Thor and Hrungnir Battle

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.

Meanwhile, Thialfi went after Mokkurkalfi. Snorri says the clay giant fell ‘with little glory.’

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.

Then Magni arrived: Thor’s son by the giantess Jarnsaxa, just three years old. He lifted the giant’s leg off his father’s neck as if it were nothing. ‘What a shame I came so late,’ he said. ‘I think I’d have killed this giant with my 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.

But Hrungnir had left Thor a souvenir. Next: The Morning Star and the Whetstone in Thor‘s Head.