Thrym

Also Known As: Old Norse Þrymr, “noise, din, crash”; also anglicised Thrymr and Trym; titled þursa dróttinn, “lord of thurses”
Region/Culture: Northern Europe
Mythos: Norse Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: He is a jötunn wealthy enough to hold the gods to ransom and patient enough to bury their best weapon rather than swing it.
Role in Mythos: He steals Thor’s hammer and names the goddess Freyja as the price of its return, setting off the most comic and most quoted disaster in the Eddic collection.
Relation to Humans: No mortal appears anywhere in his story, and no source records anyone worshipping him or fearing him at a particular place. What he offered medieval Icelanders was entertainment rather than dread, and a fifteenth-century rímur cycle retold his humiliation for audiences who clearly could not get enough of it.

Eight leagues below the earth, under rock and root where nothing grows, the most feared weapon in the north lay buried and perfectly quiet. The giant who put it there was not in hiding. He sat out in the open on a burial mound in Jötunheim, plaiting gold into leashes for his dogs and working the tangles from his horses’ manes, waiting with the calm of a man who knows the visitors are coming to him.

His name means noise. Þrymr is the Old Norse word for a din, a crash, the kind of sound that rolls. A creature called Din had stolen the thunder and put it underground, and whoever composed the poem knew exactly what they were doing with that.

Everything known about him comes from a single source, and the source is one of the best poems in the collection. Þrymskviða survives only in the Codex Regius, where it sits just after Lokasenna. Snorri Sturluson, who quotes from nearly everything else, never quotes it, and the story of the stolen hammer does not appear in the Prose Edda at all. The poem’s age has been argued about for two centuries without resolution. Older critics put it around 900 and called it one of the earliest things in the book. Jan de Vries offered a choice of 870 to 1000 or 1150 to 1200 and thought the later option made it a Christian-era parody of the old gods. Peter Hallberg argued for thirteenth-century Iceland. John McKinnell has suggested a twelfth-century composition or reworking. The poem is either a pagan survival or a medieval joke about pagans, and the people best qualified to say cannot agree.

The theft itself happens offstage. The poem opens with Thor awake and furious, shaking his beard, hair bristling, groping around for something that is not there. Loki borrows Freyja’s feather-dress and flies to the giants’ country, and finds Þrymr on his mound with the gold cord in his hands. The exchange that follows is brisk. Yes, he has the hammer. Yes, it is eight measures deep in the ground, rendered by translators as miles or leagues depending on the century. No, nobody is getting it back unless Freyja is delivered to him as a wife.

He is not bluffing and he is not negotiating. That is the whole of his leverage, and for a while it works.

Freyja’s answer, when the proposal reaches Asgard, is the funniest line in the poem and the one that does the most work. She snorts with such rage that the halls of the gods shake and Brísingamen, the great necklace, bursts off her neck and hits the floor. She says she would look like the most man-mad creature alive if she travelled to Jötunheim on that errand. The gods hold council. Heimdall proposes the solution that gives the poem its reputation: put the veil on Thor. Thor objects that the Æsir will call him unmanly. Loki points out that the alternative is giants living in Asgard by the end of the week. The veil goes on, the necklace goes on, the keys rattle at his waist, the dress hangs to his knees, broad gems sit on his chest and a neat little cap goes on his head. Loki comes along as the bridesmaid.

The goats tear at their halters and run. Mountains split, the earth catches fire, and Odin’s son arrives at the wedding.

What happens at the feast is the reason the poem has never gone out of circulation. Þrymr, delighted, orders straw spread on the benches and reels off his holdings like a man reading from a ledger, gold-horned cattle, black oxen, gems, treasures, everything he could want, and only Freyja missing from the list. Then the food comes out. The bride eats an entire ox and eight salmon, clears every delicacy set aside for the women, and washes it down with three casks of mead. Þrymr, staring, says he has never in his life seen a bride bite so wide. Loki, from the next seat, explains that Freyja has not eaten for eight nights, so violently did she long for Jötunheim. The giant accepts this. He lifts the veil to kiss her and throws himself backwards the entire length of his own hall, because the eyes under the linen are burning. Loki explains that Freyja has not slept for eight nights either. He accepts that too.

He was described by one modern scholar as aggressive, stupid, and bombastic throughout, and it is hard to improve on that.

Then he calls for the hammer. Not as a weapon, as a wedding rite: bring in Mjölnir, lay it on the bride’s knees, and let the goddess of oaths bless the pair of them. It is the single most catastrophic piece of ceremonial etiquette in Norse literature, and it is entirely his own idea. Thor’s heart laughs inside his chest when he sees it come through the door. He kills Þrymr first, then every giant in the hall, then the old sister who had spent the evening asking the bride for a gift of red gold rings. She got a blow instead of shillings.

No source gives him parents, an origin, or a death anywhere but that hall. The genealogical tract Hversu Noregr byggðist lists three figures called Þrymr, a ruler of Agder, his grandson Ketill Þrymr, and a jötunn of Verma who fathered Bergfinn and Bergdísa, but nothing in it ties them to the hammer-thief, and the name was clearly common enough to be reused. He appears in the þulur appended to the Prose Edda, almost certainly copied out of Þrymskviða rather than remembered independently. In the fifteenth century an Icelandic poet reworked the whole episode as Þrymlur, three rímur in three different verse forms, fuller in places than the Eddic poem and carrying details the Edda does not, though noticeably more solemn about the business of Thor in a dress.

His strength was never physical, and the poem is uninterested in whether he could have fought Thor. His power was the burial. Once the hammer was eight measures underground, the gods had no way to find it and no way to threaten him, and a creature with no particular distinction became, for the length of one poem, the most dangerous being in the nine worlds. His weakness was that a hoard is not a use. He did not want the hammer, he wanted a wife, and a wife required a ceremony, and the ceremony required the hammer back in the room and within reach of the only hand in the north that could lift it. He dug the thing up himself and had it carried in on a cushion.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Thrym in Norse mythology?

Thrym, Old Norse Þrymr, is a jötunn who steals Thor’s hammer Mjölnir and refuses to return it unless the goddess Freyja is given to him as a wife. His name means “noise” or “din”. He is the title figure of the Eddic poem Þrymskviða, and almost everything recorded about him comes from that one poem.

Why did Thrym steal Thor’s hammer?

Thrym stole the hammer as a ransom demand rather than as a weapon for himself. He buried it eight measures deep in the earth and told Loki plainly that no one would get it back unless Freyja became his bride. He boasts of owning gold-horned cattle, black oxen, gems and treasure, and says Freyja was the only thing his wealth had not bought him.

How did Thor get his hammer back from Thrym?

Thor went to the wedding disguised as the bride, veiled and wearing Brísingamen, with Loki beside him as the handmaid. Thrym himself called for Mjölnir to be brought in and laid on the bride’s knees to bless the marriage, which put the hammer directly into Thor’s reach. Thor killed Thrym first, then the rest of the giants in the hall.

Is the story of Thrym ancient or medieval?

Scholars have never agreed. Some date Þrymskviða to around 900 and count it among the oldest Eddic poems, while Jan de Vries raised the possibility of a twelfth-century date and read it as a Christian-era parody of the pagan gods, and Peter Hallberg argued for thirteenth-century Iceland. The poem survives only in the Codex Regius, and Snorri Sturluson never quotes it.

Does Thrym appear anywhere outside the Poetic Edda?

Yes, though thinly. He is listed among giant-names in the þulur appended to the Prose Edda, probably taken from Þrymskviða itself, and the whole episode was retold in the fifteenth-century Icelandic rímur cycle Þrymlur. Three separate figures named Þrymr also appear in the genealogical tract Hversu Noregr byggðist, but none of them is clearly the hammer-thief.