These eight nights:
Such was her longing
To visit Jotunheim!”
The giant’s sister came for a bridal present, and one she was about to get that she little expected. The mallet, by Thrym’s command, was now brought forth, that the wedding might be solemnised over it. The god laughed as he grasped his well-known bolt; and no sooner did he grasp it than he killed Thrym, the sister, and all assembled.[[86]]
According to Magnussen, the physical meaning of the poem is this. During the winter, Thor, the god of thunder, sleeps; and Thrym, the lord of that season, hides the thunderbolt. Loke (flame, and by an extension of the metaphor, heat) is sent in pursuit of it. The sun and moon were very meet and very natural gifts for the inhabitants of the dark region to solicit from the gods; and the world, on the present occasion, must have been left in darkness, or rather perhaps in cold, but for the interference of Thor. In the foundation of his theory, the critic is doubtless correct; but in the explanation of the attendant circumstances,—that in which the god assumes the female habit—he is whimsical enough. The truth is, that the foundation only can be traced in any of their myths: the circumstances are introduced purely for the sake of the embellishment, or for ensuring greater probability to the fable.
Before we dismiss Thor, we must advert to the goddess Sif, his wife. The word means a conjunction, kindred, and probably she was one of his family. By her he had two sons, Magne and Mode, and two daughters, Thrude and Lora. He was not her first husband, whose name does not appear; but she had a son named Uller by that husband.[[92]] She excelled in chastity, and was much worshipped, not in Scandinavia only, but among the Vends, and perhaps the Slavonians, as a personification of the summer-earth. Her greatest pride is her fair hair, which, like the hammer of Thor, and the magic ring possessed by Odin, was the work of the dwarfs. She is thus described by Ohlenschlager:
Sif, tall and fair with native grace,
To none in beauty need give place
Save her whom Odin called to light,
To make the erst dull world more bright.