106 pages • 3 hours read
Rick RiordanThe Sword of Summer
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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BetaChapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “I’ve Always Wanted to Destroy a Bridge”
A stunned Magnus follows Randolph onto the Longfellow Bridge. Rather than explain more about Magnus’s father, Randolph points out how the bridge’s architecture resembles a Viking longship and describes how it means the poet Longfellow, among others, knew the Boston area was sacred to the Norse explorers. Randolph believes the Viking longship went down in the water the bridge now spans and that the roots of the World Tree (Yggdrasill) are in the city.
A distant explosion interrupts Randolph’s lecture. Randolph orders Magnus to hold his hand out over the water and call up his birthright. Following a second, closer explosion, Magnus complies. The snow and ice on the water melt, leaving “a hole in the shape of a hand” (33). A corroded piece of metal shoots up through the water and into Magnus’s hand. The piece of metal is Sumarbrander, the Sword of Summer and what Magnus’s father left for him to find.
Randolph insists Magnus has the power to renew the sword, but before Magnus can even start to figure out what that means, a third explosion hits on the bridge. Magnus runs toward it to find a slick man with skin and clothes of the blackest black untouched by the fires or heat. The man has come for the sword and offers Magnus a deal: "Give me the sword and I will spare your life” (35).
Chapter 6 Summary: “Make Way for Ducklings, or They Will Smack You Upside the Head”
The man in black is Surt, the “dark one” and king of the fire giants. He demands Magnus hand over the sword again. Magnus refuses, but before he can attack, Blitz and Hearth arrive, wielding a plastic bow and a street sign that reads “make way for ducklings” (38). They attack Surt.
Surt bats Blitz and Hearth away, knocking Hearth unconscious. He summons a wall of fire, melting everything on the bridge. Magnus doesn’t feel the heat—extreme temperatures have never bothered him. He orders Blitz to get Randolph to safety and then walks “into the wall of flames” to confront Surt (41).
Chapter 7 Summary: “You Look Great Without a Nose, Really”
Despite his bravery, Magnus is no match for Surt. After a devastating blow from the giant, the sword hums, and Magnus remembers Randolph telling him to renew the blade. Surt strikes again, knocking Magnus onto his back. Above, Magnus sees “a girl in armor on a horse made of mist” (43). He silently begs for help, and she disappears.
Magnus staggers to his feet. In his hand, the sword transforms into an undamaged weapon with Norse runes along the blade. The sword attacks with a will of its own, chopping off Surt’s nose. Surt retaliates by pitching a flaming ball of tar into Magnus’s stomach. Beyond the pain, Magnus realizes he’s dying and decides if he’s going, he’s taking Surt with him. He drags Surt over the bridge railing. The last thing Magnus sees before he dies is the girl on the mist horse “diving toward me at a full gallop” (47).
Chapter 8 Summary: “Mind the Gap, and Also the Hairy Guy with the Ax”
In death, Magnus dreams. He sees a day he spent with his mom when he was a kid. Next, he sees an unfamiliar man wearing a Red Sox jersey in Randolph’s study. The man warns Magnus not to trust appearances or motives and to “tell the All-Father I said hello” (51).
The dream changes again, this time to the girl on the horse. She totes Magnus through the gap, an area of nothingness, “just endless gray” (52). Magnus falls unconscious again. When he wakes, he feels perfectly healthy and is outside a set of doors with wolf-head knockers. A nearby sign identifies his location as the Grove of Glasir, and he sees familiar Boston landmarks in the distance. Before Magnus can decide what to do, the door opens, revealing a burly man with a huge axe at his hip. The man tells Magnus he needs to check in and takes him inside.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
Magnus’s battle with Surt incites Magnus’s role in the story as a hero, warrior, and moderator of conflict. In Norse myth, it is prophesied Surt will kill Frey with the Sword of Summer at Ragnarok, an apocalyptic battle after which the world ends and is created anew. The battle in Chapter 7 sets up the main conflict of the story: Magnus must use the sword to stop Surt from ushering in doomsday. The fight also foreshadows Magnus’s later victory and delaying of Ragnarok.
Riordan uses much of Chapters 5-8 to foreshadow future events and relationships. During the battle, Magnus doesn’t feel the heat of Surt’s fire. Frey is also the god of moderate climates and the middle ground, a likely explanation for Magnus’s near immunity to extreme temperatures. This immunity foreshadows how Magnus unites groups or ends conflicts without violence. Magnus’s dream of Loki in Randolph’s study foreshadows the Epilogue and Randolph’s association with the trickster god. In addition, Loki’s warning foreshadows that Magnus is going to Valhalla, Odin’s hall of heroes.
Riordan also builds upon the story’s world in these chapters. Randolph believes the roots of Yggdrasill (the World Tree) are in Boston, which is later confirmed as true. Blitz’s ducklings sign foreshadows the Make Way for Ducklings statue being the tree’s roots. Chapter 8 shows a link between Boston and Norse myth. The Grove of Glasir exists in two places: outside Valhalla and within Boston. Its location offers support to Randolph’s theory that Boston is an important location to the Norse. It also foreshadows Magnus traveling back and forth between various places in Boston and the Nine Worlds.
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