Thrym

Thrym was a Frost Giant King of Jötunheim, remembered as a cunning Jötunn who stole Thor's hammer Mjölnir while the thunder god slept. His tale survived as a shrine story that Mimir told Atreus, a cautionary account of a giant who held the bane of his own people and squandered it. Rather than keep the weapon, Thrym bartered it for Freya's hand, a choice that brought about his death.

The theft of Mjölnir#

Thrym was a Giant King of Jötunheim and, by Mimir's account, a rather cunning individual, for he managed to steal Mjölnir from Thor while the thunder god slept. The hammer was the single greatest threat to the Jötnar, the weapon with which Thor had butchered countless giants, and for a brief time it lay in the hands of one of their own.

Yet Thrym did not think the matter through. Holding the one thing that could have protected his people, he chose instead to use it as leverage. He offered to return Mjölnir to the Aesir if they would give him Freya as his bride, never mind that she was already married to Odin. Mimir judged that Thrym did not always think with his brain, and that in returning the hammer he threw away the only advantage the Jötnar had ever held over Thor.

The wedding and his death#

Odin cared little for Freya, but he saw in Thrym's demand an opportunity. Thrym's palace lay in Jötunheim, and only giants knew the way; by agreeing to the marriage, the Aesir would have to escort Freya into the hidden realm. Odin therefore coerced Freya into using her seidr to conceal Thor, so that the thunder god could be smuggled to the feast disguised at her side.

When the hammer was produced as the wedding dowry, Thor cast off the disguise. He seized Mjölnir and wasted no time in smashing Thrym's skull, then turned on every other Giant present and butchered them in turn. The slaughter ended only when Freya, wanting no part of it, cast a powerful spell that hurled both herself and Thor out of Jötunheim with no means of return. Odin was livid, for he had hoped Thor's foothold in the realm of the giants would become his own.

A lesson remembered#

Mimir preserved Thrym's story as a shrine tale and offered it to Atreus as a lesson. For Thrym, he said, the moral was to keep one's priorities straight, for the giant had let the bane of his people slip back into enemy hands in pursuit of a bride he could never have kept. The same tale carried other lessons too: for Freya, that doing good has a price, and for Thor, that no object of power makes a man what he is.