Þjazi

Þjazi of Þrymheimr, in eagle-shape, trapped Loki mid-flight and ransomed him for Iðunn and her apples of youth. With the goddess gone the gods began to grey, and Loki was ordered to undo his deal: in Freyja's falcon-cloak he stole into Jötunheimr, turned Iðunn into a nut, and flew for home with the eagle a wingbeat behind. The gods heaped kindling at Asgard's wall and lit it as Loki dived over — Þjazi's wings caught, and the gods killed him where he fell.

His daughter Skaði came armed for vengeance, and the settlement she extracted — a husband from among the gods and her father's eyes flung into the sky as stars — turned the eagle-giant into a constellation and his daughter into a goddess. Þjazi is one of the rare jötnar to be, in a sense, honoured by his killers.

The full tale, told in Skáldskaparmál and echoed in the ninth-century shield-poem Haustlöng, begins not with a kidnapping but with a picnic gone wrong — one of the mythology's best openings.

The eagle at the cooking fire

Three gods — Odin, Loki, and Hœnir — were traveling over mountains and waste country, short of food. In a valley they came on a herd of oxen, took one, and set it to cook in an earth-oven; but each time they opened the pit, the meat was raw. From the oak above, a voice claimed responsibility: a huge eagle sat in the branches, and it offered a deal — give me my fill from the ox, and it will cook. The gods agreed, whereupon the eagle dropped down and took both hams and both shoulders. Loki, enraged at the gluttony, snatched up a pole and struck at the bird — and found the pole stuck fast to the eagle at one end and to his hands at the other. The eagle flew low and hard, dragging Loki over stones and scrub until his arms were near torn from his shoulders, and would not release him for any pleading but one price: Loki must swear to bring Iðunn out of Asgard, and her apples with her.

The eagle, of course, was Þjazi in his feather-form — son of the fabulously wealthy giant Ölvaldi, whose gold Þjazi and his brothers Iði and Gangr had divided by each taking a mouthful in turn, which is why poets call gold "the mouth-tale of these giants." Loki, home and healed, kept his oath the way he keeps all oaths: treacherously. He lured Idun into a forest outside the walls with talk of marvelous apples that she should compare against her own, and Þjazi swept down in eagle-shape and carried goddess and apples away to Þrymheimr, his hall in the high mountains.

The theft that made the gods grow old

What follows is the closest Norse myth comes to showing the gods mortal. Without Iðunn's apples the Æsir began to grey and wither — age, held off for an eon, arriving at last. They met in assembly and traced the last sighting of Iðunn: walking out of Asgard with Loki. Threatened with death and torture, Loki agreed to fetch her back if Freyja would lend him her falcon-cloak. In falcon-shape he flew to Jötunheim, found Þjazi out rowing on the sea and Iðunn home alone, turned her into a nut, and flew for Asgard with the nut in his claws. Þjazi returned, found her gone, took his eagle-form and chased — and his wingbeats raised storm-wind behind the falcon. The gods, watching the race from the walls, heaped planshavings and kindling at the ramparts and lit them the instant Loki dropped inside. Þjazi, unable to check his dive, flew straight through the flame; his feathers caught, and the gods killed him at the gate. Snorri notes drily that this slaying is greatly renowned.

Skadi's vengeance and the eyes in the sky

Þjazi's daughter Skaði took helmet, mail-coat, and all weapons of war, and came to Asgard alone to avenge her father — one giantess against the assembled gods, and the gods chose to negotiate. The settlement had three parts. She would choose a husband from among the Æsir, but by his feet alone: she picked the most beautiful pair, hoping for Baldr, and got the sea-god Njörðr. The gods must make her laugh, which she swore was impossible: Loki managed it with an obscene tug-of-war involving a goat and his own body. And — in the detail that transfigures the whole story — Odin (in Snorri's telling) took Þjazi's eyes and threw them up into heaven, where they became two stars. In Hárbarðsljóð, however, it is Thor who boasts of casting the eyes of "Allvaldi's son" into the bright sky — a genuine conflict in the sources, and an old one, since both traditions treat the deed as famous. Which two stars they are, no text says; guesses have ranged from Gemini's twins to other paired lights, but it remains a Norse constellation without a modern address. Skáldskaparmál elsewhere calls Skaði's departure for the mountains inevitable — she and Njörðr could not agree on whether to live by sea or fell — but her father's eyes still stand overhead, the rare giant given a place in heaven by the gods who killed him.

In the primary sources

The complete narrative is in the Prose Edda, Skáldskaparmál, which tells the picnic, the abduction, the recovery, the burning, and Skaði's settlement, and quotes as its authority Haustlöng, a ninth-century skaldic poem by Þjóðólfr of Hvinir describing the scenes as painted on a shield — one of our oldest witnesses to any Norse myth. In the Poetic Edda, Hárbarðsljóð has Thor claim the killing of Þjazi and the throwing of his eyes; Lokasenna has Loki boast to Skaði that he was "first and foremost" at her father's slaying, and Skaði promising him cold counsel from her sanctuaries in return; Grímnismál lists Þrymheimr, "where Þjazi dwelt, that mighty giant," now the home of his daughter. Hyndluljóð and skaldic kennings preserve the family wealth-lore of Ölvaldi's gold.