Snorri Sturluson qua Fulcrum: Perspectives on the Cultural Activity of Myth, Mythological Poetry and Narrative in Medieval Iceland

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developed on a story-pattern of Þórr’s visit to a giant’s hall, of which it can 

be recognized as a parody.

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 Most notably, Snorri’s presentation is the only 

example in which Þórr is defeated and humiliated by his giant adversary 

without redemption. 

 

The encounter in the hall is constructed as an allegory concerning the 

interpretation of poetic language.

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  Each  of  Þórr’s  (male)  companions  is  

presented with a challenge, and Þórr is presented with three. Rosemary 

Power points out that the allegorical nature of these challenges is generally 

exceptional in Old Norse prose literature.

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 The opponents in these 

encounters are beings and forces veiled behind transparent names (Logi, 

‘Wildfire’, Hugi, ‘Thought’, Elli, ‘Old Age’) and more complex visual 

kennings (a giant grey cat = ‘the world serpent’;

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 a drinking horn filled with 

the sea = ‘the mead of poetry’

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). Snorri uses allegorical techniques within the 

context of his treatise on the art of poetry to transform an adventure-

narrative of Þórr into a parable on poetic language and language use: Þórr is 

duped and humiliated because he does not correctly interpret what things 

are  called  (heiti, to use Snorri’s term) or their representations (kennings). 

Þórr’s failure to empty the horn filled with the sea in three drinks implicitly 

contrasts him with Óðinn’s successful draining of three containers of the 

mead of poetry in one drink each (§4). Mythological traditions appear to be 

consciously employed and manipulated as a resource and referent in this 

account.  

 

The play between language, image and referent already emerges in 

the adventure with the giant Skrýmir. This adventure opens with Þórr and 

                                                                                                                                          

ibid. 173–175). Snorri’s representation may potentially be intended to parody human ritual activity 

(sharing the god’s animal in a ritual feast), emphasizing Þórr’s failure as a worshipped god. 

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 For a survey of this story-pattern, see John McKinnell, Both One and Many: Essays on Change and 

Variety in Late Norse Heathenism, Il Calamo: Roma 1994, at 57–86; cf. Frog, ‘Circum-Baltic 

Mythology? – The Strange Case of the Theft of the Thunder-Instrument (ATU 1148b)’, in Archaeologia 

Baltica 15 (2011, in press; hereafter Frog 2011b), 78–98, at 88–90. 

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 The following is based on Kaaren Grimstad’s discussion and explication of the Útgarða-Loki episode 

and its images, which I was lucky enough to hear as an undergraduate in her lectures on Old Norse 

mythology at the University of Minnesota. 

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 Rosemary Power, ‘'An Óige, an Saol agus an Bás,' Feis Tighe Chónain and 'Þórr's Visit to Útgarða-

Loki'’, Bealoideas 53 (1985), 217–294. Rudolf Simek (2009, 81–82) points out that allegory was essential 

to the skaldic poetic tradition and conventional to the medieval intellectual climate; cf. Klingenberg 1986. 

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 ‘Grey-back’ = snake (cf. LP, s.v. ‘grábakr’, ‘grár’) + ‘cat’ = giant (ibid., s.v. ‘k ttr’)   ‘snake giant’ = 

world serpent.  

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 Quinn 2010, 224–225; the ‘drink’ or ‘cup’ of Óðinn, the gods, a giant or dwarf was a central conceptual 

metaphor for ‘poetry’; poetic synonyms for ‘sea’ (e.g. brim, unnr, vágr) functioned in an equivalence 

class for ‘drink’ (see Meissner 1921, 429); thus the sea in the drinking-horn of the giant-host = ‘mead of 

poetry’ (cf. the kenning hornstraum Hrímnis, ‘horn-stream of the giant’ = ‘poetry’, in a verse from a 

poem about Þórr quoted by Snorri in Skáldskaparmál, ch. 4); see also Clover 1978; Frank 1981. 

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his companions finding a great hall in which they spend the night. Owing to 

earthquakes and thunderous roaring, the companions retreat into the side-

room and Þórr stands watch. In the morning, they discover that the hall is a 

mitten and the side-room is its thumb (þumlungr); the disturbance was the 

giant’s snoring. Seth Lerer has proposed that Þórr’s misrecognition of 

Skrýmir’s ‘mitten’ as a ‘hall’ is a play on an incomplete kenning, *‘hall of the 

hand’ (= ‘mitten’).

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 Thereafter, Þórr’s activities are also otherwise forestalled 

by fixation on surface representations without recognizing or accessing the 

content or referent. Skrýmir becomes a travelling companion and all of the 

food is placed in a common sack; in the evening, the giant goes to sleep and 

Þórr is unable to open the sack (owing to unseen magic iron fastenings) 

leaving him and his companions without supper. Þórr then angrily attempts 

to strike the sleeping giant three times, unaware that he is striking hills (!) 

rather than the giant. When the giant ‘wakes’ after each blow, Þórr retreats. 

This final display of Þórr’s ineffectiveness is more peculiar because Skrýmir 

appears as nothing less than a helpful travelling companion (who in fact 

directs Þórr to Útgarða-Loki’s hall), neither threatening nor attempting to 

cause any actual harm. The illusions appear to have no greater purpose than 

to mock and annoy, which makes them unique in the corpus. 

 

The term þumlungr referring to the ‘thumb of a mitten or glove’ is only 

found in Edda, its direct adaptation into Lokrur (II, 23.4), and in Lokasenna, 

where it is used in an insult against Þórr: “sízt í hanzca þumlungi / hnúcþir 

þú, einheri // oc þóttisca þú þá Þórr vera”.

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 This clearly refers to the night in 

Skrýmir’s glove. A parallel insult is leveled against Þórr by Óðinn in 

Hárbarðsljóð, suggesting it was conventional (verbal correspondences in 

cursive): “af hrozlo oc hugbleyði / þér var í hanzca troðit // oc þóttisca þú þá 

Þórr vera“.

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 The insult in Hárbarðsljóð uses the verb troða (‘to step, tread; to 

stomp, stuff, cram’). This indicates a) that Þórr was physically forced with 

effort into the mitten, and b) that the mitten was a tight, cramped space, into 

which  Þórr  could  only  be  gotten  with  effort.  It  does  not  correlate  with  

Snorri’s description or the insult in Lokasenna. It aligns instead with the 

description of the glov (‘glove’) in which Grendel kept his victims in Beowulf 

(2085b–2090), and the mittens or gloves in which victims are stuffed in later 

                                                

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 Seth Lerer, ‘Grendel’s Glove’, ELH 61 (1994), 721–751. 

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 Lokasenna, st. 60.4–6. ‘since in the thumb of a mitten / you sat cowering, Óðinn-warrior // and you did 

not then seem to be Þórr’. 

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 Hárbarðsljóð, st. 26.3–5. ‘in fear and cowardice / you were crammed in a mitten // and you did not then 

seem to be Þórr’. 

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