Norse mythology is famous for its grimness: the one-eyed Allfather, the wolf that swallows the sun, the doom of the gods. But it also has a wild sense of humour, and no story shows it better than the Eddic poem Þrymskviða (“The Lay of Thrym”). In it, Thor — the strongest, hairiest, most ferocious and most masculine of the gods — wakes to find his hammer stolen, and can only get it back by dressing up as a bride and going to marry a giant.
The poem is preserved in the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda. Its date is disputed — some scholars think it one of the oldest Eddic poems, others a thirteenth-century parody — but it is universally regarded as one of the most skilful and entertaining poems in Old Norse.
The Hammer Is Gone
The poem opens with Thor waking in a rage. His hammer, Mjölnir, is gone. He shakes his beard and tosses his head, searching around him for it. The hammer is not merely a weapon: it is the gods’ chief defence against the giants, the tool that hallows weddings and funerals, and the guarantee of order in the cosmos. Without it, Asgard is defenceless.
Thor tells Loki first. Loki borrows Freya’s feather cloak, which allows the wearer to fly as a falcon, and flies to Jötunheim, the land of the giants.
Thrym’s Demand
In Jötunheim, Loki finds Thrym, lord of the giants, sitting on a burial mound, plaiting golden collars for his dogs and trimming the manes of his horses. Thrym greets him with a question: “How is it with the gods? How is it with the elves? Why have you come alone to Giantland?”
Loki asks bluntly whether Thrym has hidden the hammer. Thrym admits it. He has buried Mjölnir eight leagues beneath the earth. And no one will get it back — unless they bring him Freya as his bride.
Freya’s Refusal
Loki flies back and tells Thor, who goes straight to Freya and tells her to put on her bridal veil: they are going to Jötunheim together.
Freya’s reaction is magnificent. She is so furious that she snorts with rage, the halls of the gods shake, and her great necklace Brísingamen bursts apart. “You would know me as the most man-crazy of women,” she says, “if I went with you to Giantland.”
Heimdall’s Plan
The gods gather in council. What can they do? It is Heimdall, “the whitest of the gods,” who “foresaw well like the other Vanir,” who suggests the solution:
Let us put the bridal linen on Thor,
let him wear the great Brísingamen;
let keys jingle at his belt
and women’s dress fall about his knees,
and broad gems on his breast,
and a neat cap upon his head.
Thor is appalled. “The gods will call me unmanly,” he protests, “if I let you put the bridal linen on me.”
Loki replies with brutal practicality: “Be quiet, Thor, with such words. The giants will soon be settling in Asgard unless you get your hammer back.”
So they dress him in the bridal linen and the necklace, hang keys at his belt, let a woman’s dress fall about his knees, place broad jewels on his breast, and a neat headdress on his head. Loki, dressed as a maidservant, goes with him.
The Wedding Feast
They drive Thor’s goats to Jötunheim. The mountains break and the earth burns with flames as the thunder god rides to his wedding.
Thrym is delighted. “Stand up, giants, and strew the benches! They are bringing me Freya, Njörd’s daughter from Nóatún. Here in my yard walk gold-horned cows and jet-black oxen, the giants’ delight. I have many treasures, many jewels; only Freya was lacking.”
At the evening feast, the bride eats an entire ox, eight salmon, and all the dainties set out for the women, and drinks three casks of mead.
Thrym is alarmed. “Where have you seen a bride eat more greedily? I never saw a bride eat so much, or a maiden drink more mead.”
Loki, the quick-witted maidservant, answers: “Freya has eaten nothing for eight nights, so eager was she to come to Giantland.”
The Kiss
Thrym leans under the veil to kiss his bride — and leaps back the length of the hall. “Why are Freya’s eyes so terrible? It seems to me that fire burns from her eyes.”
The maidservant answers again: “Freya has not slept for eight nights, so eager was she to come to Giantland.”
Then Thrym’s grim old sister comes in and asks the bride for a bridal gift: “Take the red rings from your hands, if you want to win my love.”
The Hammer Returns
At last Thrym calls for the ceremony to begin:
Bring in the hammer to hallow the bride;
lay Mjölnir in the maiden’s lap;
bless us together by the hand of Vár.
(Vár is the goddess of oaths and marriage vows. Placing a hammer in the bride’s lap was apparently a real Norse wedding custom, perhaps to bless the marriage with fertility.)
The moment the hammer is laid in his lap, Thor’s heart laughs within him. He seizes Mjölnir and kills Thrym first, then the whole race of giants at the feast. The giant’s old sister, who had asked for bridal gifts, gets a blow of the hammer instead of rings.
The poem ends: “So Odin’s son got his hammer back.”
Why the Poem Is Funny
The comedy of the Þrymskviða works on several levels.
- The absurd disguise. Thor is the most unfeminine figure imaginable: enormous, red-bearded, fierce-eyed, with a legendary appetite. The idea of him in a bridal veil, trying to pass as the most beautiful of goddesses, is ridiculous.
- The appetite. The bride who eats an ox and eight salmon is a joke about Thor’s famous gluttony, which appears in other myths as well.
- Loki’s improvisations. The maidservant’s increasingly desperate excuses — she hasn’t eaten, she hasn’t slept — give the poem a rhythm of repeated near-disaster.
- The dramatic irony. The audience knows who is under the veil. Thrym does not.
Gender and Honour
The humour also has a serious edge. In Norse culture, to be called ragr or argr — “unmanly” or effeminate — was among the worst insults possible, and in medieval Icelandic law, it could justify killing. Thor’s fear that the gods will call him unmanly is real. That the most masculine god must dress as a woman to save Asgard turns the values of Norse society upside down, which is exactly what makes it funny.
Some scholars have connected the story with rituals involving cross-dressing, or with Loki’s own gender fluidity — elsewhere he becomes a mare and gives birth to Odin’s horse Sleipnir. Others see it simply as comic entertainment for an audience that knew its gods well enough to laugh at them.
The Myth in Folk Tradition
The story of the stolen hammer survived in Scandinavian folk ballads long after the conversion to Christianity. The Swedish ballad Torsvisan and the Danish Tord af Hafsgaard tell versions of it, and a similar ballad was recorded in Norway. In these, Thor (or “Tor”) loses his hammer and recovers it by disguise, much as in the Eddic poem. The story’s survival suggests that it was popular with ordinary people, not only with learned poets.
Thor’s Hammer as a Symbol
The Þrymskviða shows how central Mjölnir was to the gods’ security — and to Norse identity. During the late Viking Age, small hammer amulets became common, worn around the neck in a way that may have imitated or rivalled the Christian cross. More than a thousand have been found across Scandinavia and the Viking world. For the story of the hammer’s making, see The Legend of Thor’s Hammer, Mjölnir.
Last reviewed: September 2026.