The Lesser Known Adventures of Thor

Part 1: Thor's Duel with Hrungnir

Hello and welcome back to Uglubjorn blog! Happy Halloween and a good Samhain to you all. 

So far, I’m having a good fall. This month’s adventures involved another 5k, which I did a little better than last time but not quite as good as I had hoped. We also had some friends come to visit us from Utah, we showed them around to some of our favorite spots around Rochester and then went with them to Toronto CA for a few days. 

I also had the opportunity to host a voice chat with my friend Will in the FoNT discord, where we had a great discussion about the runes. 

Besides that, I’m just trying to stay on top of work, and school, staying active, and spending time with my wife and dog. 

I apologize in advance for the lack of spookiness of this topic, being that it’s coming out on Halloween and isn’t really something that fits with the horror genre. This topic is going to be another two parter: I’m going to be talking about some lesser-known stories about Thor. The story I’m sharing today is the story of Thor’s duel with Hrungnir. I’ve taken a little bit of creative liberty, but I think that I’ve kept the story mostly the same as it’s presented in the Prose Edda. So here it is:

Odin the wanderer was traveling through Jotunheim with his prized steed Sleipnir: the eight-legged horse. The magnificent sight of him with his eight-legged steed and shining gold helmet caught the attention of a boastful Jotun named Hrungnir. 

Hrungnir introduced himself and asked for Odin’s name, to which Odin did not answer and responded instead by boasting of his horse’s frat speed, betting his own head that no horse in Jotunheim could compete with his eight-legged stallion. Hrungnir angrily accepted the challenge and raced after Odin on his horse Gullfaxi. Odin managed to stay ahead of Hrungnir, galloping over the top of each hill before Hrungnir could get halfway up. 

Hrungnir in his frustration did not notice when he crossed through the gate to Asgard. Unable to dispute the results of the race or take his revenge on Odin for his boasting, he accepted the invitation to drink at their hall. 

Hrungnir took Thor’s drinking horn and drank many helpings of mead. As he got drunk, he began to boast, claiming that he would carry Valhalla to Jotunheim, bury Asgard, and kill all the Gods except for Freyja and Sif who he would carry back to Jotunheim as concubines. Whenever Freyja returned to fill the horn, he vowed to drink all of their mead stores until there was nothing left. 

The Gods became fed up with Hrungnir’s boasting and summoned Thor, their champion. 

Thor burst into the hall brandishing his legendary hammer Mjolnir. He was furious that such an unsavory being had been allowed to enter the hall, sit in his seat, and drink from his horn. He demanded to know who let the Jotun in. Hrungnir answered that he was a guest of Odin and as such was under his protection. Hrungnir then explained condescendingly that killing an unarmed guest would bring Thor great dishonor. 

Thor lowered his hammer and composed himself enough to formally challenge Hrungnir to a duel. Hrungnir having now made an ass of himself with all his boasting before the Gods could not refuse this challenge, so he agreed. The duel would take place just outside Asgard, starting on opposite sides of a hill, and they could each bring one other combatant with them. 

Hrungnir returned to Jotunheim to collect his weapons and bring a fighting partner with him. 

The Jotnar celebrated his return and praised him for his bravery. In a place called Grjotunagar, Hrungnir’s fellow tribesmen constructed a giant man out of clay to fight alongside him. They had difficulty getting a heart big enough for the clay colossus until they used a horse heart, which was just barely big enough. Hrungnir himself had a peculiar yet famous heart; made of stone shaped like a triangle. His head and shield also were made of tough stone. His weapon of choice was a massive whetstone.

Thor had many brothers in arms that he could have chosen to join him. Choosing a God like Tyr or Ullr would have made victory certain. Or perhaps Heimdall the wise, Freyr with his sword that fought on its own, or even Loki the cunning trickster. Thor instead chose his servant Thjalfi to stand by him. 

As Hrungnir approached alongside the clay colossus, Thjalfi raced out to meet them. He warned the Jotun that Thor was planning to burrow beneath the hill and attack from below. Such a thing might seem impossible to do during a duel, but it was known throughout Jotunheim that Thor had once turned a mountain into a crater with 3 strokes of his hammer during his travels on his way to visit the hall of Utgarda-Loki. Thor with his hammer was a force to be reckoned with, and not to be underestimated.

As Thjalfi raced back to his master’s side, Hrungnir set his shield on the ground and stood on it, to protect himself from an attack from below. Then he raised his whetstone above his head with both hands, readying himself to make a powerful downward strike when Thor burst from the earth. But Thor did not burrow through the hill.

Thor bounded up the hill, clearing it in nine steps, and leaped over the top and down towards the unsuspecting Hrungnir and his clay colossus. The clay man was so startled by Thor’s appearance that his over-exerted heart stopped working and the colossal figure dropped to his knees. Electricity lit up the air around Thor as he wound up his hammer and let loose a mighty throw. Hrungnir threw his whetstone back at Thor, but he was unprepared and at a disadvantage attacking from the lower ground. Mjolnir crackled with energy, it lit up and a streak of lightning followed it through the air. The mighty hammer crashed with the whetstone, shattering the stone and continuing on its path. It is said that the shards of Hrungnir’s whetstone that fell to the earth are the origin of all whetstones. Mjolnir kept flying, carried by its momentum. It collided with Hrungnir’s stone head and shattered it with a thunderous boom. 

Thjalfi finished the colossus with his spear, though he had been incapacitated already. Something was wrong though, Thor crashed into Hrungnir’s body and the two of them tumbled like ragdolls down to the bottom of the hill. Hrungnir’s leg was on Thor’s throat, and a shard of the whetstone was stuck in his forehead. Thor was still alive, but unconscious and at risk of suffocating under the weight of Hrungnir’s heavy leg. Thjalfi desperately tried to lift the massive leg, but it was no use. No one could run faster than Thjalfi, but he did not have the strength to lift the leg off his master’s neck. The other gods tried as well but it wouldn’t budge until Thor’s son Magni who was barely three years old at the time walked up confidently to where his father lay with his muscles flexed, chest puffed out, and a freshly changed diaper wrapped around his bum. Magni effortlessly picked up the Jotun’s body by the leg and threw him off his father. 

Thor gasped for air as he awoke, and Magni greeted his father by boasting that if he had shown up earlier, he could have taken the Jotun all by himself with one punch. Thor was filled with pride for his son and offered Magni the stallion Gullfaxi as a reward for his display of strength. Odin was starting to feel a bit jealous of his son and grandson who had been getting all the praise and attention, so he demanded that Thor give the stallion to him instead. Thor begrudgingly complied with his father’s commands and returned home to Thrudvangar with his family. 

Thor still had a shard of the whetstone lodged in his head that he couldn’t manage to remove on his own, so he called for the help of a Seeress named Groa. Groa began to work her magic, singing to the stone and calling for it to be removed, and to Thor’s forehead to heal. Thor felt the stone begin to loosen and slip out of his head. He began to relax and told Groa a story of how he recently encountered her husband Aurvandil during his travels, and how they waded across a frozen river together. Though they parted ways, Thor was confident that Aurvandil was ok, and that he would return home soon. Groa was so overjoyed at this news that she began to weep. To Thor’s dismay, she lost concentration on the spell, and the stone lodged itself back firmly into his head, never to be removed. 

A few things about this story that I think are particularly interesting. For one: Loki is not the instigator of this story, in fact in the version of the Prose Edda I’m going off of, he’s not mentioned. I added that bit with the shield brothers to try and give a little more context to why Thjalfi and the clay colossus also participated in the duel. Loki is usually involved in every story as the one who instigates a bad situation for the Gods, and then fixes it. Instead it was Odin who brought the unsavory Jotun to Asgard, and the Gods called upon Thor to try and fix it. Who knows what mischief Loki got up to elsewhere while the Gods dealt with Hrungnir. 

Loki’s misadventures start out as bad situations for the Gods, but usually end up with favorable results. Loki cutting Sif’s hair resulted in the Gods receiving valuable gifts from the dwarves, including Thor’s hammer. The situation with the builder got them a wall around Asgard and Odin’s horse Sleipnir. After the duel, the Gods aren’t better off than they were before. Gullfaxi though a fine horse was proved to be inferior to the horse that Odin already owns, and Thor ended up with a rock permanently stuck in his head. 

Another thing that grabbed my attention was that the spells used to remove the stone from Thor’s head were sung. It reminded me of a part of Kalevala where Vainamoinen is injured and needs to be healed by a specific song in order to have the bleeding stop. I’m trying to use my voice more when I do certain rituals and offerings, like singing the names of certain runes to express certain intentions.

A major theme of this story is boasting. The whole ordeal was caused by boasting, on the part of Odin and Hrungnir. This reminds me of a couple stanzas of Havamal:

19 - Don’t hold on to the mead-horn, but drink your fair share. Say something useful or stay quiet. And no one else will judge you poorly if you go to sleep early. 

29 - You will hurt yourself with all your talking if you never close your mouth. A hasty tongue, unless it’s disciplined, often earns its own punishment. 

Let me know if anything else stood out to you. Thank you so much for reading, and stay tuned for part 2, where I will discuss the story of Thor’s visit to Geirrod’s Hall!