Fenja and Menja: The Workers at Grótti

“King Frode had the maid-servants led to the mill, and requested them to grind for him gold and peace, and Frode’s happiness. Then he gave them no longer time to rest or sleep than while the cuckoo was silent or while they sang a song.”

“Mysing took with him Grotte, and also Fenja and Menja, and bade them grind salt, and in the middle of the night they asked Mysing whether he did not have salt enough. He bade them grind more. They ground only a short time longer before the ship sank.”

In Skáldskaparmál, Anderson’s translation, King Fróði of Denmark buys two large, strong bondwomen, Fenja and Menja, from the king of Svíþjóð. Two millstones have been found in Denmark so large that no one can turn them, and the mill, Grótti, grinds whatever its miller asks. Fróði sets the women to grind gold, peace and happiness, and gives them rest only while the cuckoo is silent or a song is sung. The labour is forced, and the song they sing is a protest against it.

Before they end the song, Snorri says, they have ground out a host against Fróði, and that night the sea-king Mýsingr comes and kills him. Mýsingr takes the mill and the women and orders them to grind salt, and his ship sinks. A whirlpool forms where the sea runs into the mill’s eye, and Snorri adds that this is how the sea became salt.

The song printed by Anderson as the Grottesong has the two women say that giants fostered them, and it blames Fróði for not asking about their descent when he bought them for their strength and fair faces. In Skáldskaparmál the tale also explains why gold is called Fróði’s meal, a poetic name for gold.

No text cited here places the mill in Jötunheimr, though the women are of giant kin. Fróði’s reign is described as a time of peace in which a gold ring could lie long on Jalanger’s heath, and it ends the night he dies. Anderson’s notes compare the tale with later folk stories about why the sea is salt.