It was a simple habitation--one large hall,
altogether empty. They stayed there. Suddenly, in the dead of the night,
loud voices alarmed them. Thor grasped his hammer, and stood in the
doorway, prepared for fight. His companions within ran hither and
thither, in their terror, seeking some outlet in that rude hall: they
found a little closet at last, and took refuge there. Neither had Thor
any battle; for lo! in the morning it turned out that the noise had been
only the snoring of a certain enormous, but peaceable, giant--the giant
Skrymir, who lay peaceably sleeping near by; and this, that they took
for a house, was merely his glove thrown aside there: the door was the
glove-wrist; the little closet they had fled into was the thumb! Such a
glove! I remark, too, that it had not fingers, as ours have, but only a
thumb, and the rest undivided--a most ancient rustic glove!
Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; Thor, however, who had
his suspicions, did not like the ways of Skrymir, and determined at
night to put an end to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, he struck
down into the giant's face a right thunderbolt blow, of force to rend
rocks. The giant merely awoke, rubbed his cheek, and said, "Did a leaf
fall?" Again Thor struck, as soon as Skrymir again slept, a better blow
than before; but the giant only murmured, "Was that a grain of sand!"
Thor's third stroke was with both his hands (the "knuckles white," I
suppose), and it seemed to cut deep into Skrymir's visage; but he merely
checked his snore, and remarked, "There must be sparrows roosting in
this tree, I think.
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