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Poetic Edda

  Thor spake:13.[1] "Great trouble, methinks,  would it be to come to thee,To wade the waters across,  and wet my middle;Weakling, well shall I pay  thy mocking words,if across the sound I come."
  Harbarth spake:14.[2] "Here shall I stand  and await thee here;Thou hast found since Hrungnir died  no fiercer man."
  Thor spake:15. "Fain art thou to tell  how with Hrungnir I fought,The haughty giant,  whose head of stone was made;And yet I felled him,  and stretched him before me.What, Harbarth, didst thou the while?"
  1. ↑ This stanza, like the preceding one, is peculiarly chaotic in the manuscript, and has been variously emended.
  2. ↑ Hrungnir: this giant rashly wagered his head that his horse, Gullfaxi, was swifter than Othin's Sleipnir. In the race, which Hrungnir lost, he managed to dash uninvited into the home of the gods, where he became very drunk. Thor ejected him, and accepted his challenge to a duel. Hrungnir, terrified, had a helper made for him in the form of a dummy giant nine miles high and three miles broad. Hrungnir himself had a three-horned heart of stone and a head of stone; his shield was of stone and his weapon was a grindstone. But Thjalfi, Thor's servant, told him the god would attack him out of the ground, wherefore Hrungnir laid down his shield and stood on it. The hammer Mjollnir shattered both the grindstone and Hrungnir's

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