Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

ocks on the strands, make them hollow, and cast the substance thus scooped out along
the coast in the form of sand-banks; the whirlpools and currents of the ocean, and the still
more powerful forces that were fancied by antiquity, and which smouldered the more
brittle layers of the earth's solid crust, and scattered them as sand and mould over "the
stones of the hall," in order that the ground might "be overgrown with green herbs" - all
this was symbolized by the larger Grotti-mill. And as all symbols, in the same manner as
the lightning which becomes Thor's hammer, in the mythology become epic-pragmatic
realities, so this symbol becomes to the imagination a real mill, which operates deep
down in the sea and causes the phenomena which it symbolizes.
This greater mill was also called Græðir, since its grist is the mould in which
vegetation grows. This name was gradually transferred by the poets of the Christian age
from the mill, which was grinding beneath the sea, to the sea itself.
The lesser Grotti-mill is like the greater one of heathen origin -- Egil Skalla-
Grímsson mentions it-- but it plays a more accidental part, and really belongs to the
heroic poems connected with the mythology. Meanwhile, it is akin to the greater. Its
stones come from the lower world, and were cast up thence for amusement by young
giant-maids to the surface of the earth. A being called Hengikjöptur (the feminine
Hengikepta is the name of a giantess - Skáldskaparmál 52; Nafnaþulur) makes millstones
out of these subterranean rocks, and presents the mill to King Frodi Fridleifsson.
Fate brings about that the same young giantesses, having gone to Svithiod to help the
king warring there, Guthorm (see Nos. 38, 39), are taken prisoners and sold as slaves to
King Frodi, who makes them turn his Grotti-mill, the stones of which they recognize
from their childhood. The giantesses, whose names are Fenja and Menja, grind gold and
safety for King Frodi on the mill, peace and good-will among men for his kingdom. But
when Frodi, hardened by greed for gold, refuses them the necessary rest from their toils,
they grind fire and death upon him, and give the mill so great speed that the mill-stone
breaks into pieces, and the foundation is crushed under its weight. 8
After the introduction of Christianity, the details of the myth concerning the
greater, the cosmological mill, were forgotten, and there remained only the memory of
the existence of such a mill on the bottom of the sea. The recollection of the lesser Grottimill
was, on the other hand, at least in part preserved as to its details in a song which
continued to flourish, and which was recorded in Skáldskaparmál.
Both mills were now regarded as identical, and there sprang up a tradition which
explained how they could be so.
Contrary to the statements of the song, the tradition narrates that the mill did not
break into pieces, but stood whole and perfect, when the curse of the giant-maids on
Frodi was fulfilled. The night following the day when they had begun to grind misfortune
on Frodi, there came a sea-king, Mysing, and slew Frodi, and took, among other booty,
also the Grotti-mill and both the female slaves, and carried them on board his ship.
Mysing commanded them to grind salt, and this they continued to do until the following
midnight. Then they asked if he had not got enough, but he commanded them to continue
grinding, and so they did until the ship shortly afterwards sank. In this manner the
8 This story appears in Skáldskaparmál 43 in the Faulkes translation, "Why is gold called Frodi's meal?"