Loki’s promise and Gríðr’s warning
Loki borrows Frigg’s falcon guise and flies to the giant Geirröðr’s dwelling. He lands where he can look inside, is caught, and refuses to identify himself. Geirröðr shuts him in a chest without food for three months. To gain release, Loki finally discloses his identity and promises to bring Thor there without his hammer or strength-giving belt. The story begins with a captive purchasing freedom at another person’s expense.
On the resulting journey, Thor stays with Gríðr, the mother of Víðarr. She explains that Geirröðr is a dangerous giant and lends Thor her own belt of strength, iron gloves, and a staff called Gríðarvölr. This assistance is crucial. The plot does not prove that Thor always succeeds by entering danger unprepared; a knowledgeable host recognizes the trap and equips him against it.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Skáldskaparmál, “Extracts from the Poetical Diction,” “Thor’s Journey to Geirrod’s,” pp.176–183 in Anderson
The river and the rising seat
Thor reaches the river Vimur. As he crosses, gripping Gríðr’s staff, the water rises alarmingly. He sees Geirröðr’s daughter Gjálp positioned upstream and causing the flood. A stone thrown at her stops it, and a rowan growing beside the bank helps him pull himself out. The prose connects that assistance to the saying that rowan is Thor’s rescue.
At the giant’s dwelling, Thor is given lodging in a room with a single seat. As soon as he sits down, the chair rises toward the roof. He braces the borrowed staff against the rafters and pushes downward. There is a crash and screaming below: Gjálp and her sister Greip have been lifting the chair, and his counterpressure breaks their backs. A dangerous crossing and apparently ordinary furniture have both concealed attacks.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Skáldskaparmál, “Thor’s Journey to Geirrod’s,” pp.177–180 in Anderson
Iron returned to its sender
Geirröðr summons Thor into a hall where fires are burning. With tongs he takes a glowing lump of iron and throws it at his guest. Thor catches it in the borrowed gloves. The giant retreats behind an iron pillar, but Thor hurls the iron back so powerfully that it pierces the pillar, Geirröðr, and the wall before entering the ground. The host’s weapon completes his own defeat.
The episode rewards attention to its helpers and materials: Gríðr’s warning, staff, belt, and gloves are indispensable to the prose sequence. It also prevents the category “giant” from working as a reliable moral label, since the giant woman Gríðr protects Thor against another giant household. Anderson prints skaldic verses alongside the account; those compressed poetic witnesses are not identical in every detail to the connecting prose. Geirröðr here is the giant iron-thrower, not the human king who imprisons Odin in Grímnismál.
Sources: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing); The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Skáldskaparmál, “Thor’s Journey to Geirrod’s,” pp.180–183; contrast Grímnismál’s prose frame
- Period / witness
- Medieval Old Norse literature; the Poetic Edda survives chiefly in thirteenth-century copies, and Snorri’s Edda was composed around the 1220s. Mythic events have no historical date.
- Recording context
- Preserved through medieval Icelandic writing and later copies, in a Christian literary culture. Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda dates to c.1270. These recording circumstances do not locate the origin of an oral story.
A recording location is not necessarily a story’s origin. Dates of texts, copies, and translations answer different questions.
Explore time & place →Read the sources
These references support the explanation above. Rights and edition notes are recorded individually.
The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) ↗
Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241); translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (1846–1936) · 1901 printing of Anderson’s translation (copyright 1879); medieval work composed in Iceland around the 1220s
Edition & rights noteThe Poetic Edda (1923 translation) ↗
Anonymous Old Norse poets; translated by Henry Adams Bellows (1885–1939) · 1923 translation; medieval poems preserved principally in manuscripts of the thirteenth century
Edition & rights note