Thor saw Hrungnir standing on his shield and he ran toward the giant. Lightning struck all around Thor, and thunder crashed.
Hrungnir saw Thor in all his divine fury.
Thor, still far away from the giant, raised Mjolnir and threw it.
Hrungnir lifted the whetstone off his shoulder with both hands and threw it to intercept Thor’s hammer.
Mjolnir crashed through the whetstone, breaking it in two. One piece fell to Earth and is the source of all the whetstones in the world today. Hrungnir’s weapon didn’t slow Mjolnir at all. The hammer crashed into the giant’s skull and shattered it.
The second piece of the whetstone pierced Thor’s skull and he fell to the ground. Hrungnir fell on top of the god. The giant’s leg lay across Thor’s neck, suffocating him.
In the meantime, Thialfe faced Mokkurkalfi. The fight was so one-sided that it’s not worth recounting the tale in these stories.
When Thialfe finished with Mokkurkalfi, he ran to Thor, not knowing whether the god was alive and unconscious or dead. He tried to lift the giant’s leg off of Thor’s neck, but he wasn’t strong enough. The Aesir came together to lift the giant’s leg, and they, together, were not strong enough to move it an inch.
Thor’s toddler son, Magni, just three years old, wandered over to his father and lifted the leg from his father’s neck with ease. Magni lamented that he had not arrived sooner. He thought he probably could’ve killed Hrungnir with his balled-up fist.
Thor stood and thanked his son. He then gifted Hrungnir’s horse, Gullfaxi, to Magni.
Odin was dismayed with Thor’s gift. He said that Thor shouldn’t give such a fine horse to the son of a giantess but rather to himself as father of Thor.
Sources:
The Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson, Penguin Classics (2005).
The Definitive Guide to Norse Mythology: The Gods Heroes, Monsters, and Legends of Viking Culture by Finn D. Moore (2022).
