Gróa: The Healer Who Nearly Helped Thor

“Then came the vala whose name is Groa, the wife of Orvandel the Bold. She sang her magic songs over Thor until the flint-stone became loose.”

“So he related to her how he had waded from the north over the Elivogs rivers, and had borne in a basket on his back Orvandel from Jotunheim; and in evidence of this he told her how that one toe of his had protruded from the basket and had frozen, wherefore Thor had broken it off and had cast it up into the sky, and made of it the star which is called Orvandel’s toe.”

“But Groa became so glad that she forgot her magic songs, and so the flint-stone became no looser than it was, and it sticks fast in Thor’s head yet.”

In Skáldskaparmál, as Anderson translates it, Thor kills the giant Hrungnir, but a piece of Hrungnir’s whetstone, which Anderson calls a flint-stone, stays lodged in his head. He goes home to Þrúðvangr, where the seeress Gróa, wife of Aurvandill, sings spells over him until the stone starts to loosen.

Wanting to reward her, Thor tells her how he carried Aurvandill from Jötunheimr in a basket over the Élivágar rivers. One of Aurvandill’s toes stuck out and froze, so Thor broke it off and threw it into the sky, where it became a star. He adds that Aurvandill will soon be home. Gróa is so glad that she forgets her spells, and the stone stays in Thor’s head. The text gives this as the reason nobody should throw a stone across a floor.

The translation used here calls Gróa a vala, a seeress, and gives her husband’s name as Orvandel, written Aurvandill or Örvandill in Old Norse. The star made from his toe is called Orvandel’s toe in that translation.

A figure named Gróa also appears in Grógaldr, a poem of the Elder Edda, where a son wakes his dead mother, Gróa, to ask for protective spells. That is a separate literary figure, and the texts do not make the two women one person.