The Norse Myths Read online

  This tale may be a rather late one, given the lack of seriousness with which the gods are treated. Both Þórr and Freyja are undignified in their emotional responses. Þórr gropes around for his hammer before yelling for Loki; Freyja’s snorting and her heaving bosom cause her favourite adornment to snap and fall from her – and we remember the high price that she paid the dwarfs for it (see Chapter 2). Þrymr’s social pretensions are neatly skewered by his self-satisfaction – all he needed was the goddess of beauty and sex as his wife to complete his collection of valuables. The comedy of that most masculine of the gods being forced into women’s clothing, and Loki’s alacrity in offering to go along also in female dress, points on the one hand to the gender ambiguity that surrounds Loki and his shape-shifting, and on the other to the strong cultural taboos against cross-dressing and other transgender activities, particularly if undertaken in connection with the practice of seiðr. Óðinn is less sensitive in this regard; as we will see in Chapter 6, he is not above disguising himself as a woman, if circumstances demand it.

  ÞÓRR’S VISIT TO ÚTGARÐA-LOKI

  The most elaborate tale of Þórr’s dealings with the giants is told at length by Snorri. Þórr and Loki set out one day to go adventuring in the goat-drawn chariot. This is when Þórr acquires his two human servants (see page 111), and later the next evening the party finds itself in a forest. Ahead is some kind of a hall so they seek shelter there, but in the middle of the night there’s an earthquake and the alarmed party huddle in a smaller room just off the main hall. The next day when they come out of the hall they find a huge man lying snoring beside it – the source of the previous night’s earthquake. Þórr is about to strike this figure with his hammer when he awakens. He recognizes the god, whom he greets by name, and asks, ‘why did you drag off my glove?’ The astonished travellers realize that the hall in which they spent the night was the giant’s glove, while the side-room was the thumb. The giant, who calls himself Skrýmir, offers his companionship and they journey together. All their provisions are placed in a bag which Skrýmir carries; that evening Þórr proves unable to open it to get dinner while the giant takes a nap. So annoyed is the god that he strikes Skrýmir the mightiest blow he can muster with Mjöllnir. But the giant opens his eyes, mutters that a leaf must have fallen on him from the oak-tree under which he is snoozing, and enquires as to whether they’ve had their dinner. The humiliated god dissembles about their hunger and in the middle of the night he strikes the sleeping Skrýmir a second blow; a mere acorn, the giant claims when he’s awakened by it. A third attack is no more successful.

  The next day Skrýmir parts company with the divine party as they come to a giant-dwelling named Útgarðr; its lord is (also) called Loki, taking his byname from his home. Skrýmir warns his new friends not to be cheeky at Útgarða-Loki’s place since they are mere babes-in-arms in comparison with the mighty men in the fortress. And the inhabitants of the hall are indeed impressively large. Útgarða-Loki welcomes his guests and invites them to take part in various competitions for general amusement. First up is Loki, who volunteers in an eating contest. Though he clears his trough of food in record time, his opponent Logi eats not only the food, and the bones, but also the trough itself. One-nil to the giants! Þjálfi runs a race against a certain Hugi; though the boy does well, over the best of three he’s clearly the loser. Þórr’s participation in a drinking competition is also pitiful. He’s challenged to drain a horn of liquid which, apparently, can usually be drained by the feeblest drinker in three draughts. But even after three lung-bursting gulps, the level in the horn has only sunk a fraction. Now Útgarða-Loki expresses his scorn by inviting the god to try two further exploits: picking up his cat and wrestling with his old nurse. Alas, Þórr is no more impressive; he can only raise one paw of the cat from the ground, while the nurse, Elli, manages to drop Þórr onto one knee. Thoroughly embarrassed by their team’s performance, Þórr and his friends nevertheless enjoy the hospitality on offer, and, after an excellent breakfast, they ready themselves to go home.

  A tiny Þórr strikes the sleeping giant Skrýmir; his enormous glove is in the foreground. Friedrich Heine (1882).

  Útgarða-Loki accompanies them some distance from his stronghold and then reveals the truth of what’s been going on; he’ll never be letting the mighty god back under his roof, so dangerous is he. For Útgarða-Loki and Skrýmir are one and the same; the food-bag was tied with magic wire; the sleeping giant had magically interposed a mountain between his head and Þórr’s hammer-blows, and the evidence, a tabletop mountain, now with three square valleys in it, is visible some way off. As for the contest within Útgarðr itself, Loki had been pitched against Fire, who of course had no difficulty in consuming the food-trough; Þjálfi had raced against Thought, and the drinking-horn had been connected to the ocean. No wonder then that Þórr had not been able to drain it, though his efforts in lowering the level in the horn explain the existence of the tides. The black cat – well, that was none other than the mighty Miðgarðs-serpent itself, while Elli the nurse was Old Age, who brings every man to his knees sooner or later. Having imparted this information, Útgarða-Loki and his hall vanish, just as Þórr is raising Mjöllnir in order to annihilate him.

  Þórr wrestles with Útgarða-Loki’s cat. Frederick Richardson (1913).

  This tale, with its allegorical representation of Fire, Thought and Old Age, suggests that Snorri expanded on an earlier tale in which Þórr meets a cunning giant with an enormous glove. In Loki’s Quarrel, Loki twits the god with having cowered in the glove and with failing to open the food-bag; these elements at least must be traditional. One curious detail is Skrýmir’s assumed name of Útgarða-Loki. Is he at some level a double of Loki? Does the cunning god divide himself between playing the brains to Þórr’s brawn, and displaying a clear giant aspect, bent on defending the Giantlands against Þórr’s readiness to lash out with his hammer? It’s one thing to cheer Þórr killing all the giant wedding guests after Þrymr stole his hammer, or smashing Hymir and his troops when he reneged on the promise to let Þórr have the cauldron, or to hear at second hand of his slaughter of giants away in the east. But it’s quite another to see him ready to murder a sleeping man who has sought only to embarrass, not to harm, him. Þórr’s dignity is somewhat recuperated by the revelation that he has been matched against metaphysical forces. Yet, once he finds himself defeated by the ocean, by the cosmic monster who symbolizes the limits of geographical space and by Old Age, the most salient aspect of Time for us humans, he reacts with peevishness. This equivocal characterization of Þórr suggests that Snorri has re-drawn him in a less than flattering light, taking his cue from older tales.

  ÞÓRR VERSUS ÓÐINN

  One final insight into Þórr’s role in the mythological system is offered in the lively poem Hárbarðsljóð (Hárbarðr’s, or Grey-beard’s, Song). Þórr is on his way home when he comes to a fjord. He hails the ferryman to ask for passage, not realizing that the old man with the boat is his own father, Óðinn, in disguise. To Þórr’s astonishment the ferryman meets his proud boast, ‘with Þórr you converse here!’ with insults and counter-boasts. The two gods participate in a flyting, a formal exchange of claims to greatness, rebuttals and counter-claims. But where Þórr brags of killing giants, including Hrungnir and Skaði’s father Þjazi, of smiting berserk women and giantesses, the ferryman’s counter-claims are not of matching heroic achievements. Rather, if he is telling the truth, Óðinn has been busy seducing lovely women. ‘How did it go with them?’ Þórr asks, sounding rather envious. Óðinn replies:

  We had frisky women, if only they were well-disposed to us,

  we had clever women, if only they were faithful to us,

  they wound a rope out of sand

  and from a deep valley

  they dug out the ground;

  only I was superior to them with my shrewdness,

  I slept with the seven sisters

  and got all their hearts, and pleasure from th
em.

  What were you doing meanwhile, Þórr?

  HÁRBARÐR’S SONG, V. 18

  These mysterious women, described in riddling terms, seem to be some sort of natural phenomenon, shaping the terrain in different ways. Þórr counters with the claim that he tossed Þjazi’s eyes up into the sky where they became a constellation, but his father remains unimpressed. To each of Þórr’s exploits, Óðinn replies with a boast of having led an army (though he does not seem to fight in person), of seducing women or of stirring up conflict – a traditional role for the god which helps him to select the right personnel to join the Einherjar. Þórr’s bragging avails him nothing in the face of Óðinn’s indifference to claims to glory or honour. The senior god makes an interesting assertion: ‘Óðinn owns the nobles who fall in battle / and Þórr owns the race of thralls!’ (v. 24). Þórr was the most popular god in Iceland and Norway, perhaps because he ruled the weather, crucial to those who live by the land or on the sea and those who labour with their hands. Óðinn meanwhile is most closely associated with aristocrats and poets, consequent on his role in winning the mead of poetry for them; he is also a patron of kings. The poem ends with Óðinn absolutely refusing to bring the ferry-boat over to Þórr and claiming that he will find that his wife Sif is unfaithful to him. Þórr has to walk the long way round, despite his threats and bluster.

  The Duel between Þórr and Hrungnir

  Hrungnir was a giant whom the gods ill-advisedly invited into Ásgarðr for a drink after he and Óðinn had been competing in a horse-race. The giant became drunk and began to boast that he’d dismantle Valhöll to take home to the Giantlands with him, destroy Ásgarðr and kill all the gods, except for Freyja and Sif whom he would take home too. When Þórr returned and found an intoxicated giant in Valhöll, he was enraged, but since Hrungnir was unarmed, they arranged to fight a duel elsewhere, at the borders of Hrungnir’s own territory. Hrungnir had a heart made of stone, and a shield of the same substance; Hrungnir’s ally was a giant figure made of clay called Mökkurkálfi, a bold enough being had he not been given a mare’s heart – the only organ large enough to power his mighty frame. Þjálfi ran up to Hrungnir as he stood ready for battle and warned that Þórr was coming for him – underground! Hrungnir promptly stood on his stone shield, only to espy Þórr riding up in his chariot, surrounded by thunder and lightning. Hrungnir’s weapon of choice was a whetstone, which he hurled at Þórr; the stone shattered in flight against Mjöllnir, and a fragment became embedded in Þórr’s skull. Defenceless Hrungnir meanwhile fell to Þórr’s hammer, toppling over so that his leg lay over the god’s neck, trapping him. Þjálfi polished off Mökkurkálfi with little difficulty. But it proved impossible to shift the giant’s body from the prostate Þórr, until along came Magni, Þórr’s three-year-old son with the giantess Jarnsaxa. Magni easily heaved the limb off his trapped father, and regretted that he’d missed the fight, ‘for I’d have had the giant away into Hel with my fists if I’d met him’. Getting the whetstone fragment out of Þórr’s head was no easy task. Þórr asked a seeress to help sing the stone out, but as she was chanting he happened to mention that he’d given her husband Aurvandill a lift over the poisonous rivers to the north. His toe had frozen off in the cold and Þórr had tossed it up in the sky to become the morning-star. This news was so exciting that Gróa, the seeress, completely forgot her spells, and the stone fragment remains in Þórr’s skull to this day.

  Many of the major myths, then, show giants and gods battling for possession over treasures which symbolize mastery over some aspect of culture. Mostly the gods come out on top, but the giants too have their victories and there’s a disquieting sense that one day – the day of ragnarök – they will have the advantage. Loki is their inside man, occupying a strangely liminal space between gods and giants. His history (what we know of it) and his role, until the onset of the events heralding ragnarök, follows below.

  NEITHER ONE THING NOR THE OTHER

  Loki is a disturbing and tantalizing figure in the divine pantheon. There is no evidence that he was ever worshipped (the cunning choose Óðinn as their patron) and he does not give his name to farms, hills or other landscape features. He’s said to be the son of Laufey and Fárbauti, a goddess and perhaps a giant. If his father were a giant it would explain both his transgressive nature (such relationships are normally forbidden) and his split loyalties. Loki is counted among the gods; he has sworn blood-brotherhood with Óðinn and, although he takes many oaths lightly, Óðinn never discounts this tie. Loki is among the Æsir early in their history, helping them wriggle out of the bargain with the master-builder, and setting out on journeys with Óðinn and Hœnir to see what is happening in the world. His impulsive behaviour on one such expedition, as seen above, led to his betrayal of Iðunn to Þjazi; in Chapter 4 we’ll see how his casually shying a stone at a dozing otter triggers a long chain of disasters.

  Loki’s ambiguousness extends to shape-shifting and gender-bending. Mating with Svaðilfari, the master-builder’s horse, caused him to give birth to Sleipnir, the best of horses. According to a mysterious sequence in Hyndluljóð (Hyndla’s Song):

  Loki ate some heart, roasted on a linden-wood fire,

  a woman’s thought-stone that he found half-singed;

  Loptr was impregnated by a wicked woman,

  from whom every ogress on earth is descended.

  HYNDLA’S SONG, V. 41

  Loptr is another name for Loki; here he becomes part of the genealogy of all the giantesses by perversely incorporating a female heart inside himself. Hyndla’s Song is one of the few surviving poems to feature Freyja; she rides, apparently on her brother’s golden boar, to visit the giantess Hyndla (Little Dog) to ask her a series of questions about origins and lineages. The boar-mount is in fact Freyja’s protégé (and likely her lover) Óttarr, who needs to be able to recite his own lineage in order to claim his inheritance. Although Hyndla is reluctant to help Freyja (and exchanges some pithy insults with her), she warms to the task and imparts more information than Óttarr strictly needs – including Loki’s pregnancy as the origin of ogresses. The poem ends with Hyndla’s ill-natured cursing and Freyja’s triumphant assertion that Óttarr now has enough information to contend against his rival, a certain Angantýr, for the inheritance.

  LOKI’S CHILDREN

  Loki has two sons by his wife Sigyn, variously named Váli (though that this son should share a name with Óðinn’s late-born avenger of Baldr seems unlikely) or Nari and Narfi. Their fates are discussed in Chapter 6. Outside wedlock, however, he fathers three children with the giantess Angrboða. These are Fenrir the wolf, the Miðgarðs-serpent and Hel, the goddess of death. The monstrous offspring strike alarm into the gods. The Miðgarðs-serpent is cast out into the ocean where it lies with its tail in its mouth. Hel, with a face that is half corpse-blue, half a healthy human pink, is given the realm of Niflheimr (Mist-world) to rule over: the place where the unheroic dead (women, children and those who do not die in battle) go.

  The Miðgarðs-serpent, Fenrir and Hel: the children of Loki. Willy Pogany (1920).

  Fenrir the wolf is reared in Ásgarðr, but he is soon eating the gods out of house and home and it is decreed that he must be chained up. The gods cannot find a fetter strong enough to bind him, and after several failed attempts, which amuse Fenrir hugely, they make a pact with the dwarfs to make a magical chain. Forged from six things – some impossible: as a cat’s footfall-sound, a woman’s beard, a mountain’s roots, a fish’s breath; and some more ordinary: a bear’s sinews and a bird’s spittle – the bond was soft, silky and smooth. Fenrir smelled something fishy about this seemingly harmless ribbon and demanded a pledge that the gods would release him from the fetter if he could not break it. As the gods hesitated, Týr bravely stepped up to place his right hand in the beast’s mouth. The fetter was wound about the wolf’s paws and it hardened into iron as the beast struggled against it. Then, says Snorri, ‘Everyone laughed – except Týr. He lost his hand.’ Fenrir w
as imprisoned in a cave and a sword was stuck between upper and lower jaws as a prop so that his mouth must always gape open. Slaver runs from his jaws, forming one of the mighty rivers of the Other World, and there he waits for the end of Time, the coming of ragnarök.

  Fenrir bound. From an eighteenth-century Icelandic manuscript.

  Loki’s Monstrous Offspring

  Loki’s children represent the metaphysical limitations of the created world. Fenrir figures the forces of Time; his kin lope through the sky in the tracks of the sun and moon, tongues lolling and jaws agape. On that great day, they will swallow up the heavenly bodies entirely. The Miðgarðs-serpent marks the outer edge of the known seas; also called the All-Lands-Girdler, it holds the world together within its closed circle. And Hel, the personification of Death, is, as we’ll see later, a hospitable hostess, welcoming the dead to her hall from which they can never depart. She is the archetype of all those desiring and alluring female fate-figures whom we saw in Chapter 2, waiting to welcome men into their eternal embrace.