Song of the Vikings by Nancy Marie Brown

Author:Nancy Marie Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group
Published: 2012-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

A runestone from Altuna, Sweden, thought to depict Thor catching the Midgard Serpent. Note Thor’s foot protruding through the bottom of the boat. Photo by akg-images.

The oldest manuscript containing the “Song of the Sibyl,” as well as “Hymir’s Lay,” about Thor’s fishing trip, is called the Codex Regius (King’s Book). This manuscript dates to 1270—after Snorri’s death but roughly when his nephew Saga-Sturla was writing about Snorri’s life and times. The Codex Regius is a copy of something older but probably not much older. Scholars believe it is owing to Snorri’s influence that the poems of the Poetic Edda were set down in writing at all. One fanciful notion is that Snorri sent out teams of poetry collectors on “field trips in the manner of the nineteenth-century folklore collectors.” Another theory is that some of the Eddic poems are not ancient examples of pagan verse at all but thirteenth-century imitations, again inspired by—or even written by—Snorri.

“Hymir’s Lay” is one of these. Its tale of Thor’s fishing trip is longer than Snorri’s, and the character of the giant is changed. Thor is not disguised. He is not alone but accompanied by the one-handed god Tyr and the servant boy, Thjalfi. Their purpose in visiting Giantland is to obtain a cauldron big enough to brew ale for all the gods. To win the cauldron Thor must engage in trials of strength, one of which is a fishing contest. When the giant Hymir catches two whales at once, Thor catches the Midgard Serpent to outdo him. There’s no tense eyeball-to-eyeball moment in this poem. Nor is Hymir terrified. He doesn’t cut the line. When Thor whacks the serpent with his hammer, he doesn’t kill it: The worm just roars and sinks into the sea. Thor and the giant row back home, and Thor carries the two whales up to Hymir’s hall, but still the giant will not admit he is beaten until Thor breaks his wine goblet, smashing it against the giant’s own hard head. Thor picks up the cauldron. It is so heavy his feet break through the wooden floor of the hall (as they did not through the boat). Then Hymir reneges and comes after Thor with a horde of monsters. The mighty Thor wields his hammer mercilessly and kills them all.

Which tale of Thor’s fishing trip is the true one, the pagan myth? Probably neither. Several versions of this story and other myths circulated in Snorri’s lifetime; some were mere hints in kennings, others well-developed verse or oral tales. Snorri took what he liked and retold them, making things up when need be.

Explaining the beginning of all things, for instance, he tinkered with the role of Ymir, the primordial giant. The idea that his flesh was earth, his blood sea, his bones rocks, his hair trees, his skull the sky, and his thoughts clouds is suspiciously like the cosmology in popular philosophical treatises of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These were based on Plato’s Timaeus, which conceived of the world as a gigantic human body, alive, with a soul.

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