In the Days of Giants: A Book of Norse TalesBrown, Abbie Farwell
General
In the Days of Giants: A Book of Norse Tales
Brown, Abbie Farwell
Mythology, Norse -- Juvenile literature
All the giants set to work with a will. They brought great buckets of
moist clay, and heaping them up into a huge mound, moulded the mass
with their giant hands as a sculptor does his image, until they had
made a man of clay, an immense dummy, nine miles high and three miles
wide. "Now we must make him live; we must put a heart into him!" they
cried. But they could find no heart big enough until they thought of
taking that of a mare, and that fitted nicely. A mare's heart is the
most cowardly one that beats.
Hrungnir's heart was a three-cornered piece of hard stone. His head
also was of stone, and likewise the great shield which he held before
him when he stood outside of Stone City waiting for Thor to come to
the duel. Over his shoulder he carried his club, and that also was of
stone, the kind from which whetstones are made, hard and terrible. By
his side stood the huge clay man, Möckuralfi, and they were a dreadful
sight to see, these two vast bodies whom Thor must encounter.
But at the very first sight of Thor, who came thundering to the place
with swift Thialfi his servant, the timid mare's heart in the man
of clay throbbed with fear; he trembled so that his knees knocked
together, and his nine miles of height rocked unsteadily.
Thialfi ran up to Hrungnir and began to mock him, saying, "You are
careless, giant. I fear you do not know what a mighty enemy has come to
fight you. You hold your shield in front of you; but that will serve
you nothing. Thor has seen this. He has only to go down into the earth
and he can attack you conveniently from beneath your very feet."
At this terrifying news Hrungnir hastened to throw his shield upon
the ground and to stand upon it, so that he might be safe from Thor's
under-stroke. He grasped his heavy club with both hands and waited. He
had not long to wait. There came a blinding flash of lightning and a
peal of crashing thunder. Thor had cast his hammer into space. Hrungnir
raised his club with both hands and hurled it against the hammer which
he saw flying towards him. The two mighty weapons met in the air with
an earsplitting shock. Hard as was the stone of the giant's club, it
was like glass against the power of Miölnir. The club was dashed into
pieces; some fragments fell upon the earth; and these, they say, are
the rocks from which whetstones are made unto this day. They are so
hard that men use them to sharpen knives and axes and scythes. One
splinter of the hard stone struck Thor himself in the forehead, with
so fierce a blow that he fell forward upon the ground, and Thialfi
feared that he was killed. But Miölnir, not even stopped in its course
by meeting the giant's club, sped straight to Hrungnir and crushed his
stony skull, so that he fell forward over Thor, and his foot lay on the
fallen hero's neck. And that was the end of the giant whose head and
heart were of stone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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