1. Faðir Móða - "father of Móði" - only here. The equivalent faðir Magna "father of Magni" occurs in a half-stanza quoted by Snorri in Skáldskaparmál (# 44), and in Hárbarðsljóð 53. Very little is known about Þórr's sons (see Vafþrúðnismál 51).

3-4. ok í gegnum steig / gólf niðr í sal "and stepped down through the floor of the hall". The prosaic order of the words would be ok steig niðr í gegnum gólf í sal, where gólf í sal is equivalent to salargólf. Although the meaning of these simple words is quite obvious (at least to the Icelandic speaker), they have been misunderstood and mistranslated by surprisingly numerous editors and translators, none of which are natives, it should be mentioned (see Translation notes below). The matter has been treated in detail elsewhere, so let it suffice to be said here that the expression stíga niðr í gegnum gólf expresses a strictly vertical movement, and has never, and will never mean "to stride down through the hall", which expresses a horizontal movement. This has been understood, without any shadow of a doubt, by the Icelanders, laymen as well as academics, for centuries. See, for example, the Lexicon Poeticum, revised by Finnur Jónsson, p. 195, s.v. golf: "træde igennem salens gulv"; and most recently, Gísli Sigurðsson's Eddukvæði (1998), p. 115: "þ.e. hann braut salargólfið".

We find exactly the same motif in Snorri's account, but here Þórr steps through the bottom of Hymir's boat, as he struggles with the Midgard serpent: "[Thor] pushed down so hard that he forced both feet throught the boat, and braced them against the sea-bed" (Gylfaginning 48, Faulkes' translation). This particular incident was well known, as evidenced by four pictorial Viking Age stones (see commentary to stanza 22), two of which actually show Þórr's feet penetrating the boat as he pulls at the monstrous serpent. It is interesting to note that this motif is not found in any of the Skaldic sources, as opposed to the pictorial ones. It is not surprising that this motif was of great interest to the sculptors, as Meulengracht Sörensen notes: "It gives a visual impression of the violent pull on the line, the vertical upward and downward movement during the struggle". In Hymiskviða, the motif has been transferred to Hymir's hall, where Þórr's feet sink through the floor, as he lifts Hymir's gigantic cauldron.

The very same motif has also come down to us in a Fornaldarsaga, i.e. Þórsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, where many mythological motifs from stories about Þórr have been reworked in the typical manner of the later heroic romances. This entertaining þáttr tells the story of Þórsteinn, a human version of Þórr, and his journey to the Underworld, and his adventures there. During a wrestling match at the palace of giant Geirröðr, the following incident occurs:

"Now Jokul got up and All-Strong turned on him. Their clash was the hardest yet, but Jokul seemed the more powerful and dragged All-Strong to the bench where Thorstein was. Then Jokul tried hard to force All-Strong away from there, but Thorstein held on to him. Jokul pulled so hard that his feet sank into the floor, ankle-deep". The last sentence goes, in the original: Jökull tók svá fast, at hann sté í hallargólfit upp at ökkla. Here we see that hallargólfit is exactly equivalent to gólf í sal in the Hymiskviða passage, and that the very same verb, stíga, is used.

7-8. en á hælum / hringar skullu "but the rings (handles) banged on his heels" - indicating the enormous size of the cauldron. This incident is briefly referred to in the First Grammatical Treatise: en heyrði til höddu, þá es Þórr bar hverinn "but the handle could be heard, when Þórr carried the cauldron". This is the only surviving reference to the Cauldron Quest myth outside of Hymiskviða.

Translation notes: Thorpe, alone of the six translators, correctly interprets lines 3-4: "and trod through the dwelling’s floor". The other five come up with surprisingly varying versions, all of them equally wrong (although Larrington surely manages to provide the worst alternative). Bray: "as across the hearth he strode down the hall"; Bellows: "and before it stood on the floor below"; Hollander: "from the dais striding down through the hall"; Terry: "strode down the hall and out the door"; Larrington: "and rolled it along down onto the hall floor". Hollander manages to lose both the Þórr-kennings, replacing them with one of his own: "goats-reiner".