Hymir

Summary

Hymir is a giant in the myths of the Scandinavian north who lives east of the rivers Élivágar at the edge of heaven and owns a kettle a league deep. In Hymiskviða, "the Lay of Hymir", he is the father of Týr; Thor went to him for the kettle, and with him went out to sea on the fishing trip in which Thor hauled up the world serpent. Hymiskviða 5; Old Norse text.

His is the story of the kettle. The gods came back from hunting eager to drink, and found by lot that the giant Ægir had many cauldrons. Thor ordered him to make them a feast, and Ægir asked for a kettle big enough to brew ale for them all. The gods could not find one, until Týr said that his father, the wise Hymir, owned a kettle a league deep. Thor and Týr set out, left Thor's goats with a man called Egill, and reached Hymir's hall. Týr met his grandmother, who had nine hundred heads; then his mother came out decked in gold, bringing her son a drink, and hid the two of them under the kettles, because her husband was stingy with guests and ill-tempered.

Hymir came home late from hunting; as he walked in the icicles clinked, and the forest of his cheeks was frozen. His wife told him that his son had come and with him the giants' adversary. He looked at them, and the pillar they hid behind broke; eight kettles fell, and only one, hard-hammered, stayed whole. Then he had three bulls killed, and Thor ate two of them by himself before he slept. Hymir said: tomorrow we shall live on what we catch. Thor went to Hymir's herd, tore the head off a black ox for bait, and rowed the boat far out. Hymir caught two whales at once; Thor cast the hook with the ox's head, and the serpent that encircles all the lands swallowed it. Thor hauled it to the gunwale and struck its head with the hammer Mjöllnir; the rocks roared and the earth shook, and the serpent sank into the sea.

They rowed back with the giant silent. Thor carried the boat and both whales to the house by himself. Then Hymir said: no one is strong unless he can break my cup. Thor threw the cup through the pillars and it did not break, until the woman whispered to him: strike it on Hymir's head, which is harder than any cup. He struck it on Hymir's head; the cup broke and the head was unhurt. Hymir said: much treasure has gone from me; never again shall I say, "ale, you are brewed". Týr tried twice to move the kettle and it would not stir; Thor gripped it by the rim, his feet went through the floor of the hall, and he lifted it onto his head with its rings clanging at his heels. When they had gone some way he looked back and saw Hymir coming from the east with a host of many-headed giants; he set down the kettle, raised the hammer and killed them all. Then he brought the kettle to the gods' assembly, and they drink ale at Ægir's every flax-harvest.

The idea the story turns on is that the vessel in which the gods' drink is brewed lies in the house of a frozen giant at the edge of the world. The gods cannot hold their feast without a kettle from the giants' land, and the giant who owns it is host and enemy at once: he feeds his guests bulls, takes one of them fishing, tests him with his cup, then pursues him with his host. The cup breaks on its owner's head because his head is harder, and the kettle leaves his house on Thor's.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the essay does not read it. The final r of Hymir is the Old Norse nominative ending; it drops in the genitive, Hymis, as in "two of Hymir's oxen", leaving Hym-. It is Arabic ḥamma: ḥ becomes h, and the doubled m counts as one. Lane gives ḥamma al-māʾ, "he heated it, namely, water, with fire"; ḥamīm, "hot water"; and miḥamm, a qumqum, "a vessel of copper, in which water is heated". On this reading Hymir is the owner of the miḥamm, which is what the story makes him: the poem speaks of him only because he owns the kettle in which the gods' drink is brewed. Lane also gives ḥamīm as "a relation, for whose case one is anxious", and in the same poem Hymir is Týr's father.

Linguistic Root

Hymir and miḥamm

Cleasby–Vigfusson sets the name beside húm, which in poetry is "the sea, from its dusky colour" and in prose "twilight, dusk". So the dictionary reads the name as "the dusky one", without settling it.

Lane, under ḥ-m-m: ḥammahu, "he heated it, namely, water, with fire", with aḥammahu and ḥammamahu; aḥimmū lanā al-māʾ, "heat ye for us the water"; ḥamīm, "hot water", and also cold water, a word with two contrary meanings; and the miḥamm, a qumqum, "a vessel of copper, in which water is heated". Ḥamīm is also "a relation, for whose case one is anxious or solicitous", a friend, a brother.

The comparison follows the Juthoor sound laws: ḥ is one of the gutturals that become h or drop in the European languages, and gemination becomes a single consonant. The y of Hym- is a vowel, and the i before the r is the Norse ending's vowel. This reading takes the name from the kettle; the Norse dictionary takes it from the dusk, which in poetry is also a name of the sea, the sea where Hymir and Thor went fishing.

Key Mythic Narratives

Snorri's version

Snorri tells the story another way. Thor set out alone in the likeness of a young lad, without chariot or goats, and lodged one night with Hymir. When Hymir went fishing at dawn he told Thor he was too small to be of use and would freeze if he sat out at sea as long as Hymir did. Thor tore the head off Hymir's greatest ox, named Himinhrjóðr, and rowed farther out than the boat's owner wished, until Hymir was afraid of the world serpent. When Thor raised the serpent, bracing his feet through the boat to the sea-bed, Hymir went pale with fear and cut the line with his bait-knife before the blow fell, and the serpent sank. Thor struck Hymir with his fist beside the ear, so that he fell overboard, and waded back to land.

Hymir's daughters

At Ægir's feast Loki taunts Njörðr with having been sent east as a hostage to the gods, and with Hymir's daughters pissing in his mouth. The texts mention these daughters nowhere else.

The lame goat

On the way home one of Thor's goats fell down half-dead, lame in the leg, and the one who caused it was Loki; the farmer paid with his two children. The full story is in Gylfaginning, where the farmer's son splits the thigh-bone for the marrow.

Symbolic Reading

The Norse rereading essay reads the giants Thor fights as the harsh face of nature, ice mountains, snowstorms and avalanches, and reads Thor's fishing for the serpent as an attempt to understand and master the ocean. The essay does not name Hymir, but the poem draws him in just this way: when he walks in the icicles clink, the forest of his cheeks is frozen, and he lives east of Élivágar, the rivers whose venom froze in the first void and gave rise to the first giant in Gylfaginning, as told under primordial waters. Then he goes out to sea with Thor, and his is the boat from which the serpent is raised.

The poem sets something against that cold: the kettle in which the drink is brewed sits in the frozen giant's house, so the heat the gods' feast needs is fetched from the land of cold.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Hymir's boat is where Thor first meets the world serpent, so it is a case of divine combat with sea and serpent. But the fishing at Hymir's does not end in a killing: in the poem the serpent sinks after the blow, and in Snorri's version Hymir cuts the line, so the last meeting is left for Ragnarök, where Thor kills the serpent and dies of its venom. In Snorri's version it is Hymir's fear for his boat that keeps the serpent alive until that day.

Hymir's kettle is what made Ægir's feast, and at that feast Loki railed at the gods; so the best-known feast of the gods and their best-known quarrel both come from the houses of two giants, Hymir and Ægir. Hymir stands beside another giant father, Ymir: Ymir is the father of the giants from whose body the world was made, Hymir the father of Týr from whose house the gods' kettle came.