Thor and the Ferryman of Insults

Thor stood at a sound on his way home from the east. Across the water was a ferryman with a boat, close enough to hear him and far enough to be safe. Thor called out, asking who stood on the opposite shore. The answer was another question: who was that old fellow shouting over the water? A crossing that should have been simple became a contest before either man had given his name.

Thor offered food in exchange for a passage. He had eaten before leaving home and carried more with him, including herring and porridge. The ferryman dismissed his pride in breakfast and threw in the claim that Thor’s mother was dead. This is a taunt in their exchange, not news the poem confirms. Thor reproached him for speaking of such a misfortune while withholding the more useful thing: his boat.

The man on the far bank looked Thor over and found further material. Barefoot, dressed without distinction, the traveller did not look like a great lord. Who owned the boat? Thor demanded. Hárbarðr said it belonged to Hildólfr, a wise man who had ordered him to carry worthy people whom he knew, and refuse thieves and horse-stealers. Before Thor could cross, apparently, he had to satisfy a boatman’s opinion of his character.

Thor named himself as Odin’s son, Meili’s brother, and Magni’s father. He expected those relationships, together with his own formidable name, to settle the matter. The ferryman called himself Hárbarðr, Greybeard, and did not become more respectful. Thor offered to wade across and repay the insults if only he knew how to reach him. Greybeard answered that Thor had no cause for anger unless he had done something worth boasting about.

That challenge supplied the shape of the whole encounter. What had each of them accomplished? Thor named the giant Hrungnir, whose head was stone. He had brought that powerful opponent down. Hárbarðr answered with five winters spent beside Fjölvar in a distant land, fighting, taking lives, and pursuing women. His recollection wandered through boasts about spirited maidens and the methods used to overcome their resistance. Thor’s deeds met a world of seduction, deception, and violence told with relish.

Thor returned to the protection of the gods. He had killed Þjazi and thrown the giant’s eyes into the sky, where people could see the signs of his achievement. In other surviving accounts this act is assigned differently; here it belongs to Thor’s own boast. Hárbarðr answered with a story about the giant Hlébarðr, who had given him a magic wand. He repaid the gift by using guile against its giver. Thor called that a bad return for generosity. Greybeard thought each person should look after himself.

Again Thor described his work in the east. He had fought giant women; without such battles, the giants would overrun the human world. Hárbarðr preferred the wars of human rulers. He had incited princes rather than reconciling them, and then sharpened the difference between himself and Thor with a deliberate insult: Odin received the noblemen who fell in battle, he said, while Thor received the race of slaves. Thor objected to the unfair division. The claim belongs to the ferryman’s provocation, not to a calm explanation of how every dead person was assigned an afterlife.

Greybeard next recalled a humiliation. Had Thor not crouched in the thumb of a giant’s glove, afraid and unable to behave like the mighty god he claimed to be? The poem expects its hearers to recognise the allusion; it does not pause to tell the whole adventure. Thor threatened him again. If he could get close, the boatman would regret speaking so freely. But getting close was precisely what Hárbarðr controlled.

Thor told of facing the sons of Svarangr, who had thrown stones at him while he crossed a river. They had gained little from their attack. Hárbarðr turned once more to a woman he wanted and suggested that Thor could have helped him. For a moment the rivals spoke almost as prospective companions. Thor would have assisted if he had been there. Yet Greybeard quickly found another opening, questioning what trust could be placed in such an offer.

The god’s blunt promises and remembered battles never changed the situation on the shore. He could name more enemies than the ferryman could physically withstand, but naming them did not bring the boat nearer. Hárbarðr could shift the subject whenever he wished. War became sex, sex became reputation, and reputation became another joke about the traveller’s helplessness. The water allowed words to escape their customary consequences.

Thor recalled fighting berserk women on Hlésey. Greybeard accused him of attacking women; Thor answered that these were no ordinary women but dangerous fighters who had threatened him. The exchange gave him no comfortable moral victory. The ferryman was not hearing testimony in good faith. Whatever Thor said could be turned sideways and used against him, including the distinction between a defenseless victim and an enemy in battle.

Toward the end, Hárbarðr brought the insults into Thor’s own household, claiming that Sif had a lover at home. Thor recognised the malice of the words. There was still no reason to accept the ferryman’s claims as reliable reports, yet they struck at things strength could not resolve from across the sound. Thor accused him of speaking whatever came into his mouth and threatened the repayment he would deliver if they ever met at closer quarters.

At last the weary traveller asked for directions. If the boat would not come, which way could he go? Greybeard described a long route inland, past a landmark, toward the place where Thor’s mother could guide him onward. Thor asked whether he could accomplish it that day. With effort, the ferryman replied. No final display of strength compelled a passage. The encounter ended with another curse from the far shore, sending Thor away to the fiends.

The poem never stages an unmasking in which Hárbarðr announces that he is Odin, although the name and his characteristic boasts strongly point that way. It leaves the reader with the argument itself: a defender of gods and people, indignant and repeatedly thwarted, facing a traveller whose weapons are speech and manipulation. Thor departs with all his strength intact. The ferryman keeps the boat.