos is reaffirmed.
Even when Thor
failed to kill a giant, as when he was bested by
he
several creative acts; with his powerful
Utgar?a-Loki,
managed
as we
low tide, and with his hammer
he created,
thirst, he created
have
while
three valleys, features
to slay a giant,
attempting
seen,
between
his
hammer
and
the
of the local landscape. This he did
thus showing again the connection
cosmos.
also be seen in the possible
connection
might
etymological
between
hamarr
and himinn 'heaven
that goes back to
relationship
Hans Reichelt's postulation
of the concept of heaven among the Indo
That
Europeans
as a stone
In many
vault.41
Indo-European
languages,
Rei
chelt thought,
this stone heaven was denoted
by *akmon, from the root
root of hamarr. Reichelt
*ak- 'sharp,' which
is likely to be the ultimate
are
states explicitly
that hamarr and himinn
related and later attempts
to associate
the myths of Prymskvi?a and Hymiskvida with his proto
in a way no modern
reader will find con
myth of the stone heaven
vincing.42 Nor,
support,
sis known
41 Hans
although
to me
indeed,
it
has
always
the etymological
deserves
is a vigorous
relationship
mention.43
refutation
The
most
of Reichelt's
found much
recent
hypothesis
analy
and
"Der steinerne
Reichelt,
Himmel,"
32 (1913),
Indogermanische
Forschungen,
23-57
42
"Der steinerne
Reichelt,
Himmel,"
25; 52-56.
43
der gotischen Sprache: Mit
See, for example,
Feist, Vergleichendes W?rterbuch
Sigmund
Einschluss
des Krimgotischen
und sonstiger zerstreuter ?berreste des Gotischen,
3d ed. (Leiden:
s. v. hamarr and
E. J. Brill,
W?rterbuch,
1939), s.v. himins, and de Vries,
Etymologisches
cited in these entries.
himinn, and the literature
Thors
therefore
of
stone?
the putative
surely
the macro-microcosmic
an
original
of
component
homologies
of
the
semantics
Indo-European
503
the equivalent
Moreover,
relationship.44
hamarr
of
of
hamarr?in
creation
myths,
of which the above-cited
from Vafpr?dnism?l
and Gr?mnism?l
passages
reflex, is bone; heaven
(or better the
may be taken as the Germanic
and shares a homologic
with
sky) is a separate category
relationship
the head.45 It would
therefore
this tantaliz
appear safest to disregard
con
evidence
ing subject and simply to accept the already adduced
cerning
the
cosmic
and
creative
powers
of Thor's
hamarr.
to be a pagan parallel
to Old English
Norse
hamarr appears
or
nouns
common
in
their usage with Christian
metod,
dryhten
charged
In the Norse
it is a sense of protec
instance,
significance.46
religious
tion from evil, through
creative
that the noun
powers,
ultimately
draws with it. Even Christian
skalds can remind us of this: metaphori
cal clothes that have been worked with a hammer
the wearer
guard
Thus
links that shield warriors
against inimical forces; the tiny hammered
are like the giant mythic
beast coiled ring-like around
the abode of
once
sea
at
worked
Thor's
hammer
and
the
mankind,
by
awaiting
final fatal blow at Ragnarpk.
is
and
it
sepa
powerful,
Craftsmanship
rates the bearers
of culture
from all those outside
culture who
it. Thor's hamarr, whether wielded
threaten
by the god or worn about
invoked
the neck,
its
shelter.
sought
this distinction
and gathered
under
it those who
"*Haekmon:
Culture,"
'(Stone) Axe' and 'Sky' in I-E/Battle-Axe
44J. Peter M?her,
i (1973), 441-62.
Studies,
Journal
of Indo-European
45 See Bruce
Themes of Creation and
Lincoln, Myth, Cosmos, and Society: Indo-European
1.
Mass.: Harvard
Destruction
Univ.
Press,
ig86), especially
(Cambridge,
Chap.
46
Nicholas
in Anglo-Saxon
and Mythmaking
En
Howe, Migration
See, most
recently,
Yale Univ.
Press,
1989), pp. 175-76.
gland (New Haven: