Thrym's Wedding: Thor in the Bridal Veil and the Necklace That Broke

The hammer under the earth

Thor's hammer is gone, and a jotun named Thrym has it. His name means "noise." The Old Norse poem that tells this story, the Þrymskviða, is named after him, and it keeps giving him a grand title: lord of the thurses. The Wikipedia summary of the poem describes how Loki finds him. Thrym is sitting on a mound, twisting gold leashes for his dogs and grooming his horses' manes. He doesn't look much like a lord of giants. He looks like a man getting ready for guests.

Loki gets there by borrowing Freyja's feather cloak and flying to Jotunheim. Thrym's terms are short. In Benjamin Thorpe's translation of the Elder Edda:

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

Loki flies home with the plumage rattling and finds Thor waiting in the middle court. Thor first asks whether the errand succeeded. He wants the news told from the air before Loki lands, because, in Thorpe's wording, "he who lies down utters falsehood."

Freyja says no

They go to Freyja with the demand, and someone tells her to put on bridal clothes for the drive to Jotunheim. Thorpe's text only says "he" spoke. The poem does not name the speaker.

Her answer shakes the building. All the hall of the Æsir trembles under her, and the famous Brisinga necklace flies apart in pieces. Then she says why she refuses, and her reason is her reputation, not fear of the giant:

"Know me to be of women lewdest, if with thee I drive to Jotunheim."

The council and the dress

The Æsir go to council and the Asyniur gather to talk it over. The answer comes from Heimdall, whom Thorpe's text calls "of Æsir brightest" and then, in the same breath, says he "well foresaw, like other Vanir." The poem puts him in both families of gods at once.

His plan is to dress Thor as the bride. That means bridal clothes, the Brisinga necklace, keys jingling at his side, a woman's skirts falling round his knees, precious stones on his breast, and a neat coif on his head.

Thor objects for the same reason Freyja did. "Me the Æsir will call womanish," he says in Thorpe's version, if he lets them dress him like that. Loki ends the argument with a threat instead of a joke. If Thor doesn't get the hammer back, the jotuns will soon be living in Asgard. So they dress him, item by item, exactly as Heimdall listed it. Loki offers to come along as the servant. The goats are rounded up and hitched, and the poem gives the drive one violent image: the rocks split and the earth burns as Odin's son drives to Jotunheim.

The feast

Thrym is delighted. He tells the jotuns to rise and deck the benches, because Freyja is coming, "Niord's daughter, from Noatun." He sends for gold-horned cows and all-black oxen. Then he says something close to sad:

"Treasures I have many, necklaces many, Freyia alone seemed to me wanting."

At the evening meal the bride eats a whole ox, eight salmon, and all the sweetmeats meant for the women, then drinks three salds of mead. Thrym has never seen a bride eat like this and says so. Loki, sitting nearby as the "all-crafty serving-maid," has an answer ready. Freyja hasn't eaten for eight nights because she was so eager to come to Jotunheim.

Thrym bends under the veil to kiss his bride and jumps back the length of the hall. "Methinks that fire burns from her eyes," he says. Loki has another answer. Freyja hasn't slept for eight nights either, for the same reason.

Then Thrym's sister comes in, and the poem calls her "luckless" before she has done anything. She asks the bride for a gift: the red rings from her hands, in return for her love and favour.

The hammer on her knee

Thrym orders the hammer brought in to bless the bride. Mjollnir is to be laid on the maiden's knee, and the couple joined "by the hand of Vor." His own wedding ritual puts the weapon straight into Thor's hands.

"Laughed Hlorridi's soul in his breast, when the fierce-hearted his hammer recognized."

Thor kills Thrym first and then crushes the whole jotun household. The poem saves one more line for the sister. She asked for rings and got a hammer's blow instead of money. The last line is flat and pleased with itself: "So got Odin's son his hammer back."

The necklace that broke and was worn

The poem contradicts itself, and it matters. In stanza 14, Freyja's anger sends the Brisinga necklace flying in pieces. In stanza 16, Heimdall says Thor should wear the famous Brisinga necklace. In stanza 20 they put "the noble Brisinga necklace" on him. Nobody repairs it. The necklace is broken in one scene and part of the costume two stanzas later. Either the shattering is a figure of speech for how angry she is, or the poet cared more about Freyja's rage and the disguise than about whether the two scenes fit. The text gives no explanation.

Text against summary

The Wikipedia summary smooths the poem out in places. Some differences:

Eight, and eight, and eight

The number eight keeps coming back. The hammer is eight rasts down. Thor eats eight salmon. Freyja supposedly went eight nights without food, and eight nights without sleep. The poem builds a pattern and then breaks it with a single hammer blow.

Another wedding, another Thor

In Thorpe's book the next poem is the Lay of the Dwarf Alvis, and it opens almost the same way: "The benches they are decking." This time a dwarf who lives under the rock has come to take a bride home. Thor, here under Vingthor, one of his names, is on the other side of the wedding. He says he has "as father, greatest power" over the girl and that he will break the promise made to the dwarf. One poem has Thor dressed as the bride. The next has him standing in the way of a wedding.

Other Thryms

Outside this poem Thrym doesn't amount to much. The same story is retold in the Þrymlur. His name shows up in the name-lists (the þulur) added to the Prose Edda, probably taken from the poem. The Hversu Noregr byggðist names three figures called Thrym: a ruler of Agder, a Ketill Thrym who lived at Þrum, and a jotun of Verma whose daughter had three children by King Raum the Old. None of them steals a hammer. The poem is what made him famous, and the poem kills him in one stanza.

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