Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 9/How Thor went to fish for the Serpent Midgard
HOW THOR WENT TO FISH FOR THE SERPENT MIDGARD.
A LEGEND FROM THE NORSE MYTHOLOGY.
Without his magic belt of power, or panoply of war,
Without his magic gauntlets, or brazen thunder car,
Over the rainbow bridge of heaven the son of Odin went,
Nor gods, nor men, nor dwarfs, nor elves, knew ought of his intent.
Seeking the haunts of fishermen along the sounding shore,
Where those who hunt the whale and shark dwelt in the times of yore,
He came unto a giant’s hut with feigned looks of shame,—
He seem’d a fair-hair’d stripling, as he shouted Hymir’s name.
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At break of day the giant rose, and from a chalky cave
He dragg’d his boat, so huge and black, down to the heaving wave.
Then Thor besought him long and loud his toil to let him share;
But Hymir cried, “Thou puny boy, thine be a meaner care,—
“To sweep the floor, and tend the kine; thou canst not go with me.
I go to where the walrus dives far ’neath the frozen sea,
Where the sun glows at midnight, and where the storm-birds scream
In millions round the icy cliff, and bergs that float and gleam.”
“I fear no cold nor tempest,” exclaim’d the eager youth;
“I’ll serve thee, Hymir, as a serf, with honesty and truth,
I will not be the first to say, half tremblingly, ‘Put back,’
Though wind blow high, or ice close in, or tempest-cloud grow black.”
Hymir relented; then the lad ran to the nearest herd,
And from the mightiest bull its head wrung off without a word;
Then both leap’d swiftly in the boat, and thrust it off to sea,
And, bending to the massy oars, drove it on silently.
Three days and nights the stripling row’d, till Hymir bade him stay,
For they had reach’d the sunken sands beyond the walrus bay;
But Thor replied, that farther yet he knew of better shores;
And silently, with head Lent down, drove fiercer at the oars.
The fifth day Hymir, frowning, rose and seized the rower’s hand:
“Now stop,” he said, “thou stubborn youth, we’ve reach’d the frozen land;
Turn ere the serpent swallow us, or ice, with closing teeth,
Grind us in two, or our frail boat split on the reef beneath.”
Thor knew the day and hour had come; he straight uncoil’d the line,
Then thrust the flesh upon the hook, and, without word or sign,
To Hymir’s horror through the surf the stripling toss’d the head,
And down through fathoms of blue wave it sunk as it were lead.
Fast flew the boat, as flies the shark upon the scattering shoal,
It seem’d as if it breathed and strove to reach the distant goal;
Hymir, in vain, protesting, cried, “Turn, turn the boat to land;
The icebergs are around us now, below us the quicksand.
“The Midgard Serpent the nine world girdless as with a chain,
The All-Father threw him there to roam the unfathomable main;
That serpent, sprung from Loki’s race, rules in the ocean gloom.
Turn, boy, and draw not down on us the inevitable doom.”
Thor answer’d not, but stood erect, frowning at earth and sky,
And Hymir trembled when he saw the red light of his eye.
Far, far the ice-cliffs glittering shone, far the white cliffs stretch’d forth,
Until the blue mist rose and hid the boundaries of the North.
The moment that the gory bait dragg’d on the ocean bed,
The serpent, gluttonous and fierce, ran at the great bull’s head;
The anchor-hook, so sharp and strong, deep in his palate drove,
The keen steel flukes their bloody way into his gullet clove.
Stung with the pain, the serpent rush’d, lashing the frothing deep,
O’er shoals and splintering bergs and rocks, where herds of walrus sleep.
Thor, by the rowlocks, grim and stern, held stalwartly and fast,
Clenching the cable in his grip until the worse were past.
Then, with a power divine, he seized the line that held his prey,
Until the waves rose frothing up and hid that savage fray;
He pull’d until he forced his feet through the boat’s yielding planks,
And, planted firm, he stood at last upon the granite banks.
Slowly uprising through the sea the Midgard Serpent came,
Spouting out venom in black floods, and breathing clouds of flame;
O’er leagues of ocean spread his coils in scaly mountains piled,
Far o’er the ice that roll’d and crash’d in tumult loud and wild.
When Hymir saw the serpent rise, cold turn’d his coward blood,
For fast his skiff was settling down into the whirlpool flood,
And just as Thor upraised his mace, his hunting-knife he drew,
And with a stroke the massive rope he sever’d clean in two.
Down, down the wounded serpent sank, writhing round sunken rock,
Deep in the dark abyss to wail till the day of Ragnarök,
The axe-age and the sword-age dire, when shields shall cleave in twain,
And Loki over Nifleheim with his wolf brood shall reign.
Then the god turn’d and struck the boor a fierce and crushing blow,—
A buffet that would split an oak. Into the rolling flow
Headlong he fell, and headlong sank; then, with swift strides the god
Forded the whirling torrent, and once more dry land trod.