SKRYMER'S TALE by Kenneth Folta Copyright 2012 Kenneth Folta Smashwords Edition Cover by Gordon Chen gordon.chen@gmail.com Special thanks to Swachski, for Tremendous editing help For Mary My 'frozen bit of meat' Ragnarok "When gather on the great barren plain The enemies all, of the Aesir, And now from the lips of Heimdall, Sounds the awful moan of the Gjallarhorn Through all the Nine Worlds None escape its call, and all The gods awake and answer to arms. And so is Ragnarok begun, The Final Battle that is not, To run its course in rivers of fire and blood. . . . . Then all the Nine worlds shall slumber In the cold hard grief Of the Fimbulwinter." * Excerpted from an uncredited English-language translation of Thurl Snorberg's 1788 work "Elegy of Ragnarok." The original work was destroyed in a fire in 1859, eliminating the possibility of a new and likely more accurate translation. SKRYMER'S TALE Ragnarok. For so many centuries had this great battle been prophecied, and with such unwavering detail, that its coming was taken as fact. And come it had, to the dread of most and to the happy shivering anticipation of the ignorant. * The frost giant Skrymer did not remember when he dropped his warhammer. It may have been after his last kill, which was Knogge, a distant cousin of Heimdall. Knogge was little more than a boy, with a thin veneer of bravado laid over his uncertainty and terror. Skrymer wondered before he saw Knogge if any Aesir yet survived. His berserker rage had burned itself out by then, and he was conflicted even as he swung his enormous hammer Marrowmunch, made from the trunks of seven trees bound together with the hides of fifteen oxen. The timid young godling was no threat to the Jotnar, and would not be for many decades, perhaps even centuries. And yet Skrymer smashed him, pounded him flat onto the mottled ground, the only recognizable remains being the little gobs and bits of flesh and bone that went into the narrow spaces between the treetrunks of Marrowmunch. It may have been then that he discarded his warhammer. Or it might have been soon after that as he slogged through the fields of the dead, for the first time seeing the terrible toll that Ragnarok had taken, on the Aesir certainly but also on the frost giants. He recognized many of the corpses as kin, as friends, as neighbors. Worse still were the ones that were unrecognizable, the ones who were mashed or chopped up so badly that there was not enough left to identify. Skrymer realized that this was the field of the Great Battle, where he had been near enough to witness the great howling wolf Fenris devouring Odin whole, entire and yet still alive, and then Fenris slain by Viodar in revenge. Where the chillingly pure sound of Mjolnir, Thor's mighty Hammer of Thunder and Death, rang exultantly as it rebounded off the shattered granite-hard skulls of Jotun and Muspellite alike. That steady death knell kept measure throughout, framing the clash and thunk and chock of lesser weapons, and the grunts and curses and sudden wounded cries of the combatants. Rang and rang until Jormungandr, the great serpent who encircled the oceans, answered Loki's summons, Loki who had abandoned all pretense of alliance with the Aesir at the sound of the Gjallarhorn's challenge. This was not the Jormungandr that centuries earlier Skrymer had disguised as a great cat, fooling Thor into believing he could not with all his prodigious strength lift even a cat off the ground. No, this was Jormungandr grown to such proportion as would give a dozen Jotun pause, of a length and girth that surely no one could stand against it. The great serpent writhed its way into Asgard, its length disappearing beyond sight into unknown distance with only its fearsome head and gaping maw present to threaten the Aesir. And yet Thor stood his ground, his mighty hammer Mjolnir thundering again and again, at the last driving the immeasurable serpent back into the sea, not dead but beaten, back into the great seas to nurse its wounds and to heal. But the victory cost Thor his life; he was able to take but eight or nine stumbling steps after Jormungandr's retreat before falling dead himself. At the remembrance of that battle Skrymer felt a moment of chilling panic go through his weary form, slapping at the pouch at his waist to reassure himself that he still possessed his little souvenir. It may have been then that he dropped Marrowmunch, in realization that the Aesir were so depleted that perhaps they would never challenge the might of the Jotnar again. The frost giants may not have been able to defeat the Aesir had not their distant kin and ancient enemies, the Muspelheim fire giants, stormed Asgard and joined battle against the Aesir. One whole wall of the sky lit up with the fire and thunder of their mountains as they attacked, swarming up and over the magnificent bridge Bifrost, the tremendous heat they wielded shattering and melting the crystalline ice covering the bridge, even melting the great arched beam of iron forged by the dwarfs to form a bridge between Asgard and the nearby worlds. No greater work had the dwarfs ever done, and yet the fire giants had destroyed it in mere minutes, even the cold strength of iron no match for their blazing fury. Now the fire giants had retreated, the overmatched gods vanquished, with only scattered bonfires and the skeletal iron stub memorial of Bifrost remaining to tell the tale of their incursion. And the Muspellite dead, whose corpses burst into flame and burned in white and red fury. Skrymer joined his surviving brethren and dragged the dead Jotnar into piles on top of the corpses of Muspellites, with these improvised pyres honoring their fellow warriors and thus dismissing their debt to their dead. None spoke during this, nor was there the traditional gnashing of teeth or tearing of hair. All of the surviving Jotnar were subdued and weary, many with dire wounds; none could maintain their chest-thumping bravado in the face of so much death. Many wept, and many were beyond weeping, numbed to emotion or having spent all their store. It may have been here that Skrymer left Marrowmunch, leaving his weapon to honor the dead. He remembered seeing a few surviving Aesir, none that he recognized save Magni son of Thor. Skrymer could not remember if he still had his warhammer when he looked to the source of a faint and forceless groan and somehow recognized the visage of Magni through the haphazardly strewn limbs and flesh and lifesblood of the dead which covered him. Magni was the largest of the Aesir and rumored to be even stronger than his father, but Skrymer had lost all desire for his enemies' death. He simply passed by, hoping that Magni was mortally wounded but not really caring if he managed to survive. After the dozens of funeral pyres burned out, the flaming corpses of Muspellites having finally exhausted their innate fuel, the Jotnar simply drifted away. Some joined silently with one or two others, but most were as sleepwalkers, moving out of instinct more than active reason. Skrymer had waded into one of the Kerlaugers, the twin rivers that bordered Asgard, more to escape Asgard and pervasive death than to head homeward. In the middle of one of the great twin rivers the ground had shaken and trembled and shaken some more, causing him to lose his footing and become completely submerged and as wet as any fish, as the shaking lasted for several minutes. Yggdrasil, the mighty tree whose roots loomed over the Nine Worlds, was voicing his rage and his displeasure at the events unfolding beneath him. Even though the Muspellites had retreated, their mountains remained framed by a wall fiery and red, the ceiling above this red wall turning black as if from soot. The furious heat reached across the distances, giving rise to a deep dread in the bosom of Skrymer. He feared the unquenchable heat of Muspelheim, feared that it might burn on to immolate even the living frost giants. And so he altered his path, using the mountain ranges to shield him from the direct heat blazing outward from so far away, and thus in the shadow of the mountains was he relieved. The heat melted the snows on the opposite side of the mountains, and some of the frigid runoff sought instinctively the protected side of the mountains also, running over the deep snowpacks for some distance before refreezing. This created an ice crust several feet thick on top of the snowpack, but this new slippery surface was little deterrent to a creature as massive as Skrymer. His boots punched easily through the ice and deep into the snow below, the iciness giving comfort to the exhausted Jotun. Indeed it restored to a small degree his heart, and his desire to live. And at last, far removed now from battle, he began to feel the number and the severity of his wounds. * * While Skrymer slowly made his way home, the conflagrations continued to rage in Muspelheim. The entire range of mountains erupted, blasting rock and flame and black sooty smoke into the air until the sky filled with roiling black clouds. Molten rivers of rock made their way to the sea, to still themselves in boiling hissing gouts of seawater. What had once been a great wall of high jagged peaks became in their gleeful self-destruction a series of rough low craters, a long line of stone acne spanning the frontier of Muspelheim. The ecstasy of the fire giants at such a profound display of their beloved ravaging flames became dismay and then horrified dejection at the devouring of their homes. And yet the fire raged on. The plumes of lava and blasts of red-hot rock fell for leagues and leagues around, laying waste to the land, and beyond the range of the firefall there began a rain of ashes and soot, coating the surface of the world in dark grays and blacks, until only the waters of the great oceans showed any color. The ominous writhing clouds soon blossomed out to cover all the Nine Worlds, the natural boundaries between them no proof against the spreading darkness. This thick blanket of smoke and ash denied the sun, and so as the fury of Muspelheim slowly cooled so did all the Nine Worlds, until they fell under the deep numbing spell of the Fimbulwinter. * * And so in this manner did the supremacy of the Muspelheim fire giants lead directly to their downfall, and to the subsequent thriving of their hated kin the frost giants. The Jotnar were too deep in their grief over their losses at Ragnarok to appreciate this irony for many dozens of years. Skrymer found comfort in the Fimbulwinter and in the solicitous ministrations of his wife, Hrangr. Each time he gazed into her admittedly homely face he felt the solid reliability of her love for him, and it was her persistent love and tireless service that at last began to elevate him up out of his sorrow. Until one day, sitting in front of the feeble fire in the great hearth of his home(only a small fire to take the numbing edge off the extreme cold of the Fimbulwinter), when Skrymer remembered his little souvenir of the great Battle at the End of the World, the little token he had snagged off the bloody ground of the great field of death. He tried to put it out of his mind, but like a flying insect casually waved away it kept coming back, and back again, until he could no longer ignore it but realized that his little possession required some sort of action on his part. So Skrymer sought audience with King Utgard, to ask permission to approach Haness, the beautiful young Volva seeress who had recently taken up residence in the tiny cottage at the edge of the tarn, well up the slope behind the great keep that was Jotunheim. Skrymer brought with him to the palace his souvenir, prepared to reveal his secret if he must but preferring to keep his prize and his knowledge close to his chest. Fortunately for Skrymer, recent years had lulled the entire kingdom into a sort of soporific state. Jotunheim's two great enemies, the Aesir and the Muspelheim fire giants, were both so weakened as to be irrelevant, and without the threat of war the Jotnar had flourished and lived well and comfortably, even in the forced closeness of the Fimbulwinter. Utgard had seemed uninterested in Skrymer's concern and had quickly granted permission to engage Haness, that the King might return to playing mock war-games with his two young sons, Temu and Saaku. * * * * * In 1911, the fledgling oil company United Kingdom Petroleum Conglomerate engaged the services of Lord Rutherford Norgood to spearhead a newly created North Sea division, seeking reliable oil sources outside the UK. Despite Great Britain's influence in the Middle East and in India, the UKPC had decided that northern Scandinavia was politically more stable and thus more desirable a location. After a year and a half of geological surveys, their first drilling team was shipped off in the spring of 1913, with a cadre of engineers and heavy equipment landing just north of Bodo, Norway. They built their own little company town, bringing local labor from hundreds of miles around to build the town and do the semiskilled grunt work involved in the drilling process. As the bulldozers and excavators were preparing the topography of the proposed town, they unearthed a series of ancient stone monoliths. The construction was briefly halted as word of this occurrence rose up the chain of command, until Lord Norgood himself arrived on the scene to evaluate the situation and make a decision as to the progress of the planned construction. "Just a bunch of rocks!" Lord Norgood reportedly snorted, urging the heavy equipment operators to simply drag them aside into a pile. The grumbling protests of the locals soon escalated, a runner sent to gather the entire corps of Norwegian draftees, who protested the casual treatment of what they considered to be important historical artifacts. Norgood had been hired for his organizational skills, not for his tact and diplomacy, and violence was narrowly averted as one of Norgood's immediate subordinates convinced him that they could quickly reconfigure the planned town to avoid the entire area where the monoliths had been found. A wire was sent to the Norwegian government, which in turn dispatched noted archaeologist Dr. Lagnor Turstid and engaged the services of the equally esteemed Latvian archaeologist and mythology expert Dr. Agnetha Hatolya. * The two well-known Doctors had never met, but were familiar each with the other's work. The local gossip at the time was filled with the talk of their heated arguments, beginning with their first meeting when Dr. Hatolya reportedly threw a notebook at Dr. Turstid. Within a few months they had found additional avenues for their passions, and became inseparable during their off-duty hours. Not that their arguments diminished. Anyone who had no need for contact with the pair gave them wide berth, as anything under the sun(and indeed the sun itself) was likely to trigger one of their legendary spats. In their final weeks at the location north of Bodo, where the monoliths were found, they were married by a local cleric, and honeymooned simply by taking one afternoon off for a picnic. Then, having gathered all the photos and rubbings and information that they could, the Doctors Turstid retreated to Lagnor's home near Oslo. They rented a large nearby space to spread out their photographs and rubbings, and began the arduous work of cataloguing and interpretation. * It was nearly ten years before the report was completed by the Drs. Turstid, at which time few people ever read it in its entirety. The report was nearly 2700 pages long, with grainy photos of the monoliths spread throughout. The new oil-drilling town and wells had been completed in 1915, and the oil production from those wells was an important part of the UK's WWI war effort. Ironically the collection of monoliths unearthed eventually became known as the Norgood Stones. They were never deemed of historical importance as no trace of settlement or habituation by local indigenous population was ever found. The stones were relegated to archival status as a curiosity of Norse Mythology, and only a few dedicated scholars know of their relative importance in confirming the prevailing mythology of some of the fundamental work of Snorri Sturleson's pre- and post-Ragnarok tales and information. * * * * * Skrymer made his way up behind Jotunheim to the tiny cottage of the King's Volva. He found himself nervous at the prospect of interaction with one of the legendary witches. Of course he had seen Volvae before, but never had direct dealings with one. . The tarn and the cottage lay nestled in front of a deep forest of pine, up against the steepness where the mountain made its final lunge upward at the sky He might have missed the cottage completely as the landmark tarn was completely frozen over and covered with snow. The beautiful pines that backed the tarn and wound around the mountain were silent and motionless in the icy air, and only a pitiful wandering wisp of smoke emanated from the chimney of the cottage. As Skrymer cautiously scanned the area to get his bearings, he could not determine the shore of the tarn, and so approached the cottage along the steepness of the mountain. He knelt and tapped gingerly at the door of the cottage with one fingernail, and after a long moment Haness opened the door. To give her credit she followed tradition and bared one small breast despite the freezing cold, and only then did it occur to Skrymer that this Midgardian Volva was ill-equipped for the Fimbulwinter. Her exposed shoulder and breast quickly turned a bright pink in the cold. "Lord Utgard said I might secure your services for a, uh, private matter," Skrymer stammered out, unexplainably meek and quite unable to take his eyes off her tiny and delicate breast. He felt a long-absent desire slowly rising, and determined to pay Hrangr some earthy attentions when he returned home. He dropped a small purse at the feet of Haness. "I'm afraid I have not much gold," he admitted. A look of happy hopefulness took hold of Haness. "Keep your gold, sir," she said, "I would instead barter for my services, if you are agreeable." "Yes, anything," Skrymer agreed immediately, snatching up his purse, knowing that Hrangr would be much happier if they retained their dwindling supply of coin. "If you cut me a pile of firewood thrice the length of your foot, and twice as wide, and as high as your boottops," Haness began, studying him for his reaction, "and, and also bring me twelve quartered reindeer, I will prophecy for you and assist you in your private matter." "Yes," Skrymer breathed a sigh of relief, as the terms were easy. "And for the ritual we will need to break down through the ice, all the way down to the waters of the tarn. This I cannot do; the task falls upon you." Skrymer nodded agreement and pulled out the dagger from his belt. A dagger of enough size for a Jotun was sufficient to butcher the reindeer and even cut down the pines, but his double-bladed axe would be better for chopping the trunks and splitting the wood, and a pickaxe would be needed to chip down through the thick ice of the tarn. He would have to return home for those. As a sign of good faith he first tracked down a nearby herd of reindeer, a gaunt herd grazing on scant dead grasses poking up through the accumulated snow. It was easy to grab the hungry reindeer and snap their necks, as their hunger made them disregard the danger. He quartered them with his dagger right there in the field, in order not to leave a bloody mess near Haness' cottage which might draw wolves, or one of the great cats of the mountains. Skrymer could not quite manage to scoop all the quartered deer into his two massive hands at once and was forced to make two trips from the field back to the tarn. Haness was pleased with his bounty and bade him stack the quarters behind the cottage, assuring Skrymer that she could spell-protect the raw meat against wolves and even the great mountain cats. She dragged one of the quarters into her cottage to salt and cure it, leaving the rest to freeze outside. Skrymer bid a temporary goodbye and returned home for the proper tools to complete his tasks. As he trudged down the mountainside he could not get the image of the slender Volva out of his mind. The vulnerable seminakedness of her tiny form had improbably awakened his dormant desires and his protective instinct, which in turn made him realize that since his return from Ragnarok he had given his beloved Hrangr but little return on her love and devotion to him. When he arrived home he surprised Hrangr by giving her a great swat on her ample rump, and her surprise turned into a warm smile as he rubbed away the sting. Thus was Skrymer delayed in his return to the high mountain lake. * * Had not the icy wind frozen the spittle on his lips he would have whistled all the way back up the mountain. The sight of the thin wisp of smoke coming from the chimney of the cottage dimmed his exuberance, as he realized now that he should have chopped up at least one tree for the Volva to use as firewood before he left. But a few deft strokes with his great axe felled enough trees to complete his task, and he sank to his knees for the more intricate work of chopping the trunks into firewood small enough for the Midgardian witch to handle. Stacking the tiny pieces of firewood was another matter; it would have taken him a couple days to neatly stack such tiny pieces, so he simply used his massive hands to smush the whole mass into a mound. Skrymer was not good at figuring amounts, so he stood and put his gigantic foot next to the mound. He was fairly certain the mound was at least as much as the dimensions that Haness had described. Again with his fingernail he tapped at the cottage door, and the delicate young Volva seemed almost reluctant to answer, only baring her shoulder and breast after opening the door. Skrymer dumped a small handful of firewood in front of her. She frowned at it, thinking that was all he had cut, then frowned up at his uncertain look. "I thought from the smoke of your chimney that you might need some firewood right away. The rest is by the side of your cottage." Haness took a few steps to see around the side, and at the sight of the great mound of firewood she laughed out loud and clapped her hands in her gladness. "It would be two or three days for me to stack neatly all those tiny pieces," Skrymer said to her, "And I will gladly do so if you require. But I hope to resolve my problem first, if that pleases you." "It pleases me indeed," Haness beamed at him, melting his heart a little bit more, "The terms of our bargain are satisfied by you. But still you must break through the ice for me to complete my part of the bargain." Skrymer bade her wait inside her cottage, and she took a few pieces of the firewood inside with her. The flying chips of ice would be dangerous to her as many of them would likely be much larger than she was. For this reason he stood with his back to her home as he worked. It took long minutes swinging the enormous pickaxe to break all the way through to the water. The ice was nearly as thick as the length of his forearm. He kept chipping away until he had widened the hole to include a short length of the shore, that Haness might have easy access. Before he tapped again at her door he scooped a small pile of her firewood over near the edge of the hole he had made in the ice, and with his flint and the help of a few dead branches of dried needles he sparked a fire to life. He tried to hide his excitement as Haness made her way to the shore. Skrymer had heard of these prophecying rituals of the Volvae but had never witnessed one himself. Haness paused in front of the small bonfire, staring absently into the nearly invisible flames as she prepared herself. Finally she shrugged off the hide she wore over her shoulders, to stand in the frozen elements clad only in a semitranslucent sheath of pale cloth, her shoulder and breast bared. As if in response to her presence the smallest of breezes rippled and whipped her thin garment, revealing her womanly curves, and blew one side of her straight honey-gold hair across her face. She seemed now oblivious to the cold, deep in an impenetrable trance. Skrymer suffered a sympathetic shiver as she strolled without haste to the shore, where she descended into the hole in the ice until she nearly disappeared. He took a step to the side that he might keep her in his sight as she stepped down directly into the water, which had already begun to freeze over. The thin veneer of ice crackled as she stepped through it, and she swirled her hands in the water in front of her to prepare for the most physically daunting part of the ritual. Slowly she bent forward at the waist, bending her knees slightly, and dipped her head and shoulders into the water. Only an unmoving arc of lower back and the top curves of her divinely shaped hips remained in sight, starkly revealed by the wet fabric, and she remained under the water so long Skrymer almost jigged in his impatient concern; he wanted to grab her and pull her out of there. He wanted to stand her in front of the bonfire, no, to take her into his mouth like a frozen bit of meat to warm her. Any Jotnar would shrink at this cold. How could this mere Midgardian Volva survive these cruel elements? Skrymer somehow forced himself to forebear his anxiety for her, and after an eternity she raised her head out of the frigid water. In his agitated state Skrymer could not even estimate how long she had been submerged, but it had been long enough that ice had begun to sheet around her, crackling and falling away in shards as she withdrew. With the faintest smile she strolled without care back to the fire, her skin bluish purple from exposure. Only as the roaring fire began to warm her did she react, her body suffering great wracking convulsions, shivering so badly that she almost became a blur to his vision. Then she did become a blur, as to his own astonishment tears filled his eyes and overflowed, becoming ice almost before they left his eyes, the frozen globules clustering high on his cheeks. He knelt, placing one massive hand like a wall behind her, shielding her as he might from the icing breeze. She stepped out of her freezing garment, the front of the garment which had been facing the fire now limp and just beginning to smoke, but the side which had been on her back crackled with ice. Haness stood naked before the fire and stretched out her arms as if to embrace it, then turned slowly around that the entirety of her might benefit from the powerful warmth. When she had completed her revolution she picked up her hide cloak and wrapped it securely about herself. She gave him a wan smile which turned to surprise as she saw his frozen tears. "Fear not for me," she said gently, "For we Volvae prepare most diligently for this ritual. Although I must admit, these Fimbulwinter conditions far outstrip any I have experienced. "Please give me a few minutes to reclothe myself more appropriately for the elements, and then I will tell you what you must do." "But you don't-- I mean, I didn't tell you anything about my uh, situation." "That matters not. The ritual makes all clear. Because of it I am given the knowledge of the water and the mountains and the trees, which see and feel and remember all." And with that the diminutive figure went back to her cottage, her bare feet scuffling through the powdery snow, and disappeared behind its closed door. For several minutes Skrymer stared at the hole he had made in the ice, watching the water freeze over completely as he knelt transfixed by the images just burned into him, until he realized that still he held his hand as a shielding wall for the Volva who had departed. He withdrew his hand and used it to pat the pouch at his waist, reassuring himself that he still possessed his battlefield souvenir, Mjolnir, Thor's mighty Hammer of Thunder. * * * * * The first forty-seven pages of the report by the Doctors Turstid compare and contrast the style of the carvings on the Norgood Stones with other important archaeological finds, concluding ultimately that the time period and the style of the Norgood Stones is anomalous. They cannot connect it to any previous finds, suggesting that perhaps there is a missing connection, or even several missing connections, between the new stones and known finds. The remaining twenty-six hundred-odd pages of the report attempt to decipher and interpret the images on the stones. Although the style of the carvings does not match anything yet known, most of the content can be aligned with various writings of Snorri Sturleson. However, the final pages of the report, beginning on page 2,604, evaluate and discuss the depictions on one stone that do not relate to any of the others or to any of Sturleson's writings. The series of fuzzy black-and-white photographs nearly tell the story by themselves, and the accompanying explanations are minimal. There are three main elements in this series of carvings. One is a giant, whom the Turstids posit to be a Jotun, or frost-giant. This Jotun towers over a tiny female figure, who by her manner of dress is assumed to be a Volva seeress. And the third element the giant holds in his massive hand, dwarfing its stature, but by shape and design this third object is most assuredly Mjolnir, Thor's Hammer. The Volva seeress literally points out the way to the giant, who carries Mjolnir away through an opening, or doorway if you will. In the next carving the giant returns, both hands empty to show that he no longer possesses Mjolnir. But where did the giant go? And where is Mjolnir? At this point, in the last few pages of the report, the Turstids dare to speculate in a most unscholarly fashion on the possibilities. They express the hope that the doorway represents an isolated, as-yet-unexplored part of the northern Scandinavian wilderness. But then they seemingly dash their own hopes by admitting that the opening or doorway resembles no known representation in any historical or archaeological finds. The report concludes with an uncharacteristically daydreamy hypothesis, that hopefully someday a matching depiction will be found that will satisfactorily explain this tale. Their dissatisfaction with these unanswered questions and the incomplete nature of their report led the Turstids to mount an archaeological expedition to Iceland in 1927, where their entire party vanished in a sudden violent volcanic eruption. They were presumed dead, although no bodies were ever recovered. * * * * * * * Thus ends "Skrymer's Tale." It is the Author's hope that these tidbits will prove appetizer enough to lure you to the feast that is "Mjolnir Found, A New Mythology," which takes place in present day Southern California, and yes, in a few of the Nine Worlds.