[23]. Thor killed no women of the giants’ race on the “journey to the East” so fully described by Snorri, his great giant-killing adventure being the one narrated in the Thrymskvitha.
[24]. Valland: this mythical place (“Land of Slaughter”) is elsewhere mentioned, but not further characterized; cf. prose introduction to Völundarkvitha, and Helreith Brynhildar, 2. On the bringing of slain heroes to Othin, cf. Voluspo, 31 and note, [[130]]and, for a somewhat different version, Grimnismol, 14. Nowhere else is it indicated that Thor has an asylum for dead peasants.
[26]. The reference here is to one of the most familiar episodes in Thor’s eastward journey. He and his companions came to a house in the forest, and went in to spend the night. Being disturbed by an earthquake and a terrific noise, they all crawled into a smaller room opening from the main one. In the morning, however, they discovered that the earthquake had been occasioned by the giant Skrymir’s lying down near them, and the noise by his snoring. The house in which they had taken refuge was his glove, the smaller room being the thumb. Skrymir was in fact Utgartha-Loki himself. That he is in this stanza called Fjalar (the name occurs also in Hovamol, 14) is probably due to a confusion of the names by which Utgartha-Loki went. Loki taunts Thor with this adventure in Lokasenna, 60 and 62, line 3 of this stanza being perhaps interpolated from Lokasenna, 60, 4. [[131]]
[29]. The river: probably Ifing, which flows between the land of the gods and that of the giants; cf. Vafthruthnismol, 16. Sons of Svarang: presumably the giants; Svarang is not elsewhere mentioned in the poems, nor is there any other account of Thor’s defense of the passage.
[30]. Othin’s adventures of this sort were too numerous to make it possible to identify this particular person. By stealth: so the Arnamagnæan Codex; Regius, followed by several editors, has “long meeting with her.” [[132]]
[35]. Heel-biter: this effective parallel to our “back-biter” is not found elsewhere in Old Norse.
[37]. Hlesey: “the Island of the Sea-God” (Hler = Ægir), identified with the Danish island Läsö, in the Kattegat. It appears again, much out of place, in Oddrunargratr, 28. Berserkers: originally men who could turn themselves into bears, hence the name, “bear-shirts”; cf. the werewolf or loupgarou. Later the name was applied to men who at times became seized with a madness for bloodshed; cf. Hyndluljoth, 23 and note. The women here mentioned are obviously of the earlier type. [[133]]
[39]. Thjalfi: Thor’s servant; cf. note on stanza 14.
[40]. To what expedition this refers is unknown, but apparently Othin speaks of himself as allied to the foes of the gods.
[41]. Hatred: so Regius; the other manuscript has, apparently, “sickness.”