Þjazi

Summary

Þjazi is a mountain giant of the Scandinavian myths who flew in an eagle's plumage. He carried off Iðunn and her apples from the gods, was killed at the wall of Asgard, and was the father of Skaði. His home in the mountains is called Þrymheimr, and Grímnismál says it is where "Þjazi dwelt, that mighty giant; but now Skaði lives, the gods' pure bride, in her father's old dwellings".

Bragi tells his story to Ægir at the start of Skáldskaparmál. Odin, Loki and Hœnir were travelling over mountains and wastelands, and food was hard to find. They took an ox from a herd and set it in a cooking-pit, but twice it would not cook. Then they heard a voice in an oak above them saying that the speaker was the one keeping the meat from cooking, and there sat a great eagle. If you give me my fill of the ox, he said, it will cook. When they agreed he came down on the pit and took both thighs and both shoulders. Loki in anger struck him with a pole; the pole stuck to the eagle's back and Loki's hands to its end, and the eagle dragged him over stones and trees until he swore to bring Iðunn out of Asgard with her apples. Loki lured her into a wood, and Þjazi came in the eagle's shape, seized her and flew with her to Þrymheimr.

With Iðunn gone the gods grew old. Loki was forced to bring her back: he flew to the land of the giants in the falcon-skin Freyja lent him, found that Þjazi had rowed out to sea and Iðunn was alone at home, turned her into a nut and carried her in his claws. Þjazi came home, missed her, put on his eagle-skin and flew after him so fast that his flight drew a rushing wind. The gods had carried loads of wood-shavings out to the wall; when the falcon flew in and dropped down by the wall they set them alight, and the eagle could not check itself when it missed the falcon. Its feathers caught fire, it fell, and the gods killed him inside their gates, "and that slaying is most renowned". His daughter Skaði came in arms to avenge him, and the gods made a settlement with her: a husband chosen by his feet, a laugh that Loki won from her, and then Odin took Þjazi's eyes and cast them into the sky, where they became two stars.

Ægir then asked about his family, and Bragi said: his father Ölvaldi was very rich in gold, and when he died his three sons, Þjazi, Iði and Gangr, shared the inheritance by each taking a mouthful of gold, all an equal number of times; and so poets call gold "the mouth-tally of the giants" and "the speech of the giants".

The idea his story turns on is taking, with the hand and the mouth. In his first appearance he demands his fill of the travellers' food before they have eaten and takes the best of the ox; in his father's house gold is shared out by mouthfuls; then he takes from the gods the woman who keeps them young. Everything he takes is taken back from him, and he dies chasing what was taken, flying farther than he should and falling into the fire. Then his death is paid for as men pay for a killing: a husband for his daughter, a laugh, and two eyes shining in the sky, so that something of his body is seen by everyone every night.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since neither essay reads his name. The final i of Þjazi is the nominative ending of a weak masculine noun; Snorri says drápu Þjaza, "they killed Þjazi", in the accusative. What remains is þjaz-: th, then j, which is Arabic y, then z, which in Norse is an s fused with a t or d. Germanic th comes from an older t by a regular law, as Latin tres is English three; Arabic ṭ becomes t in the European languages, and sh becomes s. So the letters are ṭ, y, sh: Arabic ṭāsha. In Lane ṭāsha is "he was, or became, light, inconstant, unsteady", "light-witted", "bereft of his reason, so as to be ignorant of that which he would endeavour to do"; ṭāshat yaduhu fī aṣ-ṣaḥfa, "his hand was light, or active, in the bowl, and took from every side"; ṭāsha as-sahm, "the arrow passed beyond the butt", or turned aside and did not hit; and al-aṭyash is "a certain bird", so called for its lightness and its frequent commotion. On this reading Þjazi is the ṭāʾish: a bird whose hand takes from every side of the dish, then flies past its mark. That is what the story makes him: an eagle who comes down on the gods' meal and takes both thighs and both shoulders, then chases the falcon, cannot check himself when he misses it, and falls into the fire at the wall.

Linguistic Root

Þjazi and ṭaysh

Cleasby–Vigfusson gives the name no origin; it calls him "the giant of that name, the father of Skaði", and refers to the Edda, Hyndluljóð, Lokasenna and Hárbarðsljóð. Of the letter z it says that it "never stands at the beginning of a word, but is merely an s assimilated to a preceding dental". Faulkes calls Þrymheimr the home of the giant Þjazi and compares þrymr, "noise", and þruma, "thunder".

Lane, under ṭ-y-sh: ṭāsha, "he was, or became, light, inconstant, unsteady, irresolute, or fickle", the contrary of forbearance; "light of intellect; lightwitted"; "he became bereft of his reason, so as to be ignorant of that which he would endeavour to do"; and of a beast, restless. Ṭāshat yaduhu fī aṣ-ṣaḥfa, "his hand was light, or active, in the bowl, and took from every side". Ṭāsha as-sahm, "the arrow passed beyond the butt", or "declined, or turned aside, from the butt, and did not hit it". Al-aṭyash, "a certain bird; app. because of its lightness, or activity, and frequent state of commotion".

The comparison follows the path the Skaði reading on this site follows: ṭ becomes t in the European languages, then Germanic turns old t into th by a regular law. Y is y, and sh becomes s, as the Juthoor sound laws record. One thing remains: Norse z is an s with a d or t fused to it; the s answers sh, and the dental fused to it has no match in ṭāsha.

Other readings

Neither essay reads Þjazi's name. Arabic tays, the he-goat, keeps t, y and s, and its t is the one that becomes th with no intermediate step. Goats do appear in his story: when his daughter came to avenge him, Loki tied a cord to a goat's beard to make her laugh. But that was a she-goat, and it belongs to his daughter's story, not his, so ṭāsha stands closer to what he himself does. The Semitic essay reads the giants' land Jötunheim as juththa and hāma, the abode of bodies, juththa being the body in Arabic; Snorri calls him "Þjazi the giant" in every place.

Key Mythic Narratives

Haustlöng: the eagle on the shield

The oldest telling of Þjazi's story is Haustlöng, in which the poet Þjóðólfr of Hvinir describes pictures painted on a shield. In it the poet calls Þjazi the "mountain-wolf", fjallgylðir, and has him ask for his fill, then lift from the board "four ox-portions", þjórhluti fjóra, which in Snorri are the two thighs and two shoulders. Then he speaks of the eagle's rush, arnsúg, as it chases the falcon, the very word Snorri takes into his prose, and then the gods kindle the shavings and the giant is scorched.

Who killed him

The accounts differ on his killer. In Snorri all the gods kill him at the wall, and it is Odin who makes his eyes into two stars. In Hárbarðsljóð Thor boasts that he killed Þjazi, "the mighty-minded giant", and cast the eyes of Alvaldi's son onto the bright sky: "they are the greatest tokens of my deeds, which all men since behold". In Lokasenna Loki tells Skaði that he was "first and foremost" at the slaying when they seized Þjazi, and she answers that only cold counsel will ever come to him from her.

Gerðr's kinsman

Völuspá in skamma says that Freyr married Gerðr, daughter of Gymir, of the race of giants, and that Þjazi was their kinsman, "a giant fond of finery", whose daughter was Skaði. So the two giantesses who married into the Vanir, Gerðr the wife of Freyr and Skaði the wife of his father Njörðr, come from one family.

Symbolic Reading

The Norse rereading essay reads the land of the giants as the frozen wild beyond the mountain ranges where no one lives, and the giants as the forces of nature beyond control. On that reading, which applies the essay's view to this story rather than quoting a reading of Þjazi, Þjazi is the mountain itself: he meets travellers in the mountains and wastelands where food is scarce, takes his share before them, and carries youth off to his distant home. What the text itself gives is a mountain home whose name comes from noise, an eagle whose flight draws a rushing wind, and two eyes that remain in the sky.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The bird closest to him is Anzu of the Akkadian epic: a great lion-headed eagle of the mountains who stands by Enlil and, when Enlil bathes, takes the Tablet of Destinies and flies off with it to his mountain, so that the rites stop and the gods are thrown into disarray, until Ninurta cuts off his wings, kills him and returns the tablet. Þjazi is a mountain eagle who takes from the gods the thing their order rests on, so that they grow old, and is killed when his feathers burn, and what he took comes back. The difference is that Anzu fights with the tablet's knowledge and turns the arrows back, while Þjazi has no weapon but his flight.

In the Mahābhārata Garuḍa flies to heaven and takes the drink of immortality from the gods, and the drink returns to heaven by Indra's trick. Þjazi takes the apples by which the gods keep their youth, and they return by Loki's trick. But Garuḍa takes the drink to ransom his mother and does not taste it, while Þjazi takes Iðunn for himself.

Loki's trick that takes Iðunn out and brings her back is a case of the trickster. The casting of Þjazi's eyes into the sky as stars, as Ymir's skull became the sky, places him in the cosmic-body pattern: a part of a slain giant's body becomes part of the heavens.