The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern MythsColum, Padraic
General
The Children of Odin: The Book of Northern Myths
Colum, Padraic
Mythology, Norse -- Juvenile literature
When the Æsir and the Vanir heard this they were sorely disappointed.
Who now, outside of Asgard, would give them a feast? Ægir was the only
one of the Giants who was friendly to them, and Ægir could not give them
full entertainment.
Then a Giant youth who was there spoke up and said, "My kinsman, the
Giant Hrymer, has a mead kettle that is a mile wide. If we could bring
Hrymer's kettle here, what a feast we might have!"
"One of us can go for that kettle," Frey said.
"Ah, but Hrymer's dwelling is beyond the deepest forest and behind the
highest mountain," the Giant youth said, "and Hrymer himself is a rough
and a churlish one to call on."
"Still, one of us should go," Frey said.
"I will go to Hrymer's dwelling," said Thor, standing up. "I will go to
Hrymer's dwelling and get the mile-wide kettle from him by force or
cunning." He had been sitting subdued under the mocking tales that Loki
told of him and he was pleased with this chance to make his prowess
plain to the Æsir and the Vanir. He buckled on the belt that doubled his
strength. He drew on the iron gloves that enabled him to grasp Miölnir.
He took his hammer in his hands, and he signed to the Giant youth to
come with him and be his guide.
The Æsir and the Vanir applauded Thor as he stepped out of old Ægir's
hall. But Loki, mischievous Loki, threw a gibe after him. "Do not let
the hammer out of your hands this time, bride of Thrym," he shouted.
Thor, with the Giant youth to guide him, went through the deepest forest
and over the highest mountain. He came at last to the Giant's dwelling.
On a hillock before Hrymer's house was a dreadful warden; a Giant crone
she was, with heads a-many growing out of her shoulders. She was
squatting down on her ankles, and her heads, growing in bunches, were
looking in different directions. As Thor and the Giant youth came near
screams and yelps came from all her heads. Thor grasped his hammer and
would have flung it at her if a Giant woman, making a sign of peace, had
not come to the door of the dwelling. The youthful Giant who was with
Thor greeted her as his mother.
"Son, come within," said she, "and you may bring your fellow farer with
you."
The Giant crone--she was Hrymer's grandmother--kept up her screaming and
yelping. But Thor went past her and into the Giant's dwelling.
When she saw that it was one of the Dwellers in Asgard who had come with
her son the Giant woman grew fearful for them both. "Hrymer," she said,
"will be in a rage to find one of the Æsir under his roof. He will
strive to slay you."
"It is not likely he will succeed," Thor said, grasping Miölnir, the
hammer that all the Giant race knew of and dreaded.
"Hide from him," said the Giant woman. "He may injure my son in his rage
to find you here."
"I am not wont to hide from the Giants," Thor said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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