The Boy Who Raced Thought

This book grew out of two very old stories about Thor, written down in Iceland about eight hundred years ago. Here is what comes from them, and what I made up.

The two old stories

In the first story, Thor and Loki stop for the night at a poor farm. Thor kills his two goats, cooks them for supper, and tells everyone to throw the bones onto the goatskins. The farmer's son, Thjalfi, splits one bone to get at the marrow. In the morning Thor raises the goats with his hammer, and one of them limps. To make up for it, the family gives Thor their son and daughter, Thjalfi and Roskva, as his servants.

The children go with Thor and Loki across the sea into the land of the giants, sleep in a hall that turns out to be a giant's glove, and come to the castle of Utgard, where every contest is lost. Loki loses an eating match. Thjalfi runs three races against a young man called Hugi and loses all three, each by more than the last. Thor can't empty a horn, lift a cat, or beat an old woman at wrestling. Next morning the giant king tells them the truth: Hugi was his own thought, and nothing runs as fast as thought.

In the second story, a giant named Hrungnir, who has a head and heart of stone, gets drunk in the gods' hall and challenges Thor to a duel. The giants build a huge man out of clay to stand beside him, but the only heart they can find big enough is a mare's, and it shakes with fear. Thjalfi runs ahead and tricks Hrungnir into standing on his own shield. Thor's hammer breaks Hrungnir's stone weapon, a whetstone, and a piece of it sticks in Thor's head. Thjalfi brings down the clay giant. Nobody can lift the dead giant's foot off Thor until his baby son Magni, three nights old, does it easily.

What comes straight from the old stories

Nearly every big event in this book happened in the old stories, in the same order: the goat bone, the children given away, the glove, the three hammer blows on the sleeping giant, the contests at Utgard, and the morning the castle disappears. So did Odin's horse race, Hrungnir's drinking and challenge, the clay giant, Thjalfi's trick, the broken whetstone and baby Magni.

The odd facts are old as well. The tide goes out because Thor drank from the sea. Every whetstone in the world comes from the piece that fell to the ground. And in Thor's house you must never throw a whetstone across the floor, because it would move the stone in his head. The tale of Groa and her husband's frozen toe, which Roskva tells in the last chapter, is from the old story too.

What I made up

The old stories tell us almost nothing about Thjalfi and Roskva as people, so all of that is mine. Their ages, their parents Geir and Bera, their farm at Steinsdal, old Orm and his leaky boat: all made up.

I chose which goat went lame and invented the trip home to the farm to fetch the goats, life in the kitchens and goat stall at Bilskirnir, and Thjalfi looking after the lame goat's leg all winter. Roskva noticing that Hugi leaves no footprints is my idea.

Roskva isn't in the Hrungnir story at all. Her night carrying jugs in the gods' hall, and the way her exact memory of Hrungnir's words helps Thjalfi build his trick, are mine. The old story says Thjalfi tricked Hrungnir and brought down the clay giant, but not how, so the way he does it, using what a goatherd knows about frightened animals, is mine. So are his hurt ankle, the goats sent home to fetch help, and the night on the battlefield. Almost all the talking is made up too.

Where the old stories disagree

In one old poem it's Loki, not Thjalfi, who lames the goat. I followed the version where Thjalfi does it, because that's where this whole story starts. Some translations call Hrungnir's weapon a flint or a grindstone, but the old word means whetstone, a stone for sharpening blades, so I used that. The oldest stories don't give Thor's beard a color; later Norse tradition made it red, and so did I.

This book doesn't change any of the old events on purpose. I tried to keep everything that happens in them exactly as it was told. I did leave out a couple of Hrungnir's ruder boasts. He's plenty rude without them.

Finding the old stories yourself

You can read these stories in books that are free for anyone to read:

• The Children of Odin by Padraic Colum (1920) is the friendliest old retelling. Colum leaves Roskva out, so now you know she was really there.
• The Younger Edda, Snorri Sturluson's book, translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (1880), tells both stories in full. This is where most of my book comes from.
• The Poetic Edda, translated by Henry Adams Bellows (1923), is for older readers. In it Loki teases Thor about hiding in the thumb of a glove.

Thjalfi and Roskva were in the old stories all along, standing at the edge. I wanted to give them the middle for once.

Zagzook