Hyrrokkin

"Fire-withered." A female jötunn who was summoned from Jötunheimr by the Æsir to help them launch the ship Hringhorni, so that they could make Baldr's funeral pyre on it. Hyrrokkin arrived on a giant wolf with serpents for a bridle. As soon as the giantess alighted, Odin ordered four berserkers to look after the animal but they were obliged to fell the animal before they could hold it.

Hyrrokkin then went to the ship and with a single push set it afloat, but the motion was so violent that the fire sparkled from the rollers, and the earth shook all around. Thor, enraged at the sight, grasped his hammer and would have broken her skull, had the other gods not intervened.

In a verse by the Icelandic skald Þorbjörn dísarskáld, and quoted by Snorri Sturluson in Skáldskaparmál, Thor is said to have once killed a giantess named Hyrrokkin. The name is also found among the troll-wives in the Nafnaþulur.

❧