When, in the years that followed, the Gods told this tale, late at night, in their great hall, they always hesitated at this point, because in a moment Odd will reach into his jerkin, and pull out something carved of wood, and none of them was certain what it was.
Some of the Gods claimed that it was a wooden key, and some said it was a wooden heart. There was a school of thought that maintained that what Odd had presented the giant was a realistic carving of Thor's hammer, and that the Giant had been unable to tell the real from the false, and had fled, in terror.
They were wrong.
It was none of these things.