A journey of misleading appearances
Thor and Loki stay with a farming household, where Thor kills his goats to provide a meal. He orders everyone to put the bones on the skins. The son, Þjálfi, breaks a leg bone for its marrow; when Thor restores the goats the next morning, one is lame. Thor accepts Þjálfi and his sister Röskva as servants in compensation and continues his journey with them.
After crossing into giant country, the travelers spend a frightening night in what seems to be a great building. It is the glove of the giant Skrýmir. He joins them and carries their food, but Thor cannot undo his bag’s knots. Three times Thor strikes the sleeping giant with his hammer. Each time Skrýmir wakes as though something trivial has fallen onto him. He finally directs the travelers toward Útgarðr, where they will meet beings greater than himself.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XIV, opening journey and §§46–47 in Anderson
The contests in the hall
The ruler Útgarða-Loki admits them only after they name skills worth displaying. Loki competes at eating against Logi. Both consume the meat before them, but Logi also devours bones and trough. Þjálfi races Hugi and is repeatedly outpaced. Thor then attempts to drain a drinking horn. Three tremendous drafts lower the liquid surprisingly little.
Offered a supposedly modest test, Thor tries to lift a cat from the floor. The animal arches its back until he can raise only one paw. Angry at these humiliations, he asks to wrestle someone. The host supplies an old woman named Elli. Thor struggles to move her, while she eventually forces him onto one knee. The guests spend the night in the hall, but the king’s hospitality has made Thor’s exceptional strength look painfully inadequate.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XIV, §47 in Anderson
The host explains the trick
As the visitors leave, Útgarða-Loki reveals the concealed scale of the trials. Logi was consuming fire, Hugi was thought, and the drinking horn’s other end reached into the sea: Thor’s drinks caused the ebb of the tides. The cat was the world serpent. Raising even one paw nearly lifted it from its encompassing position. Elli was old age, against which nobody can remain undefeated forever.
The host also explains the earlier journey’s deceptions: the bag was bound with iron, and mountains intercepted the hammer blows, leaving three valleys. Thor reaches for his hammer when he learns how he has been manipulated, but the host and castle vanish. He cannot obtain a final retaliatory victory. Útgarða-Loki is distinct from Thor’s traveling companion Loki. The story ends by revising the meaning of every apparent failure, showing both the reach of Thor’s power and the limits of judging an event by its visible surface.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XIV, §48 in Anderson
- Period / witness
- Medieval Old Norse literature; the Poetic Edda survives chiefly in thirteenth-century copies, and Snorri’s Edda was composed around the 1220s. Mythic events have no historical date.
- Recording context
- Preserved through medieval Icelandic writing and later copies, in a Christian literary culture. Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda dates to c.1270. These recording circumstances do not locate the origin of an oral story.
A recording location is not necessarily a story’s origin. Dates of texts, copies, and translations answer different questions.
Explore time & place →Read the sources
These references support the explanation above. Rights and edition notes are recorded individually.
The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) ↗
Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241); translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (1846–1936) · 1901 printing of Anderson’s translation (copyright 1879); medieval work composed in Iceland around the 1220s
Edition & rights note