ᛘᛁᚢᛚᚾᛁᚱ Mjólnir

The Wager and the Short Haft

After Loki shears the goddess Sif's hair, he must replace it, and from the sons of Ívaldi he commissions three treasures: hair of living gold for Sif, the ship Skíðblaðnir, and the spear Gungnir. Swaggering, he wagers his own head with the dwarf Brokkr that Brokkr's brother Sindri — named Eitri in some tellings — cannot make three treasures as fine. At the forge, Loki turns himself into a fly and bites Brokkr at the bellows: once on the arm, once on the neck, and neither bite moves him. But the third bite lands on his eyelid as Sindri works the iron, and blood blinds him for one stroke of the bellows. Out comes a hammer — and its haft is too short.

Óðinn, Þórr, and Freyr judge the treasures, and Brokkr names the hammer's virtues: however hard it is swung, it will not fail; thrown, it never misses; it will never fly so far that it does not return to the hand; and it can be made so small it is kept inside the shirt. Only the short haft stands against it. The gods judge it the best of all six gifts, for with it the Æsir can defend themselves against the frost giants — and Loki keeps his head. The flaw in the most trusted weapon in the world is the permanent signature of Loki's sabotage.

The Hammer in the Bride's Lap

Þórr wakes one morning and the hammer is gone. Loki borrows Freyja's feather-coat, flies to Jötunheimr, and hears Þrymr, lord of giants, boast that he has buried Mjǫllnir eight leagues under the earth — and no one gets it back unless Freyja is brought to him as bride. Freyja's rage at the suggestion shakes the hall and snaps her necklace Brísingamen, so the gods take counsel, and Heimdallr proposes the unthinkable: dress Þórr as the bride. The thunder-god protests, but Loki answers that without the hammer the giants will soon be living in Ásgarðr — and so Þórr is veiled, hung with Brísingamen and jingling keys, and driven to Jötunheimr with Loki as his maidservant.

The comedy is exact: the 'bride' devours an ox and eight salmon and drinks three casks of mead, and Loki must explain that Freyja has not eaten for eight nights, so great was her longing. Þrymr lifts the veil to steal a kiss and leaps the length of the hall from the fire in her eyes — eight nights without sleep, Loki insists. Then Þrymr calls for the hammer to be brought in to hallow the bride, laid on her knees by the hand of Vár. Þórr's heart laughs; his hand closes on the haft. He kills Þrymr first, then the giant's whole household. It is the funniest poem in the Edda and the hammer's most famous story — and the joke has a hard core: the hammer laid in the bride's lap is not a stage prop but the actual consecration of a marriage.

Hallowing Baldr's Pyre

When Baldr lies dead, the gods build his pyre on his ship Hringhorni, and the giantess Hyrrokkin, riding a wolf with vipers for reins, must be fetched to launch it. Baldr's wife Nanna dies of grief and is laid beside him. Then Þórr steps forward, raises Mjǫllnir, and hallows the pyre — the god of thunder consecrating the ship of the dead god before the fire is lit. A dwarf named Litr runs before his feet in that moment, and Þórr kicks him into the flames. The same gesture that revives his goats after they have been slaughtered and eaten, that blesses the bride at the wedding feast, here blesses the burning of the best of the gods. Hammer at the cradle, hammer at the marriage bed, hammer at the grave: the sources are clear that Þórr's weapon marked every threshold of life, and the Viking-age custom of wearing it hung that power around the neck.