Fenja and Menja and asked them to grind salt. At midnight, they asked Mysing if he did not have salt enough, but he asked them to grind more. They only ground for a short while before the ships sank. A giant whirlpool (maelstrom from mal "mill" and ström "stream") was formed as the sea started rushing through the center of the mill stone. Then the sea begun turning salt. Post-Christianisation folklore Modified forms of the tale are found as stories such as Why the Sea Is Salt, collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe in their Norske Folkeeventyr. In Orcadian and Shetlandic folklore, the are renamed 'Grotti Finnie' and 'Grotti Minnie' who are two witches that create the a whirlpool in the Pentland Firth, named the Swelkie. Modern cultural references Viktor Rydberg's apprehension of unregulated capitalism at the dawn of the industrial age is most fully expressed in his acclaimed poem Den nya Grottesången (The New Grotti Song) in which he delivered a fierce attack on the miserable working conditions in factories of the era, using the mill of Grottasöngr as his literary backdrop. Grottasöngr appears as part of Johannes V. Jensen's novel The Fall of the King. The author edited his prose text into a prose poem that was included in his first poetry collection published in 1906. Jensen later reflected on the Grottasöngr in his book Kvinden i Sagatiden. The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie also draws inspiration from the Grottasöngr in the character of the Strength and Patience of the Hill. Verses of the poem were used for the song Grótti by French neofolk group SKÁLD in 2020. References Bibliography Tolley, Clive (ed. and trans.), Gróttasöngr: The Song of Grotti. Viking Society for Northern Research, 2008. External links Gróttasöngr in Old Norse Den nya Grottesången in Swedish from «Kulturformidlingen norrøne tekster og kvad» Norway. Eddic poetry Sources of Norse mythology