Magni

Summary

Magni is a son of Thor by the giantess Járnsaxa, and the brother of Móði. Thor's wife Sif is called "co-wife of Járnsaxa". When Thor is asked his name he answers: I am Odin's son, Meili's brother, and Magni's father.

His story is the story of the giant Hrungnir. Odin raced this giant on horseback until Hrungnir followed him inside the walls of Asgard. The gods gave him drink, and when he was drunk he said he would carry Valhalla off to the land of the giants, sink Asgard and kill all the gods except Freyja and Sif. The gods called for Thor, and he and the giant agreed to a duel at the border. Hrungnir's heart was of stone, his head was of stone, and his weapon was a whetstone. Thor threw his hammer Mjöllnir and Hrungnir threw the whetstone; they met in the air and the whetstone broke, a piece of it lodged in Thor's head and he fell forward, while the hammer smashed the giant's skull and Hrungnir fell across Thor with his leg on Thor's neck. Thor's servant Þjálfi could not lift the leg, nor could all the gods. Then Magni came, three nights old, threw the leg off his father and said: "It is a hideous shame, father, that I came so late; had I met this giant, I would have struck him into Hel with my fist." Thor was glad of his son, said he would grow into a mighty man, and gave him Hrungnir's horse Gullfaxi. Odin said Thor had done wrong to give that good horse to a giantess's son and not to his own father.

The idea the story turns on is that Magni belongs to both sides: his father is the gods' protector, his mother is of the giants, and he lifts what all the gods could not, the dead giant's weight off his father's neck. The strength that saved Thor in his life is the strength that takes his hammer after his death: at Ragnarök Thor kills the serpent and dies of its venom, and when the new earth rises from the sea Mjöllnir belongs to Magni and his brother Móði. His name is the Norse word for strength itself: magn is might, and from the same family comes Thor's belt megingjarðar, "girdle of might", which increases his divine strength by half when he buckles it on.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The final i of Magni is the nominative ending of a weak masculine noun, the genitive being Magna, as in "Magni's father", which leaves magn-: m, g, n. The essay's reading closest to these letters is makkana: m is m, Arabic k answers g in the European languages, and n is n. Lane gives mukna as "power; ability; strength", makkanahu min al-shayʾ as "he made him to have mastery and power over a thing", and amkanahu al-amr as "it was within his power". These are the senses of the Norse word itself: magn is might, the verb magna is to strengthen, and in the same family is the verb má, "can, is able". On this reading Magni is the one who has mukna, the able one, which is what the story makes him: he lifted what the gods could not, and the hammer then passed to him.

Linguistic Root

Magni and makkana

Cleasby–Vigfusson define magn as "main, strength", comparing megin and the verb mega, with examples such as "might and main" and "to overpower by main force". Orel brings together under the Germanic *maȝenan, power, the verb magna, to strengthen, and the verb *maȝ, can, be able, whence Gothic mag and English may.

Lane, under m-k-n: makkanahu and amkanahu min al-shayʾ, "he made him to have mastery, or dominion, or authority, and power, over a thing; put it in his power"; amkanahu al-amr, "it was within his power"; tamakkana, he became firm and settled, "particularly implying in authority and power"; mukna, "power; ability; strength"; and makāna, greatness and high rank.

The comparison keeps all three letters in order. M is m, n is n, and Arabic k meets q and j in the European languages at k, c and g, as the Juthoor sound laws record, so the g of magn stands where k stands. The meeting of sense is wider than one word: strength in magn answers mukna, strengthening in magna answers tamkīn, and ability in má answers amkana. One thing remains: the Germanic family has a known Indo-European history, and Orel compares Sanskrit maghá-, gift and wealth, so the Arabic comparison stands beside that family.

Other readings in the essay

The essay puts majjana first, explaining it as bold daring, then maghānī, inherited wealth, then makkana, then mijann, shield. Lane gives majana as "he cared not for what he did nor for what was said to him", close to the daring of the infant who wishes he had killed the giant with his fist, but it does not carry the sense of strength in the Norse word. Maghānī is the plural of maghnā, whose m is the prefix of place, whereas the m of magn is a root letter; its sense of wealth meets the horse Thor gave his son. Mijann belongs to the root j-n-n, and its m is the prefix of instruments.

Key Mythic Narratives

Magni's father

In Hárbarðsljóð Thor stands on the shore of a sound and asks the ferryman to take him across. The ferryman asks his name, and Thor says: I am Odin's son, Meili's brother and Magni's father. The ferryman, as commentators read him, is Odin in disguise, so Thor names himself by his father to his father without knowing him. Near the end of the poem Thor tells the ferryman: row the boat over, let us stop this taunting, and come and meet Magni's father.

After the duel

The piece of whetstone stayed in Thor's head, and the seeress Gróa came and chanted over him until it loosened. To gladden her Thor told her that he had carried her husband Aurvandill out of the land of the giants, and that one of his toes had frozen, so Thor threw it into the sky and made it a star. She was so glad that she forgot her spell, and the piece stayed in Thor's head.

Symbolic Reading

The Semitic-reading essay makes Magni an image of strength and bold courage handed down like wealth, since he inherits his father's hammer. In the story itself he inherits a horse before the hammer: his father's spoil from the giant he killed, given to him by Thor instead of to Thor's own father, to Odin's protest.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Heracles is born to Zeus by a woman not his wife, and Hera sends two snakes to his cradle, which the infant strangles. Magni is born to Thor by a giantess who is not his wife Sif, and at three nights old he lifts the giant's leg that the gods could not. The two stories meet in the strength of the god's child born outside his marriage and part in how the child is received: Hera is Heracles's enemy, while Odin objects to the horse, not to the boy. Beside him in Norse myth stands Váli, the son of Odin who killed his brother's killer when he was one night old.