From a horse race to a challenge
Odin rides Sleipnir into giant country and encounters Hrungnir, who boasts that his own horse Gullfaxi is faster. A race carries the angry giant into Asgard. There he receives drink and becomes threatening: he talks of destroying the gods, taking their hall, and carrying off Freyja and Sif. The gods call Thor to deal with the increasingly dangerous guest.
Hrungnir insists that he entered under protection and that killing him unarmed would bring Thor little distinction. He proposes a formal duel. Thor accepts, and the giant returns home to prepare. Hrungnir has a stone head and heart, a stone shield, and a whetstone as his weapon. The giants also construct a huge clay companion, Mökkurkálfi, but give it a mare’s heart, which proves unsuited to courage under pressure.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Skáldskaparmál, “Extracts from the Poetical Diction,” “Thor and Hrungner,” pp.169–172 in Anderson
A victory with a trapped victor
Before the duel, Þjálfi runs ahead and tells Hrungnir that Thor will attack from below. The giant therefore stands on his shield instead of holding it in front of him. Thunder announces Thor’s arrival. Hrungnir throws the whetstone as Thor throws his hammer. The weapons meet in flight; the whetstone breaks, and a fragment lodges in Thor’s head, while the hammer crushes Hrungnir’s skull.
The falling giant’s leg lands across Thor’s neck. Þjálfi has killed the clay giant but cannot free his master, and the other gods also fail. Thor’s son Magni arrives when only three nights old and lifts the leg away. Thor rewards him with Gullfaxi. Odin objects that Thor has given the horse to his son by a giant woman instead of to Odin himself. The victorious household is not free of rivalry over the spoils.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Skáldskaparmál, “Thor and Hrungner,” pp.172–174 in Anderson
The interrupted cure
Thor still has the stone fragment in his head. The healer Gróa sings charms that begin to loosen it. Encouraged, Thor tells her that he carried her husband Aurvandill across a river in a basket. One toe froze during the journey; Thor broke it off and placed it in the sky as a star. He adds that Aurvandill will soon return home.
Gróa is so delighted by the news that she forgets her healing songs, leaving the stone embedded. The duel’s narrative therefore closes with an incomplete recovery. Thor’s force destroys his enemy, but a child must release him, and well-intentioned speech disrupts the treatment of his wound. Snorri’s account incorporates and explains poetic material, including verses associated with Haustlöng. The explanation here follows the connected prose rather than treating every later elaboration as independently attested in the older poem.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Skáldskaparmál, “Thor and Hrungner,” pp.174–175 in Anderson; adjacent Haustlöng citation within that account
- 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.
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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 note