Þrymr: The Giant Who Demanded a Bride

9. “I have Hlorridi’s hammer hidden eight rasts beneath the earth; it shall no man get again, unless he bring me Freyia to wife.”

31. Then said Thrym, the Thursar’s lord: “Bring the hammer in, the bride to consecrate; lay Miollnir on the maiden’s knee; unite us each with other by the hand of Vor.”

32. Laughed Hlorridi’s soul in his breast, when the fierce-hearted his hammer recognized. He first slew Thrym, the Thursar’s lord, and the Jotun’s race all crushed;

Þrymskviða opens with Thor waking to find his hammer gone. Loki borrows Freyja’s feather garment and flies into the giants’ land, where Þrymr sits on a mound plaiting gold bands for his dogs. He admits he has the hammer hidden eight rasts beneath the earth and will return it only if Freyja is brought to him as his wife. Freyja refuses in a rage, and the gods take counsel. Heimdallr advises dressing Thor as the bride, with the Brisinga necklace, keys and a coif, and Loki goes along as the maid.

Þrymr orders the benches decked and cattle brought. The bride eats an ox, eight salmon and three measures of mead, and the maid explains away the hunger and the burning eyes. Þrymr calls for the hammer to be laid on the bride’s knee to hallow the wedding. Thor seizes it and kills Þrymr and his kin.

Þrymr is called lord of the Thursar, a poetic word for giants. The poem sets his seat in the giants’ land that Loki flies into and names no hall for it. He is a different giant from Þjazi, and his name should not be confused with Þrymheimr, the home of Þjazi, which has its own entry.

The poem is unusual in its humour: the strongest of the gods is dressed as a bride, and Loki appears as a helper at his side. In Thorpe’s stanza 19 Loki warns that the giants will take over Ásgarðr unless the hammer is recovered, which shows what the theft puts at stake. In stanza 23 Þrymr calls Freyja Njörðr’s daughter, from Nóatún.