One of my fav flytings in the Story of Burnt NjĂĄll!:
"...Thangbrand held his peace while she spoke, but made a long speech after her, and turned all that she had said the wrong way against her.
"Hast thou heard," she said, "how Thor challenged Christ to single combat, and how he did not dare to fight with Thor?"
"I have heard tell," says Thangbrand, "that Thor was naught but dust and ashes, if God had not willed that he should live."
Thangbrand was a Christian missionary whose ship had been wrecked, so she, Steinunn, mother of Ref the Skald replied:
"He that giant's offspring slayeth
Broke the mew-field's bison stout,
Thus the Gods, bell's warder grieving,
Crushed the falcon of the strand;
To the course of the causeway
Little good was Christ I ween,
When Thor shattered ships to pieces
Gylfi's hart no God could help."
Thangbrand the priest came back from Iceland to King Olaf, and told the ill success of his journey; namely, that the Icelanders had made lampoons about him; and that some even sought to kill him, and there was little hope of that country ever being made Christian."
âKing Olaf Trygvason's Saga