After an indescribable struggle, the monster’s terrible venom-breathing head appeared, and Thor, seizing his hammer, was about to annihilate it when the giant, frightened by the proximity of Iörmungandr, and fearing lest the boat should sink and he become its prey, drew his knife, cut the fishing line, and thus allowed the monster to drop back like a stone to the bottom of the sea.
“The knife prevails: far down beneath the main
The serpent, spent with toil and pain,
To the bottom sank again.”
Thor’s Fishing, Oehlenschläger (Pigott’s tr.).
Angry with Hymir for his inopportune interference, Thor dealt him a blow with his hammer which knocked him overboard; but Hymir, undismayed, waded ashore, and met him as he returned to the beach. Hymir then took both whales, his share of the fishing, upon his back, to carry them to the house; and Thor, wishing to show his strength also, shouldered boat, oars, and fishing tackle, and followed him.
Breakfast being disposed of, Hymir challenged Thor to show his strength by breaking his goblet; but although the thunder-god threw it with irresistible force against stone pillars and walls, it remained whole and was not even bent. In obedience to a whisper from Tyr’s mother, however, Thor suddenly hurled it against the giant’s forehead, the only substance tougher than itself, where it was shivered to pieces. Hymir, having thus seen what Thor could do, told him he might have the required kettle, which Tyr vainly tried to lift, and which Thor could raise from the floor only after he had drawn his belt of strength up to the very last hole.
“Tyr twice assayed
To move the vessel,
Yet at each time