Thor’s Encounter with Útgarða-Loki

At a Glance

• Central figures: Thor, god of thunder; Loki, the trickster god; Thjálfi, Thor’s mortal servant; and Útgarða-Loki, the giant king of Útgarðr.
• Setting: The fortress of Útgarðr in Jotunheim, the land of the giants; from Norse mythology as preserved in the Eddic tradition.
• The turn: Útgarða-Loki reveals that every contest was rigged - Loki ate against wildfire, Thjálfi raced against thought, Thor drank from a horn connected to the sea, wrestled Old Age herself, and lifted Jörmungandr the World Serpent.
• The outcome: Thor reaches for Mjölnir in fury, but Útgarða-Loki and his fortress vanish, leaving Thor alone in the wilderness.
• The legacy: Despite losing every contest, Thor had moved the sea with his drinking, raised the World Serpent from the ocean floor, and brought Old Age to one knee - deeds that left the giants so alarmed they vowed never to let him enter Útgarðr again.

Thor had crossed Jotunheim with Loki at his side and Thjálfi at his heels. They had come through snow and black forest and the kind of cold that settles into iron. At last they reached the fortress: Útgarðr, walls of ice-mortared stone so tall that looking up at them made the neck ache. The gate was locked. Thor tried it. Then Loki tried it. In the end they squeezed through the bars like thralls creeping past a sleeping guard.

Inside, giants sat along benches the length of a longhouse, and at the far end, on a throne that would have seated five men at once, sat Útgarða-Loki - gray-bearded, amused. He looked Thor over the way a man looks at a dog that has wandered in from the cold.

“The Thunderer,” he said. “Smaller than I expected. In my hall, no one eats or drinks or sits without first proving his worth. What can you do?”

Loki and the Thing Called Logi

Loki spoke first. He was hungry, he said, and there was no one in any of the nine worlds who could eat faster than he could.

Útgarða-Loki called for Logi.

A long wooden trench was carried in and filled at both ends with meat. Loki crouched at one end and Logi at the other, and they ate toward the middle. Loki ate hard and fast - he stripped bone clean and swallowed without pausing - but when they met in the center, Logi had not only eaten all the meat on his side. He had eaten the bones. He had eaten the wood of the trench itself. Nothing remained where he had been.

Loki sat back. He said nothing.

Thjálfi and the Thing Called Hugi

Next Thjálfi was called forward. He was the fastest mortal alive - that was known. He had won races against men, against horses. He said he would run against any man in the hall.

Útgarða-Loki brought out Hugi.

They ran three times the length of the hall. The first race, Hugi was a full body-length ahead at the finish. The second, he had time to turn around before Thjálfi arrived. The third, he had nearly doubled back and was at the middle of the course again before Thjálfi reached the far wall.

Thjálfi did not make excuses. There were none to make.

The Horn That Did Not Empty

Now Útgarða-Loki turned to Thor, and there was something careful in his face, something watchful beneath the amusement.

He had a drinking horn brought out - long, well-made, full to the brim with dark ale. The best drinkers in his hall, he said, could empty it in one pull. Most managed it in two. No one had ever needed three.

Thor put the horn to his lips and drank. He drank until his lungs were empty and his chest burned and he had to stop. He set the horn down. The level had dropped, but barely. He could see his own hands shaking.

He drank again. He gave it everything - held on past the pain, past the point where thought becomes only the single need to keep going. When he came up for air the horn was still heavy.

On the third pull he drank until his vision went gray at the edges. And when he lowered the horn, the ale was lower - he had moved it, clearly - but it was still far from empty.

The hall was very quiet.

The Cat

Útgarða-Loki let the silence sit a moment. Then he said if Thor found drinking too difficult, perhaps something simpler. There was a grey cat that lived in the hall. An old animal. Could Thor lift it from the floor?

Thor seized it with both hands and pulled. The cat arched. One paw came up, then no more. Thor pulled harder, dug his heels in, used his back and his legs and everything he had. A second paw rose. The cat’s spine curved like a drawn bow. Its remaining two paws stayed flat on the stone floor.

That was all Thor could manage.

Elli

Thor was angry now in the way that he goes quiet before he throws Mjölnir. He demanded a wrestling match. He would face anyone in the hall.

Útgarða-Loki looked around, appeared to consider, and called for Elli - his old nursemaid, he said, the one who had put him to bed as a child.

She was stooped. Her hair was white. Her hands were spotted and the skin hung loose on her arms. Thor did not want to do this. He did it anyway.

He could not throw her. He could move her, push her, try to get under her weight and drive her off her feet - but she was always there, always rooted, and slowly, grip by grip, she worked him downward until he was on one knee on the stone floor.

Útgarða-Loki called it there.

What Was Behind It

In the morning Útgarða-Loki himself walked them to the edge of his land. He seemed in good spirits. He told them he had a thing to say.

Logi was not a giant. Logi was wildfire. Nothing eats faster than fire.

Hugi was not a giant. Hugi was thought. Nothing runs faster than thought.

The drinking horn was connected by its tip to the sea. Every gulp Thor took was draining the ocean. When he reached home, he would see what he had done to the coastline.

The cat was Jörmungandr - the World Serpent, coiled around the roots of the sea. When Thor lifted its second paw, the sky had gone white above Útgarðr. The giants had been very frightened.

Elli was old age. Elli put everything to one knee in the end.

Thor’s hand went to Mjölnir. Útgarða-Loki was already gone. The fortress was gone. There was only the grey plain and the wind off the ice, and Thor standing alone with the hammer in his fist and the cold sea somewhere behind him, lower by a few feet than it had been the day before.