Norse Mythology: Chapters 6–7

She felt that the man should be beaten for his impertinence, then thrown out of Asgard and sent on his way.

They found themselves looking at Loki, who stared back at them, and who smiled and held up a finger as if he had something important to divulge.

“The smith will begin to build his wall. He will not finish it. He will work for six months, unpaid, on a fool’s errand. At the end of six months we will drive him away—we might even beat him for his presumption—and then we can use whatever he has done so far as the foundations of the wall that we will complete in the years to come. There is no risk to us of losing Freya, let alone the sun or moon.”

"We will give you one season, and one season only. Tomorrow is the first day of winter. If you are not finished on the first day of summer, you leave here, unpaid. But if you have finished building the wall, as high and as thick and as impregnable as we have agreed, then you will be given everything you have asked for: the moon, the sun, and the beautiful Freya. You may have no help in building your wall from anyone; you must build this wall alone.”

“He digs fast,” said Frey, Freya’s brother.
“Well, yes, obviously he is a mighty digger of ditches and trenches,” said Loki grudgingly.

It snowed before dawn, a light dusting of snowflakes, a presentiment of the deep snows that would come further into the winter.

Each day the wall grew, and by evening it was bigger and more imposing than it had been before.

Odin called the gods to him.
“The wall is growing apace,” he said.

But Svadilfari was sure-footed and implacable, even in the thickest, wettest mud, and he hauled the rocks to Asgard, although the stone-boat was so heavy it cut deep gashes into the sides of the hills.

The mud dried and the spring flowers came out: yellow coltsfoot, and white wood anemones in profusion—and the wall being built around Asgard was a glorious, imposing thing.

The mud dried and the spring flowers came out: yellow coltsfoot, and white wood anemones in profusion—and the wall being built around Asgard was a glorious, imposing thing.

When it was finished it would be impregnable: no giant, no troll, no dwarf, no mortal would be able to breach that wall.

And the stranger continued to build it with relentless good humor.

“I would like to see whoever caused this calamity killed before I go,” said Freya.

“Svadilfari!” called the builder, and the stallion pricked his ears up and moved into a swift canter across the meadow, heading for the builder.

His face twisted; he no longer looked like the stranger who had arrived in Asgard a season before, placid and even-tempered.

“And you gods are nothing but cheats and vile oath-breakers. If I still had my horse, I would be finishing your wall now. I would be taking the lovely Freya and the sun and the moon for my wages. And I would be leaving you here in the darkness and the cold, without even beauty to cheer you.”

A huge god, red-bearded and muscular, wearing iron gauntlets and holding an iron hammer, which he swung, once.

Many people would admire Odin’s horse, but only a brave man would ever mention its parentage in Loki’s presence, and nobody ever dared to allude to it twice.

The gods were shocked when they saw what Loki and Angrboda’s children were, but that did not deter them.

They seized the children, and they bound them, and they carried the oldest between them, tied to the stripped trunk of a pine tree, and they muzzled the second child with a muzzle made from knotted willow, and they put a rope around its neck as a leash, while the third child walked beside them, gloomy and disturbing.

He stared at the girl: on the right side of her face her cheek was pink and white, her eye was the green of Loki's eyes, her lips were full and carmine; on the left side of her face the skin was blotched and striated, swollen in the bruises of death, her sightless eye rotted and pale, her lipless mouth wizened and stretched over skull-brown teeth.

He stared at the girl: on the right side of her face her cheek was pink and white, her eye was the green of Loki's eyes, her lips were full and carmine; on the left side of her face the skin was blotched and striated, swollen in the bruises of death, her sightless eye rotted and pale, her lipless mouth wizened and stretched over skull-brown teeth.

Hel said nothing, only looked at him with her single green eye, sharp as an ice chip, and her pallid eye, dull and spoiled and dead, and he saw no fear in her.

“I am only myself, Hel, daughter of Angrboda and of Loki,” she said. “And I like the dead best of all. They are simple things, and they talk to me with respect. The living look at me with revulsion.”

Odin watched the wolf-child grow with foreboding, for in his dreams the wolf had been there at the end of everything, and the last things Odin had seen in any of his dreams of the future were the topaz eyes and the sharp white teeth of Fenris Wolf.

The next day Tyr went to take the wolf his meat. “I broke the fetters,” said Fenrir. “I broke them easily.”

The wolf was still growing, and the gods were in the smithies, forging a new set of chains.

"If you can escape from these chains,” said the gods, "then your renown and your strength will be known to all the worlds. Glory will be yours. If chains like this cannot hold you, then your strength will be greater than that of any of the gods or the giants.”

The gods looked at each other, and there was the beginning of triumph in their eyes, but now the huge wolf began to twist and to writhe, to kick out his legs and strain in every muscle and every sinew.

The gods looked at each other, and there was the beginning of triumph in their eyes, but now the huge wolf began to twist and to writhe, to kick out his legs and strain in every muscle and every sinew.

The gods moved back involuntarily, and it was good that they did so, for the chains fractured and then broke with such violence that the pieces were thrown far into the air, and for years to come the gods would find lumps of shattered shackles embedded in the sides of huge trees or the side of a mountain.

"You are not stupid, Fenrir. There is no treachery here. But I understand your reluctance. It would take a brave warrior to consent to be tied up with bonds he could not break. I assure you, as the father of the gods, that if you cannot break a band like this—a veritable silken ribbon, as you say—then we gods will have no reason to be afraid of you, and we will set you free and let you go your own way.”

The wolf’s tongue lolled from his mouth, and he laughed then, showing sharp teeth each the size of a man’s arm.

The wolf growled inarticulately, and saliva poured from its mouth, forming a river.