Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter XXIII. Hamlet's Storm-mill

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This is a chapter from Donald A. Mackenzie's 1912 collection *Teutonic Myth and Legend*, a scholarly retelling of Norse and Germanic mythology for a general audience. It presents two linked folk narratives — the Norse myth of Frode's Mill (drawn from the *Gróttasöngr*) and a related fairy tale of two brothers — both centered on a magical quern that grinds out whatever its owner commands. The Frode story follows giant slave-maidens Fenja and Menja who, denied rest while grinding the king's wealth, call down sea raiders to destroy him; the new master then forces them to grind salt until his ship sinks, creating both the Maelstrom and the saltiness of the sea. The brothers' tale follows the same template: a poor man obtains the quern from the devil, a greedy rich brother buys it and cannot stop it flooding his farm with herrings and broth, and it ultimately ends on the ocean floor still grinding salt for a skipper who also failed to learn how to stop it. The distinctive claim threaded through both stories is etiological — they offer mythological explanations for real natural phenomena (the Maelstrom, ocean salinity) rooted in the idea of unstoppable, mindless grinding. Mackenzie presents these as parallel variants of the same deep mythological motif, suggesting continuity between courtly Norse skaldic verse and common folk tradition.

Teutonic Myth and Legend: Chapter XXIII. Hamlet's Storm-mill

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