The Hammer and the Dress
Thor woke up, reached to the side and grabbed for Mjolnir. It was the first thing he did every morning, the way other people reach for their spectacles or the piss-pot. But his hand closed on nothing. He felt again. Nothing. He sat up, and what happened to his face at that moment is the sort of thing you would rather not see.
He turned his entire hall Bilskirnir upside down. Benches flew. Tables shattered. He tore at his own sheets as if the hammer had somehow hidden itself in the bed. Sif stood in the doorframe and watched him with the look only a wife who has seen it all before can produce. Then he went to Loki, because Loki always knew more than he should, and Thor had a simple approach to these situations: if something was stolen, Loki was either guilty or knew who was.
"My hammer," said Thor, and his whole body trembled with the kind of controlled rage that precedes uncontrolled rage. His hands opened and closed, and the knuckles were white. "If you have anything to do with this I will kill you with my bare hands. I do not need a hammer for that."
Loki, who recognised the tone and knew exactly where the line was, protested his innocence. It was not him. It was not something he had caused indirectly either, at least not this time. He borrowed Freyja's falcon cloak to fly to Jötunheimr and investigate. The falcon cloak was Freyja's most private possession, and the fact that she lent it out said something about how seriously the gods took a missing Mjolnir.
In Jötunheimr the giant Þrymr sat on a hill, twisting gold collars for his hounds and evening out the manes of his horses, calm in the way only the man with the upper hand can be. He had neat braids in his beard and gold chains around his neck and smiled broadly when he saw the falcon land. "Looking for something?" he asked. He had buried Mjolnir eight leagues underground, and the price for its return was Freyja. As a wife. In his bed. Loki flew home.
Freyja took the news roughly as you would expect. Her famous necklace Brísingamen burst from the force of her fury, the beads bouncing across the floor, and her nostrils flared until the gods worried she might start breathing fire. "Do you think," she said, and it was a calm more dangerous than screaming, "that I am a woman you can wrap up and send as payment to a giant? That I am a cow you lead by the halter? Do you think I should ride to Jötunheimr and spread my legs like a whore for some bastard with braids in his beard? All of Asgard will call me the most man-crazed of all the goddesses, and I will not have that on me." The gods sat in silence and stared at the table.
It was Heimdallr who said it. Of all the gods it was Heimdallr, who normally kept to himself out at Bifröst and seldom involved himself in others' business, who put forward the suggestion. He said it calmly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world: dress Thor as the bride. Give him a dress and a veil and Brísingamen around his neck and send him to Þrymr as Freyja.
The silence that followed was so dense you could have cut it with a knife. Thor went white. Then red. Then white again. The veins on his neck stood out like ropes. "Never," he said, and his voice was so low it was barely audible. "They will call me a faggot. They will say I have become a woman. Never."
But Loki, who had begun to smile that smile that never bodes well, put a hand on his shoulder. "You want your hammer, Thor. And Þrymr wants a bride. What does it cost to be beautiful for one evening?" He leaned closer. "Besides, if there is anyone in this hall who knows what it feels like to be called a faggot, it is me. I survived. So will you."
So they dressed the thunder god in bridal linen. They pulled the dress over his shoulders, and the fabric strained until the seams protested. They hung Brísingamen around his neck, which was about as feminine as an oak stump. They veiled his face, and the veil moved with each breath as though a gale was blowing underneath. They hung keys at his belt and begged him for the love of all that is holy not to clench his fists. Loki dressed as the bridesmaid and could barely breathe for suppressed laughter, and Thor turned to him with a look that promised future violence.
They rode to Jötunheimr in Thor's chariot, drawn by his goats Tanngnjóstr and Tanngrisnir, and the ground burned beneath the wheels and the mountains shook. There stood Þrymr beaming with joy on the steps of his hall, with all of Jötunheimr invited to the wedding. He had decked the hall in ribbons and flowers and slaughtered animals for a feast meant to last for days. "At last," he said. "At last Freyja comes."
The bride was unusually broad across the shoulders. Þrymr did not comment. The bride's hands were like spades and her forearms had sinews like rope, but Þrymr was in love and love makes you blind, and apparently that applies to giants too. They sat at the table, and Þrymr sat beside his bride and smiled and was happy, and it was almost tragic when you thought about it, but no one thought about it.
The bride ate an entire ox, eight salmon, and three platters of sweets, and washed it all down with three barrels of mead. Þrymr stared. "I have never seen a bride eat so much," he said. Loki, sitting beside her in all his bridesmaid finery, answered quickly: "She has not eaten for eight days out of longing for you, Þrymr. Eight days. Not a bite. That is how great her love was." Þrymr nodded, flattered, and his heart swelled.
Then he leaned forward to kiss the bride. He lifted the veil gently, and was met by a pair of eyes burning with such intense, concentrated, furious hatred that he stumbled back three paces and hit the bench behind him. "Why does the bride have such fierce eyes?" he asked in a tone that revealed he was genuinely terrified. "She has not slept for eight nights out of longing for you, Þrymr," said Loki. "Eight nights. Not a wink. See how the fire of passion burns in her gaze."
Þrymr bought it, and he was not the first man to let his cock think instead of his head. Þrymr's sister went up to the bride and asked for bridal gifts, rings of gold, and the bride stared at her with a look that should have given everything away, but weddings make people blind.
As was the custom at giant-weddings the hammer was laid in the bride's lap to bless the marriage. Mjolnir was laid in Thor's lap. It was like handing the cleaver back to a butcher. Thor's fingers closed around the shaft, and in that moment the bride vanished and the god returned, and what happened next was brief and terrible.
Þrymr died first. His skull cracked like a pot. Then his sister, who had had the cheek to ask for bridal gifts. Then his brothers. Then everyone else. Thor tore through the hall like a butcher through a sheep pen. Blood and teeth and splinters of bone flew through the air. The dress ripped and fell from him in pieces, and he stood in shreds of bridal linen and giant-blood and Brísingamen had slid down around his waist like a belt.
He rode home with a bloody hammer and crushed bridal ornaments, and it is said he never spoke of that evening again. The other gods tried sometimes, over the mead-horns, with a smile. Thor looked back with a gaze that ended conversations. Mjolnir was home. That was all that counted.
It was not only giants who wanted a piece of Thor's family. The dwarf Alvíss came to Asgard and demanded Thor's daughter. He was small as dwarfs are, pale as dwarfs are, and self-confidence he did not lack. He said that Þrúðr had been promised to him, that a deal was a deal, and that he had come to collect his bride. Thor, who had been away traveling, looked down at him from his full height and said nothing for a while.
'You,' said Thor at last. 'Want my daughter.' He said it slowly, as though tasting each word and finding that it tasted like shit. 'You look like a corpse that crawled out of its own grave. And you have the nerve to come here and demand to fuck my daughter?' Alvíss answered that he lived beneath the mountain, that he was the wisest of all dwarfs, that his knowledge spanned all nine worlds, and that he had been promised Þrúðr while Thor was away traveling. Thor leaned back and crossed his arms.
'Prove it,' said Thor. 'Answer my questions, every one, and she is yours. What is the sun called among gods, among elves, among dwarfs, among giants?' Alvíss answered. 'What is the moon called?' Alvíss answered. 'What is the wind called, the sea, the fire, the forest, the night, the grain, the ale?' Alvíss answered everything, thoroughly and correctly, with the kind of showmanship that only someone who knows he is right can deliver.
Question after question. Hour after hour. Thor asked more and Alvíss answered every one with the patience and the pride that would be his undoing. The night passed. They sat in the hall, just the two of them, and the candles burned down. Alvíss noticed nothing. He was too busy demonstrating how much he knew.
Dawn came like a spear through the hall's opening. The sunlight struck Alvíss full in the face, and his skin hardened, his eyes froze, and the dwarf who was the wisest of all dwarfs turned to stone in the middle of an answer. Thor stood up, stretched, and looked down at the boulder that had just been demanding his daughter. 'With a single mind I deceived you,' he said. 'You sit above ground, dwarf. The day has taken you.' Then he went and had breakfast.
But Thor's adventures in Jötunheimr were far from over. There were rumours of a king in Útgarðr, one who called himself Útgarða-Loki, and who was said to be the mightiest of all giants. Thor decided to pay him a visit.