Once upon a time there was a day long ago when Thor and Loki were riding horses through the nine lands of the universe, accompanied by Thor’s two goats. They saw a cozy farmhouse with bright windows as the sun began to set, and they ran to investigate.
The farmer and his wife had invited Thor and Loki to stay with them the night before the battle. Roskva, the farmer’s daughter, and Thjalfi, the farmer’s son, were the farmer’s only children.
To feed everyone that night, Thor slaughtered his goats. For the bones to rest on, he laid out some hides. Thjalfi went against Thor’s orders and fractured a bone to get at the marrow. When Thor resurrected the goats the following day, he noticed that one of them had a limp hind leg and knew exactly what had to be done.
In his fury, Thor was ready to slaughter the family, but the father offered his two children as slaves to the gods in exchange for their lives, and Thor agreed to spare them.
To get to Jotunheim, Thor and his companions had to cross a deep ocean and an old forest until it was dark.
When they were seeking for a spot to spend the night, they came across a large room in the woods that appeared to be empty, so they made up camp there.
At nightfall, Thor was startled by the sound of an earthquake-like disturbance that roused him from his sleep. When I heard it, I was terrified. To protect his companions, Thor led them to a smaller room in the hall and stood guard at the doorway with his hammer.
When the sun came up, Thor walked outdoors to investigate. He spotted a giant sleeping in the wilderness and his snoring produced a dreadful noise. Thor didn’t like giants but as he approached the giant to destroy it with his hammer, the giant stood up and greeted him: “Hello, my name is Skrymir but I don’t need to ask you your name because you are the powerful Thor. You utilized my glove to find a spot to sleep, I see”.
At this juncture, Thor and his comrades learned that they had slept in the Giants’ glove and that the side chamber was the glove’s thumb.
Skrymir asked Thor if he may join them on their voyage and offered to carry all their goods in his food bag. Thor consented and they started out for Utgarda-hall Loki’s in the center of Jotunheim.
Towards dark, the giant discovered a location for them to rest under a great oak tree. He left Thor with the bag of goods and informed him that he was going to sleep and that Thor should cook a feast for him and his friends.
The giant began to snore again, and as Thor tried to unzip the bag, he found that he could not. He was so upset that he flung his hammer at the sleeping giant’s head, but Skrymir barely stirred up for a moment thinking that an acorn had fallen on him. Two more times that night Thor tried to kill the monster in this fashion and it was the same each time. The giant would wake up thinking that something had fallen from the tree and disturbed his sleep.
That morning, Skrymir separated from Thor and his company, making them understand that they will find men taller than him and that they will not boast in the hall of Utgarda-Loki, otherwise they will be laughed at because they are so small. Thor, Loki and the two humans, we are happy to see the giant go. They would be happy not to see him again.
In the middle of the day, they came across Utgarda-fortress. Loki’s It was so large that they pressed their neighbor to see the top. Thor tried to open the door to get in, but he couldn’t and the group had to squeeze through the bars.
Once inside, they saw a room with two large tables and several giants sitting around the tables, and in the middle of them was Utgarda-Loki himself.
Thor introduced himself to the big giant. Utgarda-Loki remarked that the mighty Thor must be more than what he saw before him. He also added that no one is allowed to stay unless they have a skill or knowledge that is superior to that of other men.
Loki then became angry and challenged any man to an eating contest because he could eat faster than anyone else.
Utgarda-Loki called one of his men, Logi, and pitted him against Loki in the eating contest. The other giants brought out a meat feeder and placed it between the two competitors. In the end, Loki ate all the way to the middle and met Logi there. The only difference was that Loki ate all the meat, but Logi ate the meat, the bones and the trough.
The giant king called his man the winner of the contest and no one could deny it.
Then the big giant asked Thjalfi if he wanted to participate in the contest and Thjalfi said that he could beat any man in a race. So they all went out on level ground and Utgarda-Loki called a man named Hugi to compete against Thor’s man.
On the first lap, Hugi finished the race and turned to look at his opponent. Thjalfi didn’t do well in the other two races either. He even lost by a bow length.
It was clear that Thjalfi had lost the contest, so Utgarda-Loki turned to Thor and asked him what challenge he was going to enter. Thor replied that he could drink more than any man and Utgarda-Loki called his cupbearer who blew a horn to the god of thunder. Thor raised this horn and began to drink for what seemed like an eternity.
Thor removed the horn from his mouth and realized that barely a drop had been drained.
Utgarda-Loki said that great men emptied the horn in one drink and some great men emptied it in two but three drinks is not impressive.
Thor, however, tried twice to empty the horn from the rim so that it could be carried without spilling, but he failed and the contest was over. Thor returned the horn to Utgarda-Loki. The god of thunder became angry.
Then Utgarda-Loki challenged Thor to lift his cat off the ground, as this was usually a child’s game and should be easy enough.
A large gray cat rushed into the middle of the room and Thor reached out, grabbed it and tried to lift it over his head. The cat’s back continued to arch and, as big as it was, Thor was only big enough to pull his paws off the floor.
Utgarda-Loki said that he had predicted this challenge would go this way since Thor is smaller and shorter than the other men in this room.
Thor roared: “If you think I am so short, pick someone to fight me! I am angry!”
Utgarda-Loki looked at his men in the room and decided that it would not be worthy for them to fight Thor. So he called for his nurse, an old woman named Elli who he said had taken down men no less strong than Thor.
Thor was enraged by his choice of opponent, but he accepted the match anyway. He did not do well. Every time Thor put his strength into a grapple, the old giantess held on. Finally, Thor lost his footing and the giantess brought him to his knees
It was now late at night. Utgarda-Loki stopped the contests and offered Thor and his companions hospitality and a place to spend the night.
When Thor awoke, Loki and Thor’s servants prepared to leave Utgarda-hall Loki’s but the great giant welcomed them into the hall with hospitality and a breakfast table.
As they left the fortress, Utgarda-Loki followed Thor and his companions for some time. It was then that the giant decided to tell them the truth. He looked at Thor and told him that he was actually the giant Skrymir and that he would never invite Thor to his hall again because the god of thunder had almost caused their destruction. The night Thor tried to kill Skrymir, the giant had moved a mountain next to his head. Skrymir admitted that he had shape-shifting abilities so that the god would not notice when he moved the mountain. Thor had left three large square valleys with the blows of his hammer. Find a wide range of Scandinavian jewelry on this specialized Viking website.
When Loki tried to eat faster than Logi, it was not fair because Logi is a forest fire and the man Thjalfi ran were Utgarda-own Loki’s running thoughts. The horn that Thor drank from was connected to the ocean and Thor drank so much that it created the tides. The cat was actually the Midgard snake that envelops the whole world, but Thor picked it up above the world and almost reached the sky, even though he thought he had only lifted his paws slightly from the ground.
Thor was so angry that his eyes turned red.
Utgarda-Loki said that the old woman that the god of thunder fought was actually old and he was very impressed to see how long Thor stood on his feet.
Finally, Thor lost his temper and threw his hammer at Skrymir, but the giant, as well as his fortress, disappeared and left in its wake a magnificent sight, a large flowery plane that stretched out before Thor and his companions. Skrymir and its great hall were no longer visible.
