Leeds Studies in Englishtango.bol.ucla.edu/nord_myth/gods_giants-readings.pdf · The vertical model...

Leeds Studies in English

Article:

Margaret Clunies Ross, 'Two of Þórr's Great Fights according toHymiskviða', Leeds Studies in English, n.s. 20 (1989), 7-27

Permanent URL:https://ludos.leeds.ac.uk:443/R/-?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=123693&silo_library=GEN01

Leeds Studies in EnglishSchool of EnglishUniversity of Leeds

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/lse

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


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 4t0) 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 4t0), 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 fire-giants 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


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 of porr'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


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 myth-type 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 30-31).

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 Leyen24 and von Sydow,25 observed the close connexions between Hymiskvida

13


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., D2-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


Table 1 — HymiskviSa's Wondertale Syntagm

Strophes Summary Description Function Comments

1-2

[4-5]

4-6

10-14

[The Initial Situation in AsgarSr.]

Lack of a Brewing Cauldron.

JEgti despatches porr to fetch Cauldron.

[Gods are ignorant of whereabouts of cauldron. Tyr supplies information that Hymir owns it.]

p<5rr and Tyr accept their mission to obtain cauldron from Hymir.

porr and Tyr depart from AsgarSr [leaving their goats with farmer Egill].

The heroes journey to gianUand.

The heroes are presumably interrogated by the two women at Hymir's house.

The beautiful woman offers help to the heroes and hides them from Hymir's shattering glance.

Hymir returns home from hunting and discovers his natural enemy, p6rr, there, together with his own son, Tyr.

Aa-VniLack.

B2-JX The Hero is despatched.

C-X Beginning of counter-action.

t-XI Departure.

G-XV Journey.

D2-XU First Function of the Provider.

[E-XHI The Hero's Reaction.]

F^-XIV Help Received.

[The Preparatory Part of the syntagm is missing.]

jEgir's motive is given as vengeance (3/3) , not a wondertale motive, but nevertheless he func t ions as Mandateur.

[Not part of wondertale syntagm.]

[Egill material is not part of wondertale syntagm.]

This function is out of its normal place in the syntagm.

Hymir's beautiful lover, who is also Tyr's mother (8/8), acts as Provider.

c.f. strophe 30.

D i f f i cu l t to accommodate to syntagm; at some point, heroes should state their request for cauldron before Hymir subjects them to tests.

15



14-16

16-18

18-19

20

21-24

26-27

28-29

30

31

32

Ordeal by food and drink.

p6rr eats two oxen supplied from Hymir's herd.

porr must find suitable bait for fishing expedition.

porr gets a bull's head from Hymir's herd.

Hymir tests p6rr's strength at rowing far out to sea.

p6rr outrows Hymir.

Fishing competition: Hymir catches two whales but pdrr hooks MiSgarSsormr.

Hymir subjects porr to the test of carrying the boat and its contents home.

porr does so.

p6rr subjected to apparent test of strength: break glass goblet.

He fails to break it.

Hymir's mistress tells p(3rr to break the goblet against Hymir's skull.

p6rr breaks the goblet against Hymir's skull.

Hymir agrees to surrender cauldron,

M-XXV Difficult Task.

N-XXVITask accomplished.

M

N

M

N

M N

M

N

M

N-

Here follows the paired functions M-N, 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.

F^-XIV Help received.

N+

[Request and promise are nowhere stated.]

16



33-34

35-36

[37-38]

39

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.

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).

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 26-31.]

K-XIX Reparation assimilated to F, Magic Object Received.

17


Themes and Paradigms in HymiskviSa — towards a reinterpretation of myth

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 self-conscious 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


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 lava-whales' (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 many-headed 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


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 Levi-Straussian 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


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


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


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.

1 0 E. Meletinskij, 'Scandinavian Mythology as a System', Journal of Symbolic Anthropology, 1-2 (1973), 43-58 and 57-78.

24


1 1 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. Turville-Petre, 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


2 0 Jens Peter Schj0dt, 'Livsdrik og Vidensdrik. Et problemkompleks i nordisk mytologi', Religonsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift, 2 (1983), 85-102.

2 1 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.

2 2 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.

2 3 Vladimir Propp, The Morphology of the Folktale, translated by L. Scott, second edition (Austin and London, 1968).

2 4 Friedrich von der Leyen, Das Mdrchen in den Gottersagen der Edda (Berlin, 1899).

2^ C. W. von Sydow, 'Jatten Hymes bagare', Danske Studier (Copenhagen, 1915), pp. 113-50.

2 6 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.

2 7 John Lindow, 'HreiSars )>£ttr heimska and AT 326. An Old Icelandic Novella and an International Folktale', Arv, 34 (1978), 152-79.

2 8 Joseph Harris, 'The Masterbuilder Tale in Snorri's Edda and Two Sagas', Arkiv for nordisk filologi, 91 (1976), 66-101.

2 9 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.

3 0 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


3 1 Rudolf Meissner, Die Kenningar der Skalden. Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik (Bonn and Leipzig, 1921), pp. 126-29.

3 2 See Georges Devereux, 'Consid6rations psychanalytiques sur la divination', in La Divination, edited by A. Caquot and M. Leibovici (Paris, 1968), II, 449-71.

3 3 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

7KRUV��KDPDUU�$XWKRU�V��-RKQ�/LQGRZ5HYLHZHG�ZRUN�V��6RXUFH��7KH�-RXUQDO�RI�(QJOLVK�DQG�*HUPDQLF�3KLORORJ\��9RO��1R��2FW��SS��3XEOLVKHG�E\��University of Illinois Press6WDEOH�85/��http://www.jstor.org/stable/27711059 .$FFHVVHG��

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of Illinois Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journalof English and Germanic Philology.

http://www.jstor.org

Thors hamarr

John Lindow, University of California at Berkeley

Despite its reputation for unfettered violence, Old Norse mythology arms only the three major gods, and although their weapons are great treasures, they hardly seem to be ordinary ones. Odin, the chief 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

him to go to Giantland to woo Ger?r. Freyr was therefore apparently weaponless when he killed Beli and definitely so when he faced Surtr at Ragnarpk.1 Like Odin's spear, then, Freyr's sword was never used

as an ordinary weapon. Thor, the third major god according to the order of the gods' appearance at Ragnarpk and in the arrangement of their poems in Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda?although Snorri lists him first after Odin among the sir, and scholars are unanimous in regarding Thor as the most worshipped god of the later Viking

Age?fights with his hammer. Unlike Odin's spear and Freyr's sword, weapons used in unusual ways, Thor's hammer is a somewhat unusual

object?a tool?used as a weapon. This tool is the most valuable and famous weapon in the mythology.

Indeed, according to the myth of its origin as recounted in Sk?ldskap arm?l in Snorri Sturluson's Edda, the gods judged it the best object of the six created by dwarfs at Loki's behest: Sif's hair; Freyr's ship Ski?bla?nir, which always has a fair wind and can be folded up like a

hanky and put in one's pocket; and Odin's spear Gungnir?these ob

jects were made by the sons of Ivaldi?and Odin's self-replicating ring Draupnir, Freyr's boar Gullinborsti, and Thor's hammer?these three

made by another dwarf, Sindri, as a wager with Loki that he could

surpass the craftsmanship displayed in the first three. While Sindri

1 When Snorri has Gangleri marvel at Freyr's willingness to give up his weapon, he

may be expressing a thirteenth-century chieftain's disdain for the fertility god, a disdain which may appear in an insult directed to Sturla Sighvatsson at Snorri's instigation during incidents reported in Sturlunga saga, the compilation of contemporary sagas from thirteenth-century Iceland: Gu?run Nordal, "Freyr fifldur," Skirnir, 166 (1992), 271-94

Journal of English and Germanic Philology?October ? 1994 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

486 Lindow

was forging the hammer, and his brother Brokkr was manning the bellows, Loki took on the form of a fly and bit Brokkr so fiercely between the eyes that blood blinded him and he stopped fanning the flames for just a moment; this delay, Sindri said, might have spoiled everything.

Here is what Snorri wrote about Sindri's presentation of the ham mer and its characteristics.

P? gaf hann Por hamarinn ok sag?i, at hann myndi mega lj?sta sv? st?rt sem hann vildi, hvat sem fyrir vaeri, at eigi myndi hamarrinn bila, ok ef

hann yrpi honum til, Ip? myndi hann aldri missa ok aldri flj?ga sv? langt, at eigi myndi hann s kja heim hpnd, ok ef ]3at vildi, Ip? var hann sv?

l?till, at hafa m?tti ? serk ser; en pat var lyti ?, at forskeptit var heldr skamt. Pat var d?mr ]3eira, at hamarrinn var beztr af pllum gripunum

ok mest vprn ? fyrir hrimj)ursum.2

Then he gave the hammer to Thor and said that he could hit as hard as

he wanted with it, whatever might be before him, and the hammer would not fail; and if he threw it at something, then he would never lose

it, or throw it so far that it would not come back to his hand; and if he desired it, then it would become so small that he might have it in his

shirt; but there was this flaw in it: the handle was rather short. It was the

judgment of the gods that the hammer was the best of all the precious objects and the greatest defense was in it against the frost giants.

Since no text shows the hammer functioning as a boomerang or

shrinking to fit in a pocket,3 we may perhaps assume that Snorri added these details to glorify the hammer, although I find myself suspecting Snorri's rational sense here?he explains how Thor got his hammer back after throwing it and perhaps too why there were min iature hammers that humans could wear. The flaw of the short ham

mer, however, is mythologically entirely appropriate, for each of the

major gods is endowed with some flaw: Odin lacks an eye, Tyr a hand, Freyr a sword, and so forth. The flaw serves apparently to intensify the god's power in some particularly relevant realm: Odin sees the

future, Tyr is extraordinarily bold (Snorri) or deeply implicated in

2 Snorri Sturluson: Edda, ed. Finnur J?nsson (abbreviated in the text as SnE) (Copen hagen: G. E. C. Gad, 1926), p. 99. My translation, as throughout;

3 A possible exception is the inscription on a runic amulet from Oland, Sweden, in which Bruce E. Nilsson reads the following lines: Porr g ti hans meR pceim hamri sam ur

hafi kam, flo fran illu 'May Thor protect him [seil. Bove, to whom the inscription is ap parently addressed] with that hammer which came from the sea, (and which) fled from evil': "The Runic 'Fish-Amulet' from ?land: A Solution," Mediaeval Scandinavia, 9 (1976), 236-45, this quotation pp. 238-39. Nilsson explains this otherwise unparal leled expression as a reflection of the hammer's boomerang-like return from the bot tom of the sea, and the evil that lurks there, after Thor flung it at the Midgard serpent on his famous fishing expedition.

Thors hamarr 487

torts and contracts (Dum?zil),4 Freyr's sexual potency is so great that he can obtain a spouse from among the giants. Indeed, creation itself

was flawed, for one giant escaped the primordial flood, but this too was ultimately beneficial, for it gave rise to the entire cycle of the

mythology with its cleansing renewal at Ragnarpk. Thor's hammer has a short handle, and it is hard to imagine anything more effective in his hands. Perhaps, too, the hammer is flawed insofar as it falls into the hands of the giants (Prymskvi?a) or must be left behind when the

god undertakes a dangerous expedition (journey to Geirr0?r). Snorri uses the verb Ij?sta to say what the hammer can do. Unlike

hnj?da, the technical term used of hammers, this verb refers properly to blows struck, very often in anger (and impersonally for the onset of natural phenomena, such as storms and darkness; the metaphor here parallels English expressions such as "the storm struck"). The blows may be struck with the fist or with a weapon or some other

object. Thus Snorri makes it clear that the hammer is to be a weapon, and he ends by saying that it provided a strong defense against the frost giants, powers of chaos.

And indeed it did. With it Thor killed countless giants. In a duel with Hrungnir, the strongest giant, Thor cast the hammer through the whetstone hurled by his opponent and broke the whetstone to

pieces; the hammer killed Hrungnir. In his other famous duel, Thor

flung the hammer at the Midgard serpent, impaled on a fishing line and hauled up from the remote depths of the sea, and may have killed him?this according to those who read the myth against Indo

European analogues?or may not have; the best mythographers and

mythologers, like Snorri or Preben Meulengracht S0rensen,5 accept that both are possibilities. Thor killed the giant masterbuilder of As

gard with his hammer, and he also used it to kill groups of giants, as at the end of the poem Prymskvi?a; and by raising it aloft and threat

ening Loki with it, he stopped the uninvited trickster's muckraking at

^Egir's hall in Lokasenna.

4 From among Georges Dum?zil's extensive works on this point, the most important for Germanic remains the chapter on "Magic, War, and Justice" in his Gods of the Ancient

Northmen, UCLA Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology, Publi cations, 3 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1973), pp. 26?48. See further C. Scott Littleton, The New Comparative Mythology: An Anthropological Assessment

of the Theories of Georges Dum?zil, 3d. ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1982), esp. pp. 63-67. 5 Preben Meulengracht S0rensen, "Thor's Fishing Expedition," in Words and Objects: Towards a Dialogue between Archaeology and History of Religion, ed. Gro Steinsland, Insti tute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, Oslo, Skrifter 6:71 (Oslo etc.: Nor

wegian Univ. Press, 1986), 257 ?

78.

488 Lindow

There is no doubt, then, that Thor's hammer functioned primarily as a weapon, a weapon used against the other major group of players in the mythology, the jptnar or giants as they are usually called inclu

sively. In this he follows his Indo-European structural cognates, such as Zeus, who killed the titans with a bolt of lightning, or Indra, who used the same weapon to split the head of the vrtra. These parallels accord with the standard etymology for Mjpllnir,6 which regards the name as cognate to or a loan from forms such as Russian m?lniya

'lightning' (and cf. Latvian milna, the hammer of the thunder god Perkun), and with Axel Kock's suggestion of a relationship with Norse

mjgll 'dry new snow,' modern Icelandic mjalli 'white color,' leading to "the gleaming lightning weapon."7 A relationship with the verb

mala 'grind' has also been suggested,8 which would accord less well with the Indo-European parallels but might make sense insofar as Thor crushes his giant opponents. The meteorological associations of the verb Ijosta would, however, accord splendidly with the standard

etymologies. A bolt of lightning is a natural phenomenon, not a tool, however it

is tamed in a mythology, and the difficulty of this parallel may be further underscored by drawing in the boomerang-like stone pos sessed, according to de Vries,9 by the Dagda in Irish tradition; if it exists (I have been unable to locate it), it too derives directly from the realm of nature and has not been fashioned by the hand of man.

This is not to deny an indirect cultural function to the thunder

weapon of Indo-European gods, insofar as it was thought to send the rain that promoted the growth of crops (itself the subject of numer ous rituals, and clearly the focus of, for example, the Baltic thunder

gods);10 but again the primary register is natural, not cultural. It is in this light that we should probably regard the nonviolent functions of

Thor's hammer in the mythology: the giving of new life to his slaugh

6 Jan de Vries, Altnordisches etymologisches W?rterbuch, 2d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1962),

s. v. Mjpllnir. 7 Axel Kock, "Etymologisch-mythologische Untersuchungen," Indogermanische For

schungen, 10(1899), 110?11. 8 Olof Hellquist, Svensk etymologisk ordbok, 3d ed. (Lund: Gleerup, 1966), s. v. Mjol

(l)ner. In the most recent general treatment, Edgar C. Polom? accepts both etymologies as possibilities: Edgar C. Polom?, "Thor," Encyclopedia of Religion, 14 (1987), 492.

9 Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 11: Die G?tter?Vorstellungen ?ber den

Kosmos?Der Untergang des Heidentums, 3d ed., Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, 12:2 (Berlin: W. de Cxruyter, 1970), p. 127.

10 See, for example, Haralds Biezais, Die himmlische G?tterfamilie der alten Letten, His toria Religionum, 5 (Uppsala and Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1972), pp. 92-179;

Biezais, "P?rkons," Encyclopedia of Religion, 11 (1987), 246-47.

Thor's hamarr 489

tered and eaten goats, as reported in the tale of Thor's journey to

Utgar?a-Loki; the hallowing of the bride, as reported in Prymskvi?a; the blessing of the dead Baldr's funeral pyre, as reported in Gylfaginn ing (not to mention the possible phallic aspects of the hammer, iden tified as early as 1855 by Mannhardt).11 Here too, perhaps, belong the little amulets known as "Thor's hammers," of which about 50 ex

amples, mostly made of silver, are known from much of Scandinavia from the end of the Viking Age. These were apparently meant to be

worn attached to one's clothing or hung about the neck, and are un

derstood as conferring protective powers to the wearer. More gener

ally, they are read as reactions to the Christian cross; that they hang upside down (when compared to a cross) could be read as an inversion of the Christian symbol. However, the existence of an earlier group of some 400 or so miniature hammers, virtually all of them in iron and attached to iron neck rings (the so-called "Thor's hammer rings") from the earlier Viking Age, especially Sweden, makes it seem far less

likely that the symbol owes its existence to the cross, even if it grew to be an anti-cross during the end of paganism.12 This older group of Thor's hammers (if that is what they are) is closely associated with cremation and to a lesser extent inhumation burials, whereas the later

group, perhaps because of its use of the more expensive silver, is con

nected with hoards which may have had a votive purpose. Since, in

any case, the earliest of the iron hammers and rings antedates the

Viking Age (it is from the Valsg?rde grave field and has been dated to ca. 750),13 it is plain that Thor's hammers had a long history throughout the Viking Age. That this history may have been far

longer is suggested by the hammers with which some figures are

11 Wilhelm Mannhardt, "Fr?-Donar," Zeitschrift f?r deutsche Mythologie und Sitten kunde, 3 (1855), 86?107.

12 Krister Str?m, "Torshamrar," Kulturhistoriskt lexikonf?r nordisk medeltid, 18 (1974), 503-06; Str?m, "Thorshammerringe und andere Gegenst?nde des heidnischen Kults," in Systematische Analysen der Gr?berfunde, ed. Greta Arwidsson, Birka: Untersu

chungen und Studien, 2 : 1 (Stockholm: Kungliga vitterhets historie och antikvitets akademien / Almqvist & Wiksell, 1984), pp. 127-40. Another piece of evidence for the "anti-cross," namely the Eyarland (Iceland) bronze image of a seated figure holding an inverted cross or hammer, long regarded as portraying Thor and his hammer, prob ably postdates the conversion to Christianity and may well have nothing to do with that

deity: Kristj?n Eldj?rn, "The Bronze Image from Eyarland," in Specvlvm Norroenum: Norse Studies in Memory of Gabriel Turville-Petre, ed. Ursula Dronke, Gu?run P. Helga d?ttir, Gerd Wolfgang Weber, and Hans Bekker-Nielsen (n.p.: Odense Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 73-84. 13 Greta Arwidsson, Valsg?rde 6, Die Gr?berfunde von Valsg?rde, 1, Acta Musei An

tiquitatum Septentrionalium Regiae Universitatis Upsaliensis, 1 (Uppsala and Stock holm: Almqvist 8c Wiksell, 1942).

490 Lindow

equipped in the Bronze Age rock carvings and by certain expressions from more recent times, such as the reference in the Gifterm?lsbalk (provisions for weddings and marriage) of the Old Swedish ?stg?ta lagen to the hamar siangf4 The expression refers to a gift of linens for the bridal bed and might therefore be understood in light of the

power of Thor's hammer to bless bridal couples implied by the end of Prymskvida.]5 Later Swedish popular customs, such as placing a

large long-handled hammer in the bridal bed, have also been adduced in this context,16 and if the entire complex is indeed accepted as a unified whole, Thor only borrowed his hammer from a tradition of

amazing longevity, to which he returned it when people no longer believed in him. He also, according to the older standard view,17 lent it (along with himself) to the Saamis, who knew of a divine Horagalles (< p?rrkarl; also Tiermes/Diermes), whom they portrayed on drums and other votive objects with a hammer?sometimes, indeed, with a hammer in each hand.18 That this long-lived hammer assured more

14 D. H. S. Collin and D. G. J. Schlyter, eds., ?stg?ta-lagen: Codex Iuris Ostrogotici. . . ,

Corpus Iuris Sueo-Gotorum Antiqui, S?mling afSweriges^amla lagar (Stockholm: P. A.

Norstedt, 1830), p. 111. Translation and commentary in Ake Holmb?ck and Elias Wes

sen, ?stg?talagen och Upplandslagen, 2d. ed., Svenska landskapslagar tolkade och f?rklarade f?r nutidens svenskar (Stockholm: AWE/Geber, 1979), p. 112, 122.

15 This understanding may be problematic: The bridal bed in question is that of two

slaves, and what the law says is that the dowry shall be two kinds of pillows. Neither of these is a bolster, to which a free woman was entitled, and this seems to mean that the slave bride slept on a harder bed; cf. Collin and Schlyter, ?stg?ta-lagen, p. 288. Holm back and Wessen, ?stg?talagen och Upplandslagen, p. 112, translate the term as stens?ng 'stone bed.'

16 For example, Eric Elgqvist, "Brudhammare och hammers?ng," Folkminnen och

folktankar, 21 (1934), 1-19. 17 This view, which saw large amounts of borrowing on the part of the Saamis, has

lately been meeting with increasing scepticism. See, for examples, the essays gathered in Tore Ahlb?ck, ed., Saami Religion: Based on Papers Read at the Symposium on Saami

Religion Held at Abo, Finland, on the i6th?i8th of August 1984, Scripta Instituti Donneri ani Aboensis, 12 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell [distr.], 1987), and in Ahlb?ck and

Jan Bergman, eds., The Saami Shaman Drum: Based on Papers Read at the Symposium on the Saami Shaman Drum Held at Abo, Finland, on the 19th?20th of August 1988, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, 14 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell [distr.], 1991). Axel Olrik's

arguments for extensive Nordic borrowings in Saami pre-Christian religion were spe cifically repudiated by 0ysteinn Johansen, "Nordiske Ian i f0r-kristen samisk religion?" Viking, 46 (1982), 124-37, who however admitted that Thor might have had some influence. Hakan Rydving, "Scandinavian-Saami Religious Connections in the History

of Research," in Old Norse and Finnish Religions and Cultic Place Names: Based on Papers Read at the Symposium on Encounters between Religions in Old Nordic Times and on Cultic Place-Names Held at Abo, Finland, on the 19th?21st of August, 1987, ed. Tore Ahlb?ck,

Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, 13 (Stockholm: Almqvist 8c Wiksell [distr.], 1990), 358-73, offers a general assessment.

18 Axel Olrik, "Nordisk og lappisk gudsdyrkelse," Danske studier, 2 (1905), 39 ?

57; Helge Ljungberg, Tor: Unders?kningar 1 indoeuropeisk och nordisk religionshistoria, 1: Den

Thors hamarr 491

than fertility is indicated by the more recent Icelandic evidence, which indicates that a hammer of Thor might be erected as a boundary

marker?a custom going back to the settlement19?or used to locate

a thief. Whether or not continuity connects Thor's hammer with ancient

rock carvings and with peasants marrying, marking boundaries, or

tracking thieves, it is a fact that the hammer was the only attribute of the Norse gods to be crafted by human beings. No golden hair of Sif

was deposited in a hoard, no miniature Gungnir or SkiSbla?nir was worn by people and buried with them. Thor's hammer is thus unique in at least two ways: mythologically, because it is a tool used as a

weapon, and archaeologically, because it is the only retained divine

symbol. Furthermore, it is unique in the linguistic record, for in Old Norse the word hamarr in the sense 'hammer' shows a remarkable

tendency to refer mostly to the hammer of Thor, as will be docu mented below.

First, however, it is worth pointing out that hamarr had another common meaning in the old language, namely "rock, ridge," or "out

crop," and one's sense that this is the more usual meaning is con

firmed by its initial placement in the entries on hamarr in the various dictionaries, even if "hammer" is the primary sense in cognates of the word attested in the other Germanic languages. The connection be tween the two meanings must be, as Kluge and Mitzka state explicitly, that the first hammers were made of stone.20 Whether or not this is so, the dual meaning of the term, or, put another way, the existence

of the two homonyms, afforded a possibility for punning. This pos sibility has long been recognized, since it was used in a verse ascribed to Grettir and located in Chap. 16 of Grettis saga. Grettir has just killed the h?skarl Skeggi, by grabbing Skeggi's ax in mid-stroke, breaking off the (metal) top part from the (wooden) shaft, and sinking it into Skeg

nordiska ?skguden och besl?ktade indoeuropeiska gudar; den nordiska ?skguden i bild och myt, Uppsala Universitets ?rsskrift 1947:9 (Uppsala: A. B. Lundequistska bokhandeln;

Leipzig: O. Harrassowitz, 1947), pp. 48-52, 135-45; Ernst Manker, Die lappische Zau bertrommel: Eine ethnologische monographie, 11: Die Trommel als Urkunde geistigen Lebens, Nordiska Mus?et: Acta Lapponica, 6 (Stockholm: H. Geber, 1950), pp. 68-73. 19

Dag Str?mb?ck, "Att helga land: Studier i Landn?ma och det ?ldsta rituella besitt

ningstagandet," Festskrift till?gnad Axel H?gerstr?m den 6 September 1928 av filosofiska och

juridiska f?reningarna i Uppsala (Uppsala and Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1928), pp. 198

? 220; rpt. in his Folklore ochfilologi: Valda uppsatser utgivna av kungl. Gustav Adolfs akademien 13.8.1970, Skrifter utgivna av kungliga Gustav Adolfs akademien, 48 (Upp sala: kungliga Gustav Adolfs akademien), pp. 135-65. 20 Friedrich Kluge and Walter Mitzka, Etymologisches W?rterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 20th ed. (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1967), s.v. Hammer.

492 Lindow

gi's head. When people ask whether Grettir knows anything about

Skeggi's whereabouts, he replies with a verse.21

Hygg ek at hlj?p til Skeggja hamar-trpll me? fpr ramri, bl?Os var ? grpn Gri?i gr?Sr, fyr stundu ?Oan, s? gein of haus h?num

har?mynt ok litt spar?i (var ek hj? vi?reign J^eira)

v?gtenn, er klauf enni.

(I think that a hammer-troll leapt at Skeggi with a powerful attack a

short while ago; a hunger for blood was on the lip of the Gri?r of battle; she yawned fiercely over his skull and little spared her battle-teeth when she split his forehead; I was present at their encounter.)

What Grettir seems to say is that a giantess (a troll of the hamarr 'rock') killed Skeggi, but what he means is that an ax (a troll of the hamarr 'hammer,' i.e., in this case, the top part of an entire hammer) did

the job. Given the existence of this obvious and deliberate pun, we may

may infer a kind of continual pun for Thor's hamarr, which was pri marily an ordinary tool but which could if circumstances allowed be

imagined to be as large as a prominent part of the landscape, that other hamarr; this pun would be particularly appropriate when Thor's

physical size was stressed. Such a pun would especially inform Thor's battles with the jptnar, not least when their size too was emphasized, as was the case, for example, with Hrungnir or the Midgard serpent. It seems not unlikely, for example, that Snorri played with the dual

meanings in the Utgar?a-Loki episode of Gylfaginning. When Thor attacks Utgar?a-Loki on the way to the latter's hall, Snorri makes it clear that Thor's weapon is the tool (SnE, p. 47), "hann ser, at hamars

mu?Yinn s0kkr dj?pt ? hpfu?it . . . s0kkr p? hamarrinn upp at

skaptinu . . ." ("he sees, that the hammer's 'mouth' sinks deeply into

the head [of Skrymir] . . . thereafter the hammer sinks in up to the

shaft"). Later when ?tgar?a-Loki is explaining the sj?nhverfingar he

employed, he points out that the tracks of Thor's hammer (hamarspor) match three valleys, one for each blow (SnE, p. 53). Each of these

21 The text and translation follow Finnur J?nsson, Den norsk-islandske skjaldedigtning (hereafter Skj in the text) (Copenhagen: Gyldendal?Nordisk forlag, 1912-15), BII,

464. Gu?ni J?nsson, ed., Grettis saga Asmundarsonar, Islenzk fornrit, 7 (Reykjavik, 1936), p. 47, chooses gunnar instead of grpn in line 3 (the manuscript forms vary) and

constructs the reading "blood-hunger was on the ax (? Gri?i gunnar, lit. 'on the giantess of battle').

Thors hamarr 493

valleys is four-sided (like the top part of a hammer), which indicates that Snorri is still thinking primarily of the hammer as a tool. The existence of the homonym, however, means that the hamarr 'hammer'

creates in the earth a valley, a physical feature that often sits below a hamarr 'ridge.'

A clear example of the potential ambiguity or punning is contained in a passage from the supplements to Olafs saga helga in Flateyjarb?k,

quoted as an example of hamarr 'stone, ridge' by Johan Fritzner.22

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" ("he destroyed all idols and images, such as Thor . . . and many sacrificial monsters, both ridges [hammers?] and altars [piles of stones], forests, lakes and trees and all other idols great and small"). The connection of Thor to the uninhabited and hence

dangerous outlying areas of nature, made in this passage, is otherwise

typical of Thor's enemies, the jptnar; by the line of reasoning of the medieval Christianity of Flateyjarb?k, Thor himself was perhaps a

hamar-trpll in both senses of the word hamarr. Above I stated that hamarr 'hammer' is primarily used only for the

hammer of Thor. This does not hold, at first glance, for the skalds, who used the word for Thor's hammer four times and for ordinary hammers nine times, according to Finnur J?nsson's Lexicon PoeticumP

The nine attestations that do not refer to Thor's hammer occur pri

marily in kennings for armor: sarks, weeds, and kyrtils worked with hammers could all stand for armor. Besides these, Rognvaldr kali

hung on his arm a ring rounded by a hammer; the anonymous poet of the thirteenth-century religious poem Liknarbraut imagined the noise of the hammers driving nails in the palms of Christ on the cross; and Einarr Gilsson, composing a century or so later, called a certain

smith "tree of the hammer"; given the usual skaldic formula for war

rior, "tree of battle/weapons," this is the closest the hammer comes

directly to being a weapon anywhere outside the hands of Thor. One final skaldic attestation, however, puts the hammer in Thor's hand

22 Flateyjarb?k: En samling af norske konge-sagaer med indskudte mindre fortcellinger om

begivenheder i og udenfor Norge samt annaler, ed. Gu?brandur Vigf?sson and C. R. Unger, 3 vols. (Christiania: P. T. Mailing, 1860-68), m, 246. Johan Fritzner, Ordbog over det

garnie norske sprog, 4th ed., 3 vols, plus supplement (Oslo etc.: Universitetsforlaget, 1973), s. v. hamarr.

23 Finnur J?nsson, Lexicon Poeticum Antiquae Linguae Septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog, oprindelig forfattet af Sveinbj?rn Egilsson, 2d ed. (Copenhagen:

M0ller, 1931), s. v. hamarr.

494 Lindow

and allows him to use it. It is an anonymous verse in dr?ttkvcett from the Third Grammatical Treatise, and probably to be dated, as Finnur

J?nsson does, to the tenth century. A?r djuphuga?r draepi dolga rammr meS hamri

gegn ? gr ?is vagna

gagnsaell fa?ir Magna. (Skj BI, 171) (Before the deep-minded, brave, courageous, victorious father of Magni struck with his hammer the enemies of the sea of carts.)

I also detect a possible oblique reference to Thor and his hammer in a kenning related to the skaldic formula "worked with a hammer."

Three of these use the participle of the verb p fa 'to full' (of cloth; i.e., to beat and sometimes shrink it). Besides these three kennings,

which occur in Hallfre?r vandrae?askald's Erf dr?pa for Ol?fr Trygg vason (ca. 1001), the anonymous Kr?kum?l (twelfth century), and in the first lausavisa of Sturla B?r?arson (thirteenth century), this verb is used on only one other occasion in skaldic poetry, according to Lexicon Poeticum, namely by no less a bard than Bragi, traditionally regarded as the first skald. Bragi makes use of the word in Ragnarsdr?pa 14, the 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 reist of freista.

(It is clear to me, that soon the son of Alfp?r wished to test his strength against the moisture-fulled engirdler of earth.)

The stanza clearly says that Thor wanted to try his strength against the Midgard serpent, vid ?ri p fdan jarear reist. Finnur J?nsson,

whose translation in Skj I have followed in my own rendering above, informs us that this means "moisture-fulled engirdler of earth," with ?r 'drizzle' standing presumably for the sea and pcefdr used here with that other sense of "full," namely "to shrink." The rain-lashed pri

meval serpent has been beaten by weather or waves, not a hammer,

but in light of the formula hamri pcefdr, we can easily recall the ham mer that Thor is about to cast at the beast and which is indeed men tioned as the first word of the next stanza?in the dat. hamri, thus

recalling the formula explicitly. It may even be possible that we are

dealing here with a pun on a homonym or second sense of ?r, which the poet of the Norwegian rune poem (late thirteenth-century) un

derstood as the name of the u-rune and characterized as dross or slag

Thors hamarr 495

metal ([?r] er af Mu jame), although the modern Icelandic gloss sup plied by Sigfus Bl?ndal associates it with the sparks that fly off impure iron when it is being worked.24 Since in this case the hammer appar ently did not do its job, it performed as an impure metal, but the

fragments or sparks that it casts off when it smashes the heads of

giants will continue to threaten the serpent. In Eddie poetry, which is presumably the best narrative source of

the myths and heroic legends, the only attested hammer other than Thor's is the one wielded by the smith Vplundr after he has been

lamed and banished to an island by King NiSa?r.25

Sat hann, n? hann svaf, ? valt oc hann sl? hamri; v?l gorSi hann heldr hvatt Ni?a?i.

(Vglundarkvida 20, ed. Neckel and Kuhn, p. 120)

(He sat, nor did he sleep, ceaselessly, and he beat with the hammer; rather he boldly made plots against Ni?a?r.)

The situation is perhaps even more remarkable in prose (or in the

lexicography of prose?). There are, of course, technical terms for various kinds of hammers involved in smelting and riveting: sleggja, j?rnsleggja, and similar words for the former, hnj?dhamarr for the

latter. On the simplex hamarr as "hammer," however, one finds that

Fritzner has a column and a half, and he cites only one prose attesta

tion that is not relevant to Thor: the use of an expression Uttill tis hamarr 'the hammer of humility' once in the Heilagra manna s?gur.26 That is one more attestation of the simplex referring to a hammer other than Thor's than one finds in the dictionary of Cleasby and Vig f?sson, although a pair of compounds not related to Thor is glossed.27

Walter Baetke's dictionary of Old Norse prose adds to the gloss "auch =

hamarsmark," the so-called sign of the hammer made over a

drink; the equal sign suggests that the plain meaning 'hammer' is not

significant.28

24 Sigf?s Bl?ndal, I s lands k-dans k ordbog: Islensk-d?nsk oroab?k (Reykjavik: t>?rarinn B.

t>orl?ksson; Copenhagen and Kristiania: H. Aschehoug, 1920-24), s.v. ?r. 25 Eddie poems are quoted by title and stanza from the edition of Gustav Neckel and

Hans Kuhn, Edda: die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkm?lern, 5th ed. (Hei delberg: C. Winter?Universit?tsverlag, 1983). 26 The attestation allegedly occurs in Nikolaus saga erkibyskups II (Heilagra manna

s?gur: legender og fort llinger om hellige m nd og kvinder, ed. C. R. linger, 2 vols., [Chris tiania: B. M. Bentzen, 1877], 11, 134, line 35) but it is not to be found there. In any case, it must represent either a direct translation from Latin or a particular excrescence of the so-called florid style. 27 Richard Cleasby and Gudmundur Vigfusson, An Icelandic-English dictionary, 2d ed.

with supplement by William A. Craigie (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957), s.v. hamarr. 28 Walter Baetke, W?rterbuch zur altnordischen Prosaliteratur, 2d ed. (Darmstadt: Wis

senschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976), s. v. hamarr.

496 Lindow

A computer-aided search of an electronic corpus of the fornaldar s?gur, texts beloved of named weapons and objects, revealed only one hammer: the solution to the fourth riddle put by Gestumblindi (i.e., Odin), to King Hei?rekr in Chap. 9 of Hervarar saga ok Heidreks kon

ungs.29 Although it would be difficult to discern any full mythological progression in the subject of these riddles, even though it is Odin who

poses them, we may note that the answer to the first is beer, which is what Odin drinks in connection with his ecstatic wisdom perfor mances in the Eddie poems, and that they lead to an epiphany of Odin with the same unanswerable question that Odin put to Vaf]3r?S nir: What did Odin say in the ear of the dead Baldr on the funeral

pyre? When, then, the second riddle refers to the riddler's travels over a bridge across a river, with birds on both sides of him, we might take it as reference to Odin's journey to the hall of the human Gestum

blindi (with whom he has changed places), and the birds might be his ravens. The answer to the third riddle, the one immediately preced ing the hammer-riddle, is that the traveler lay in the shade and

quenched his thirst with dew; perhaps this is Odin lying in the shade of the world tree, whence, as Vplusp? 19 points out, the dews come, and perhaps he tasted of the mysterious white liquid referred to in that stanza. The next two riddles refer to the tools of smithing, gold smith's hammer (riddle 4) and ironsmith's bellows (riddle 5), and thereafter the trail of a mythological progression, however vague, grows faint. The riddles turn to spiders and onions, games and house hold animals, and their order in the various manuscripts begins to

vary. "Smaekkask n? g?turnar, Gestumblindi" ("your riddles become

trifling, Gestumblindi"), Hei?rekr chides the god. In any case, we may satisfy ourselves with the observation that the only hammer in the

fornaldars?gur is mentioned by Odin in a discourse of concealment; there are no ordinary hammers. This whole state of affairs suggests a

special place for Thor's hammer among all the hammers 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

creating the cosmos from the primordial void, the gods assign the celestial bodies to their stations and thereby create the system for

reckoning time (strophes 5?6), thus establishing at the very begin ning the contiguity of time and space that characterizes the world

29 In the edition of Christopher Tolkien, The Saga of King Heidrek the Wise: Saga Heidreks konungs ins vitra (London, etc.: T. Nelson, i960), pp. 32-44.

Thors hamarr 497

view of this mythology.30 What is now lacking is culture, and that be

gins in strophe 7. Hittuz aesir ? I?avelli,

f)eir er hprg oc hof h? timbro?o; afla lpg?o, au? smi?o?o,

tangir sc?po oc toi gor?o. (Vglusp? 7, ed. Neckel and Kuhn, p. 2)

(The aesir met at ?Oavpllr, they who timbered high the "cult-site" and

"temple;" they set up forges, crafted wealth, created tongs, and made

tools.)

The only tool specifically mentioned here is the set of tongs, presum ably controlled by the ?-alliteration of the long line, but that the tools in question are those of goldsmithing is made clear in the next stanza,

which presents the Golden Age of the gods and its end.

Tefl?o ? t?ni, teitir v?ro, var ))eim vaettergis vant ?r gulli, unz ?3ri?r qv?mo |)ursa meyiar, ?m?tcar mi?>c, ?r iptunheimom.

(Vglusp? 8, ed. Neckel and Kuhn, p. 2)

(They played an obscure board game in the enclosure, were merry; noth

ing of gold was lacking them until three giant maidens arrived, very pow erful, out of Jotunheimar.)

The Golden Age, then, was made possible by smithing tools, specifi cally for gold, and the hammer is one of these tools, perhaps the most

prominent. In Snorri's paraphrase of these lines it is the first tool mentioned (SnE, p. 19):

t>ar naest ger?u JDeir h?s, er Ipeir lpg?u afla ?, ok J)ar til ger?u pe'ir hamar ok tpng ok ste?ja ok ]3a?an af oil t?l pnnur; ok \>vi naest smi?u?u Ipeir malm ok stein ok tr?, ok sv? gn?gliga J)ann m?lm, er gull heitir, at ?>ll

b?s-gpgn ok pli rei?igpgn hpf?u [?eir af gulli, ok er su pld kpllu? gullaldr.

(Next they made a building in which they set up forges, and there they made a hammer and tongs and an anvil and from them all other tools; and next they worked metal and stone and wood, and so abundantly in

that metal that is called gold, that all their household implements and

furnishings were of gold; and that age is called the Golden Age.)

This Golden Age is ended by the arrival of three giantesses, and it is important to recall that this is the first actual interaction in Vglusp?

:^? A. Ya. Gurevich, "Time and Space in the Weltmodell of the Old Scandinavian

Peoples," Mediaeval Scandinavia, 2 (1969), 42-53; Kirsten Hastrup, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland: An Anthropological Analysis of Structure and Change (Oxford: Claren

don, 1985).

498 Lindow

between gods and giants, even though the seeress has recalled giants from long ago who raised her and has mentioned the existence of

Ymir before sand, sea, and waves existed, before the earth and the

heavens, when the primordial gap was yawning and there was no

grass. The creation undertaken by the gods, according to the next

stanza, involved the lifting up of the cosmos, but the homology of Ymir and the cosmos known from other sources goes unmentioned.

Thus female giantesses interrupt the Golden Age made possible by the existence of tools, and specifically the existence of tools of gold smithing, a male domain. Now as it happens, Thor has a special con nection with giantesses, for according to poets who actually wor

shipped him or at least sang his praises in the waning days of

paganism in Iceland, Thor was especially good at slaying giantesses.31 H?rbardslj?d 23 permits Thor himself to boast of these feats in a con

text which suggests the cosmic nature of such giantslaying:

Ec var austr oc iptna bar?ag, br?Sir bolv?sar, er til biargs gengo; mikil myndi aett iptna, ef allir lif?i, vaetr myndi manna undir mi?gar?i.

(H?rbar?Sslj?ft 23, ed. Neckel and Kuhn, p. 82)

(I was to the east and I slew giants, evil maidens, who went to the moun

tain; the race of giants would be large, if all lived, hardly a man would be in Midgard.)

Thus even if there were no hammer at this point in the cosmogony, we might be tempted to implicate Thor, the traditional enemy of

giantesses. The hammer only increases that temptation, as do Thor's

great strength and ruddy complexion, both attributes that smiths

might acquire. To be sure, the Vplusp? poet uses plural verbs in con nection with the proto-smithing, but the gods are as yet little differ entiated and none has been mentioned by name outside the frame of the first stanza. In any case, smithing is an activity requiring tools, and

only Thor has a tool for his major attribute. That tool is denoted by the common noun hamarr referring most often to the one that Thor

possesses, and cognates of hamarr, it may be worth pointing out, 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

proto-smith of Germanic legend. Although most scholarship associ

31 John Lindow, "Addressing Thor," Scandinavian Studies, 60 (1988), 119-36. 32 De Vries, Etymologisches W?rterbuch, s.v. hamarr.

Thor s hamarr 499

ates smithing with Odin,33 the evidence uncovered in this context sug gests that Thor too has a claim to such an association. Perhaps there is additional evidence in support of this claim.

Volundr's primary physical attribute is his laming, and it has been

pointed out in a far more general context that limping is associated with smiths.34 No gods limp,35 but one god has a limping animal, namely Thor, who obtained his companion I>j?lfi when the latter sucked the marrow from the bone of one of Thor's slaughtered goats, thus making it impossible for Thor to revive the animal wholly intact.

This evidence is slight, to be sure, but it may be corroborated by the Saami materials, for smiths in Germanic are associated with shaman

ism, and the shamanically-oriented Saamis apparently had no trouble

borrowing Thor and his hammer (or hammers). Indeed, one tantaliz

ing piece of evidence might be read to suggest that as Old Man Thor

(Horagalles), he limped. The famous drawing of a lost Saami drum,

33 For example, Hilda Ellis Davidson, "The Smith and the Goddess: Two Figures on the Franks Casket from Auzon," Fr?hmittelalterliche Studien, 3 (1969), 216?26; Lotte

Motz, "New Thoughts on Dwarf-Names in Old Icelandic," Fr?hmittelalterliche Studien, 7 (1973), 100-17.

34 Ferdinand Sokolicek, "Der Hinkende im braucht?mlichen Spiel," Festschrift Otto

H?fler zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Helmut Birkhan and Otto Gschwantler (Vienna: Notring, 1968), 423-32.

35 Bruce Lincolns revisionist reading of the evidence used by Dum?zil to reconstruct the parallelism of a one-eyed and one-handed god or king (Le borgne et le manchot) argues that a case could be made for the loss of, or a wound to, a leg, too, by the one

eyed: Bruce Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 246-48. Although Lincoln cites Roman and Irish evidence, Dum?zil's insistence on the primacy of the Scandinavian evidence might lead one to wonder about Odin's leg, despite the silence of that evidence. More interesting in this context is Lincoln's observation that serious consideration of the Roman evidence "leads one to other data that focus upon the opposition of the lower social orders? smiths, artisans, and common soldiers . . .?to domination by kings" (p. 248). That

would agree with the view of J. Michael Stitt that Thor's hammer was "a club-like tool"

(an extension of the more general view of Mjpllnir as simply a club; see, for example, Jaan Puhvel, Comparative Mythology [Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1987], p. 201) and thus to be connected with Indo-European cultures in which "the warrior often has associations with the accoutrements of the peasant class, and this is true of the club in particular. . . . The club is the weapon of the duel, and in the

literary tradition was the weapon of choice for fighting a berserkr" (J. Michael Stitt, Beowulf and the Bear's Son: Epic, Saga, and Fairytale in Northern Germanic Tradition, The Albert Bates Lord Studies in Oral Tradition, 8 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), p. 200. Here he quotes Geo Widengren, Der Feudalismus im alten Iran: M?nnerbund, Gefolgswesen, Feudalismus im Verh?ltnisse, Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen der Arbeits

gemeinschaft f?r Forschung des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen, 40 (K?ln and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1969: 61). Stitt goes on to note that "there is a certain logic to

using a club against a berserkr, since the latter were theoretically impervious to metal"

(p. 236, n. 14 [note to p. 200]). The connection with fornaldarsaga heroes is interesting, since they frequently, like Thor, fight with and slay female giants.

500 Lindow

called "Randulf 1723" by Manker after the identity and date of the author of the Naer0 manuscript in which it is found, has numerous

figures, two of whom appear to have one leg slightly shorter than the other: Hora Galles and Varalde Noyde, the world shaman.36 I would

hardly care to push this evidence, since strange lower legs are not uncommon on the Saami shaman drums (and the missionary environ

ment in which the drums became known to the outside world cer

tainly contributed to the difficulty of interpreting the figures on

them),37 but it may at least bolster the argument that Thor and sha manism coexisted comfortably among the Saamis.

More generally, comparative evidence suggests "close connections

between smiths, shamans, and warriors."38 Relating this general back

ground to the Germanic context, Stephen O. Glosecki expressed it this way: "The connection is close indeed, for the old myths weave

shaman, smith, and warrior together in the total tapestry of tribal life. The three automatically acquire a mythic dimension. With their

magic powers, spirit helpers, underworld adventures, and initiatory ordeals, they tend to converge with one another, as though they tap a limited pool of supernatural resources."39 Even if one thinks first of

Odin in connection with shamanism, it is difficult to deny Thor his

place as the superior warrior.

If Thor is associated with the tools and Golden Age disrupted by giantesses of Vplusp? 7 ?8, he ought to be associated with what follows, namely the catalogue of dwarfs; put more generally, if Thor is asso ciated with smithing, he ought to be associated with dwarfs, the major smiths and craftsmen of the mythology. And indeed he is, in a way

more direct than that of any other god. Somehow Thor's daughter became engaged to a dwarf, and it is with this creature, Alviss, that Thor engages in a contest of wits according to the Eddie poem Alviss m?l?a contest that otherwise would be difficult to explain. Why should Thor, known more for his brawn than his brain, engage in a contest of this type, which belongs so clearly to the realm of Odin,

36 Manker, Lappische Zaubertrommel, il, 187 ?

204. 37 See Hakan Rydving, "The Saami Drums and the Religious Encounter in the Eigh

teenth and Nineteenth Centuries," The Saami Shaman Drum, ed. Ahlb?ck and Bergman, pp. 28-51.

38 Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth, transi. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper & Torchbook, 1975), p. 86; cf. Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Bollingen Series, 76 (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press,

1964), p. 470. 39

Stephen O. Glosecki, Shamanism and Old English Poetry, The Albert Bates Lord Studies in Oral Tradition, 2 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989), p. 152.

Thor 's hamarr 501

unless he has some special connection with dwarfs, a connection em

bodied in his primary attribute, the hammer, the tool for working metals?40

Perhaps this association with craftsmanship helps explain the loca tion of Vglundarkvida in Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda, between the Thor poems Prymskvida?which focuses on the recovery of the hammer and shows that without it Thor may even have to revert to the female domain?and Alv?ssm?l?which focuses on an attempt by a lesser craftsman to usurp privileges ordinarily and properly re served for his betters. Such an explanation would supplement the tra

ditional explanation drawing on an assignment to the "lower my

thology" of the elves and dwarf of the two poems. Although Old Norse mythology lacks the notion of a crafted cos

mos, like that implied by, say, the work of Ilmarinen in Kalevala, Thor's hammer is still related in its principal use throughout the my thology to those primordial times when the universe was created. As

Vafpr?dnism?l and Gr?mnism?l agree, the universe was fashioned from the body of Ymir.

Or Ymis holdi var ipr? um scppu?, enn ?r beinom biorg,

himinn ?r hausi ins hrimkalda iptuns, enn ?r sveita si?r.

(Vafpr?dnism?l 21, ed. Neckel and Kuhn, p. 48)

(From the flesh of Ymir was the earth fashioned, mountains from his

bones, heaven from the skull of the frost-cold giant, and from his sweat

the sea.)

Or Ymis holdi var ipr? um scppu?, enn ?r sveita saer,

biprg ?r beinom, ba?mr ?r h?ri, enn ?r hausi himinn.

40 The ray of sunshine that dooms the dwarf in the poem's last stanza parallels the bolt of lightning that Thor and the other thunder gods hurl; and thus recalls an old surmise of Oscar Montelius equating the ax of Mediterranean sun gods with Thor's hammer: "The Sun-God's Axe and Thor's Hammer," Folk-Lore, 21 (1910), 60-78 (En glish version of "Solgudens yxa och Tors hammare," Svenska forminnesf?reningens tid

skrift, 10 [1900], 277-96). The salient difference is that Alviss is, one assumes on the basis of the comparative evidence, not smashed to bits but rather is turned to stone.

Certainly Thor does use the sun as a weapon; see Heinz Klingenberg's demonstration of the sun as the "missing category" of the poem: "Alv?ssm?l: Das Lied vom ?berweisen

Zwerg," Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift, 48 (1967), 113-42. In this context the Jut landic term dv rgehammer 'dwarfs' hammer' for "an old stone axe" may also be relevant:

H. F. Feilberg, Bidrag til en ordbog over det jyske almuesmal, 4 vols. (Copenhagen: Thiele,

1866?1914), 1, s. v. dv rgehammer.

502 Lindow

Enn ?r hans br?m ger?o bli? regin mi?gar? manna sonom;

enn ?r hans heila v?ro {)au in har?mo?go scy pll scppu?.

(Gr?mnism?l 40-41, ed. Neckel and Kuhn, p. 65)

(From the flesh of Ymir the earth was fashioned, from his sweat the sea, a tree from his hair, and the heaven from his skull. And from his brows the joyous gods made Midgard for the sons of men; and from his brain

were the powerful clouds all made.)

That this cosmogony entered into (indeed initiated) the cosmic

struggle between gods and giants was clear to Snorri (SnE, p. 14): "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,

Midgard, marked off as safe for men and protected, as we have seen,

by Thor and his hammer. Whenever, then, a giant is slain, the uni verse is mythologically recreated, and the portion marked off as safe from the powers of chaos is reaffirmed.

Even when Thor failed to kill a giant, as when he was bested by Utgar?a-Loki, he managed several creative acts; with his powerful thirst, he created low tide, and with his hammer he created, as we have seen, three valleys, features of the local landscape. This he did while attempting to slay a giant, thus showing again the connection between his hammer and the cosmos.

That connection might also be seen in the possible etymological relationship between hamarr and himinn 'heaven that goes back to

Hans Reichelt's postulation of the concept of heaven among the Indo

Europeans as a stone vault.41 In many Indo-European languages, Rei

chelt thought, this stone heaven was denoted by *akmon, from the root *ak- 'sharp,' which is likely to be the ultimate root of hamarr. Reichelt states explicitly that hamarr and himinn are related and later attempts to associate the myths of Prymskvi?a and Hymiskvida with his proto

myth of the stone heaven in a way no modern reader will find con

vincing.42 Nor, indeed, has the etymological relationship found much

support, although it always deserves mention.43 The most recent analy sis known to me is a vigorous refutation of Reichelt's hypothesis and

41 Hans Reichelt, "Der steinerne Himmel," Indogermanische Forschungen, 32 (1913), 23-57

42 Reichelt, "Der steinerne Himmel," 25; 52-56. 43 See, for example, Sigmund Feist, Vergleichendes W?rterbuch der gotischen Sprache: Mit Einschluss des Krimgotischen und sonstiger zerstreuter ?berreste des Gotischen, 3d ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1939), s.v. himins, and de Vries, Etymologisches W?rterbuch, s. v. hamarr and himinn, and the literature cited in these entries.

Thors hamarr 503

therefore of the putative relationship.44 Moreover, the equivalent of stone? surely an original component of the semantics of hamarr?in

the macro-microcosmic homologies of Indo-European creation myths, of which the above-cited passages from Vafpr?dnism?l and Gr?mnism?l

may be taken as the Germanic reflex, is bone; heaven (or better the

sky) is a separate category and shares a homologic relationship with the head.45 It would therefore appear safest to disregard this tantaliz

ing subject and simply to accept the already adduced evidence con

cerning the cosmic and creative powers of Thor's hamarr.

Thus Norse hamarr appears to be a pagan parallel to Old English dryhten or metod, common nouns charged in their usage with Christian

religious significance.46 In the Norse instance, it is a sense of protec tion from evil, through ultimately creative powers, that the noun draws with it. Even Christian skalds can remind us of this: metaphori cal clothes that have been worked with a hammer guard the wearer

against inimical forces; the tiny hammered links that shield warriors are like the giant mythic beast coiled ring-like around the abode of

mankind, worked once by Thor's hammer at sea and awaiting the final fatal blow at Ragnarpk. Craftsmanship is powerful, and it sepa rates the bearers of culture from all those outside culture who threaten it. Thor's hamarr, whether wielded by the god or worn about the neck, invoked this distinction and gathered under it those who

sought its shelter.

44J. Peter M?her, "*Haekmon: '(Stone) Axe' and 'Sky' in I-E/Battle-Axe Culture," Journal of Indo-European Studies, i (1973), 441-62.

45 See Bruce Lincoln, Myth, Cosmos, and Society: Indo-European Themes of Creation and Destruction (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, ig86), especially Chap. 1.

46 See, most recently, Nicholas Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon En

gland (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 175-76.

Leeds Studies in Englishtango.bol.ucla.edu/nord_myth/gods_giants-readings.pdf · The vertical model...

Documents

Transcript of Leeds Studies in Englishtango.bol.ucla.edu/nord_myth/gods_giants-readings.pdf · The vertical model...