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Bilskirnir and Þrúðvangr

Bilskirnir

Thor's hall, with five hundred and forty rooms, the greatest house ever built; it stands in his land of Þrúðvangr, 'strength-field'.

Bilskirnir is Thor's hall. Odin, speaking in Grímnismál, gives its size and his opinion of it: "Five hundred rooms and forty there are / I ween, in Bilskirnir built; / Of all the homes whose roofs I beheld, / My son's the greatest meseemed" Grímnismál 24.

Snorri agrees that it is "the greatest house that men know of" and places it in Thor's realm, Þrúðvangar Gylfaginning 21. Grímnismál calls the land Þrúðheimr, "strength-home": "Thor shall ever in Thruthheim dwell, / Till the gods to destruction go" Grímnismál 4. Both names contain þrúðr, strength, which is also the name of Thor's daughter Þrúðr Skáldskaparmál 4.

Snorri quotes the stanza in a different version from the one Bellows translates: "Five hundred floors / and more than forty, / So reckon I Bilskirnir with bending ways" Gylfaginning 21. The number 540 is the same as the count of Valhalla's doors in the previous stanza of the poem Grímnismál 23. Readers have often noted the parallel between Odin's hall and his son's.

Thrúðvangar is where Thor goes home to in Snorri's stories: after his visit to Útgarða-Loki Gylfaginning 47, and after the duel with Hrungnir, with the whetstone still in his head Skáldskaparmál 17. Skalds called Thor the "Lord of high Bilskirnir" Skáldskaparmál 4.

In the sources

Quoted from the hosted translations; each line is checked against the text when the site is built. Select a reference to read it in context.

Five hundred rooms and forty there are I ween, in Bilskirnir built; Of all the homes whose roofs I beheld, My son's the greatest meseemed.
Grímnismál 24 Odin praises his son Thor's hall as the greatest he knows.
And Thor shall ever in Thruthheim dwell, Till the gods to destruction go.
Grímnismál 4 The poem names Thor's land Þrúðheimr.
He has his realm in the place called Thrúdvangar, and his hall is called Bilskirnir; in that hall are five hundred rooms and forty. That is the greatest house that men know of
Gylfaginning 21 Snorri's version, with the land called Þrúðvangar.

Myths with Bilskirnir and Þrúðvangr

Odin as Grímnir between the fires To win a wager with Frigg, Odin visits his foster-son King Geirröðr in disguise and is tortured between two fires for eight nights. Given a drink by the king's young son, he pours out a vision of the gods' halls and the world-tree, then reveals himself, and the king falls on his own sword. Thor's duel with Hrungnir A horse race with Odin brings the stone-headed giant Hrungnir drunk and boasting into Asgard. Thor challenges him to the first single combat of his life, kills him with Mjölnir, and carries a piece of the giant's whetstone in his skull for ever after. Thor's journey to Útgarða-Loki Thor travels east with Loki, Þjálfi and Röskva, sleeps in a giant's glove, and loses every contest in the hall of Útgarða-Loki: to fire, to thought, to the sea, to the World Serpent and to old age. Only at parting does he learn he was tricked.

Related

Thor Þórr The thunder god, strongest of the Æsir: son of Odin and Earth, husband of Sif, and with his hammer Mjöllnir the gods' defender against the giants, until he dies killing the World Serpent. Odin Óðinn Chief of the Æsir: a one-eyed god of wisdom, poetry, magic, war and the dead, who gave an eye and hanged himself on a tree for knowledge, and who dies at Ragnarök. Valhalla Valhöll Odin's vast hall of the battle-dead, roofed with shields and raftered with spears, where the einherjar feast and fight each day until they march out to meet the wolf at Ragnarök. Sif Thor's wife, mother of Ullr and Þrúðr, famous for the golden hair the dwarfs made for her after Loki cut off her own. Þrúðr Daughter of Thor and Sif, known only from kennings. Poets called the giant Hrungnir 'Þrúðr's thief', hinting at a lost story of her abduction. Magni Thor's son by the giantess Járnsaxa. At three nights old he lifted the dead giant Hrungnir's leg off his father; after Ragnarök he and his brother Móði inherit Mjöllnir.