Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

tradition explained how the mill came to stand on the bottom of the sea, and there the mill
that had belonged to Frodi acquired the qualities which originally had belonged to the
vast Grotti-mill of the mythology. Skáldskaparmál, which relates this tradition as well as
the song, without taking any notice of the discrepancies between them, adds that after
Frodi's mill had sunk, "there was produced a whirlpool in the sea, caused by the waters
running through the hole in the mill-stone, and from that time the sea is salt."
80.
THE WORLD-MILL (continued).
With distinct consciousness of its symbolic signification, the greater mill is
mentioned in a strophe by the skald Snæbjörn (Skáldskaparmál 33). The strophe appears
to have belonged to a poem describing a voyage. "It is said," we read in this strophe, "that
Eylúður's nine women violently turn the Grotti of the skerry dangerous to man out near
the edge of the earth, and that these women long ground Amlodi's lið-grist."
Hvatt kveða hræra Grótta
hergrimmastan skerja
út fyrir jarðar skauti
Eylúður's níu brúðir,
þær er . . . . fyrir löngu
liðmeldr . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . Amlóða mólu.
To the epithet Eylúður, and to the meaning of lið- in lið-grist, I shall return below.
The strophe says that the mill is in motion out on the edge of the earth, that nine giantmaids
turn it (for the lesser Grotti-mill two were more than sufficient), that they had long
ground with it, that it belongs to a skerry very dangerous to seafaring men, and that it
produces a peculiar grist.
The same mill is suggested by an episode in Saxo, where he relates the saga about
the Danish prince, Amlethus, 9 who on account of circumstances in his home was
compelled to pretend to be insane. Young courtiers, who accompanied him on a walk
along the sea-strand, showed him a sandbank and said that it was meal. The prince said
he knew this to be true: he said it was "meal from the mill of the storms" (Hist. Dan.,
Book 3, p. 85).
The myth concerning the cosmic Grotti-mill was intimately connected partly with
the myth concerning the fate of Ymir and the other primeval giants, and partly with that
concerning Hvergelmir's fountain. Vafþrúðnismál 21 and Grímnismál 40 tell us that the
earth was made out of Ymir's flesh, the rocks out of his bones, and the sea from his
9 This tale in Saxo is the source of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, thus Amlodi is often rendered Hamlet in
translation, as in Faulkes' Edda.