Skrýmir in the forest
Útgarða-Loki’s story is in Snorri’s Gylfaginning, chapters 45 to 47, and he is named before he appears. Thor sets out east toward Jötunheim with Loki, Þjálfi and Röskva and walks all day through a great forest. At night the travellers shelter in a very great hall, and when the earth shakes about midnight, they move into a side-chamber on the right. At dawn Thor finds a man asleep in the wood, snoring mightily, and the man is not small. Snorri says that this was the first time Thor’s heart failed him to strike with the hammer. The man wakes, says that he is called Skrýmir, and picks up his glove: the hall of the night was the glove, and the side-chamber was its thumb.
Skrýmir travels with them and carries all their food in one bag. At evening he lies down to sleep under an oak, and Thor cannot loosen a single knot of the bag. Three times in the night Thor strikes the sleeper with Mjöllnir. After the first blow Skrýmir asks whether a leaf has fallen on him, and after the second, whether an acorn has. A little before day Thor swings with all his strength at the temple that is turned up. The Old Norse adds a sentence that Brodeur’s English leaves out, Sökkr þá hamarrinn upp at skaftinu: the hammer sank in up to the haft.
En Skrýmir settist upp ok strauk of vangann ok mælti: “Hvárt munu fuglar nökkurir sitja í trénu yfir mér? Mik grunaði, er ek vaknaða, at tros nökkut af kvistunum felli í höfuð mér. Hvárt vakir þú, Þórr? Mál mun vera upp at standa ok klæðast, en ekki eiguð þér nú langa leið fram til borgarinnar, er kölluð er Útgarðr. Heyrt hefi ek, at þér hafit kvisat í milli yðvar, at ek væra ekki lítill maðr vexti, en sjá skuluð þér þar stærri menn, ef þér komit í Útgarð. Nú mun ek ráða yðr heilræði. Látið þér eigi stórliga yfir yðr. Ekki munu hirðmenn Útgarða-Loka vel þola þvílíkum kögursveinum köpuryrði. En at öðrum kosti hverfið aftr, ok þann ætla ek yðr betra af at taka.”
“But Skrýmir sat up and stroked his cheek, and said: ‘Some birds must be sitting in the tree above me; I imagined, when I awoke, that some dirt from the twigs fell upon my head. Art thou awake, Thor? It will be time to arise and clothe us; but now ye have no long journey forward to the castle called Útgardr. I have heard how ye have whispered among yourselves that I am no little man in stature; but ye shall see taller men, if ye come into Útgardr. Now I will give you wholesome advice: do not conduct yourselves boastfully, for the henchmen of Útgarda-Loki will not well endure big words from such swaddling-babes. But if not so, then turn back, and I think it were better for you to do that.’” — Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 45, tr. A. G. Brodeur
A blow that sinks the hammer to the haft feels to Skrýmir like dirt from the twigs. Then he gives advice, heilræði, and in it the master of Útgarðr comes into the story for the first time, by name and in the third person. The hirðmenn Útgarða-Loka, the henchmen of Útgarða-Loki, will not put up with big words from kögursveinum, which Brodeur translates as swaddling-babes. Skrýmir then takes the bag on his back and goes off north across the forest, and Snorri does not record that anyone bids him god-speed.
The king and his games
At midday Thor and his companions come to a castle on a plain, so high that they have to bend their necks back to see over it. Thor cannot open the gate, so they creep in between its bars, and they find a great hall with many men on two benches. Brodeur’s English calls its master the king. He looks at them in his own good time, smiles “scornfully over his teeth”, and asks whether “this toddler is Öku-Thor”. No one may stay there, he says, who does not know some craft or cunning beyond most men.
Loki, the god who came with Thor, goes first. Snorri does not connect him with the giant whose name ends in his, and in the hall they stand on opposite sides. Loki offers to eat faster than anyone, and Útgarða-Loki sets a man named Logi against him at a trough full of meat. They meet in the middle, but Loki has eaten only the meat off the bones, and Logi has eaten the meat, the bones and the trough. Then Þjálfi loses three heats to a lad named Hugi; his own entry tells that race heat by heat. Last, Thor offers to drink against anyone, and Útgarða-Loki has his serving-boy bring the horn that his henchmen drink from.
“Af horni þessu þykkir þá vel drukkit, ef í einum drykk gengr af, en sumir menn drekka af í tveim drykkjum, en engi er svá lítill drykkjumaðr, at eigi gangi af í þrimr.” Þórr lítr á hornit ok sýnist ekki mikit ok er þó heldr langt, en hann er mjök þyrstr, tekr at drekka ok svelgr allstórum ok hyggr, at eigi skal hann þurfa at lúta oftar í hornit. En er hann þraut örendit ok hann laut ór horninu ok sér, hvat leið drykkinum, ok lízt honum svá sem alllítill munr mun vera, at nú sé lægra í horninu en áðr. Þá mælti Útgarða-Loki: “Vel er drukkit ok eigi til mikit. Eigi myndak trúa, ef mér væri sagt frá, at Ása-Þórr mundi eigi meira drykk drekka, en þó veit ek, at þú munt vilja drekka af í öðrum drykk.” Þórr svarar engu, setr hornit á munn sér ok hyggr nú, at hann skal drekka meira drykk, ok þreytir á drykkjuna, sem honum vannst til örendi, ok enn sér hann, at stikillinn hornsins vill ekki upp svá mjök sem honum líkar.
“‘It is held that this horn is well drained if it is drunk off in one drink, but some drink it off in two; but no one is so poor a man at drinking that it fails to drain off in three.’ Thor looked upon the horn, and it did not seem big to him; and yet it was somewhat long. Still he was very thirsty; he took and drank, and swallowed enormously, and thought that he should not need to bend oftener to the horn. But when his breath failed, and he raised his head from the horn and looked to see how it had gone with the drinking, it seemed to him that there was very little space by which the drink was lower now in the horn than before. Then said Útgarda-Loki: ‘It is well drunk, and not too much; I should not have believed, if it had been told me, that Ása-Thor could not drink a greater draught. But I know that thou wilt wish to drink it off in another draught.’ Thor answered nothing; he set the horn to his mouth, thinking now that he should drink a greater drink, and struggled with the draught until his breath gave out; and yet he saw that the tip of the horn would not come up so much as he liked.” — Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 46, tr. A. G. Brodeur
Útgarða-Loki sets the measure before Thor drinks, and then he praises and doubts in the same breath. After the second draught the tip of the horn, stikillinn hornsins, still will not come up. Útgarða-Loki needles him again: Thor cannot be called as great a man there as the Æsir call him unless he does better in the other games. Thor drinks a third time in anger, with all his might, makes some space in the horn at last, and gives it up. Útgarða-Loki says that Thor’s prowess is plainly less than they thought, and he offers other games.
The cat and the old nurse
The next game, Útgarða-Loki says, is one that young lads there play: lifting his cat up from the ground. Out onto the hall floor leaps köttr einn grár, a gray cat and a very big one. Thor puts his hand under its belly and lifts, and the cat arches its back as he stretches up. At the very utmost of his reach the cat lifts one foot, einum fæti, and no more. The game went as he had foreseen, Útgarða-Loki says: the cat is very great, and Thor is low and little beside the huge men there. Thor, angry now, tells anyone who calls him little to come and wrestle with him.
Þá svarar Útgarða-Loki ok litast um á bekkina ok mælti: “Eigi sé ek þann mann hér inni, er eigi mun lítilræði í þykkja at fást við þik.” Ok enn mælti hann: “Sjám fyrst, kalli mér hingat kerlinguna fóstru mína, Elli, ok fáist Þórr við hana, ef hann vill. Fellt hefir hon þá menn, er mér hafa litizt eigi ósterkligri en Þórr er.” Því næst gekk í höllina kerling ein gömul.
“Then Útgarda-Loki answered, looking about him on the benches, and spake: ‘I see no such man here within, who would not hold it a disgrace to wrestle with thee;’ and yet he said: ‘Let us see first; let the old woman my nurse be called hither, Elli, and let Thor wrestle with her if he will. She has thrown such men as have seemed to me no less strong than Thor.’ Straightway there came into the hall an old woman, stricken in years.” — Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 46, tr. A. G. Brodeur
He finds no man on his benches who would not think it lítilræði, a disgrace, to wrestle with Thor, and he sends instead for kerlinguna fóstru mína, the old woman who was his nurse, and names her: Elli. The harder Thor grips, the firmer she stands. Then she tries a hold of her own, and before long Thor falls to one knee. Útgarða-Loki stops the bout and says that Thor need not challenge any more of his hirð, the household that Brodeur calls his body-guard. In every game of the evening he has chosen the contest, named the opponent and spoken the verdict, and each verdict has made Thor smaller.
Eye-illusions
In the morning Útgarða-Loki feeds his guests and walks out of the castle with them. He asks Thor whether he has met any man mightier than himself, and Thor admits the shame he has got. Now that Thor is outside, the giant tells him the truth. If he lives and has his way, Thor will never come in again; had he known Thor’s strength, he would never have let him in, because Thor nearly brought them all into great peril. From the start he had worked “eye-illusions” against Thor.
He came upon them first in the wood, he says, and he had bound the provision-bag with iron. Thor’s three blows, the least of them enough to kill him, fell on a saddle-backed mountain that he had brought into the way, and the three square dales near his hall are the marks of the hammer. He never says the name Skrýmir. He only implies that he was the figure Thor met in the forest. In the hall, Logi was “wild-fire”, which burned the trough as fast as the meat, and Hugi was his own thought, which Þjálfi could not be expected to outrun. As for the horn, Annarr endir hornsins var úti í hafi: its other end was out in the sea. What Thor drank down from the sea is now called fjörur, ebb-tides.
“Eigi þótti mér hitt minna vera vert, er þú lyftir upp kettinum, ok þér satt at segja, þá hræddust allir þeir, er sá, er þú lyftir af jörðu einum fætinum. En sá köttr var eigi sem þér sýndist. Þat var Miðgarðsormr, er liggr um öll lönd, ok vannst honum varliga lengð til, at jörðina tæki sporðr ok höfuð, svá langt seildist þú upp, at skammt var þá til himins. En hitt var ok mikit undr um fangit, er þú stótt svá lengi við ok fellt eigi meir en á kné öðrum fæti, er þú fékkst við Elli, fyrir því at engi hefir sá orðit ok engi mun verða, ef svá gamall verðr, at elli bíðr, at eigi komi ellin öllum til falls. Ok er nú þat satt at segja, at vér munum skiljast, ok mun þá betr hvárratveggju handar, at þér komit eigi oftar mik at hitta. Ek mun enn annat sinn verja borg mína með þvílíkum vélum eða öðrum, svá at ekki vald munuð þér á mér fá.”
“‘It seemed to me not less noteworthy when thou didst lift up the cat; and to tell thee truly, then all were afraid who saw how thou didst lift one foot clear of the earth. That cat was not as it appeared to thee: it was the Midgard Serpent, which lies about all the land, and scarcely does its length suffice to encompass the earth with head and tail. So high didst thou stretch up thine arms that it was then but a little way more to heaven. It was also a great marvel concerning the wrestling-match, when thou didst withstand so long, and didst not fall more than on one knee, wrestling with Elli; since none such has ever been and none shall be, if he become so old as to abide “Old Age,” that she shall not cause him to fall. And now it is truth to tell that we must part; and it will be better on both sides that ye never come again to seek me. Another time I will defend my castle with similar wiles or with others, so that ye shall get no power over me.’” — Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 47, tr. A. G. Brodeur
The gray cat was the Miðgarðsormr, the serpent this wiki calls Jörmungandr, which lies around all lands. Thor had lifted it so far that skammt var þá til himins, it was then only a short way to heaven. Elli’s name is the Old Norse word for old age, and the sentence that explains her uses the word twice more: no one lives so long that he elli bíðr, waits for old age, without ellin, old age, bringing him down at last. Útgarða-Loki ends with a promise to defend his stronghold again with the same kind of wiles, vélum, or with others.
Thor swings up his hammer, but when he is about to throw it, he sees Útgarða-Loki nowhere, and where the castle stood there is only a wide and fair plain. Thor goes home resolved to meet the Midgard Serpent, and that resolve leads to the fishing with Hymir in the next chapter. There Gangleri’s first words are that Útgarða-Loki is very mighty and “deals much in wiles and in magic”. In the boat, as the baited hook goes to the bottom, Snorri measures the new trick by the old one: Thor beguiled the Miðgarðsormr no less than Útgarða-Loki hafði spottat Þór, had mocked Thor, when he lifted the serpent on his hand.
This wiki files Útgarða-Loki with the monsters, as it files Þrymr and the other giants. Trickery and magic are for the eye-illusions and for Gangleri’s verdict on him; kingship is for the castle, the benches of his men and the title that Brodeur’s English gives him. He never fights. He wins every game in his hall by choosing what the game really is, and when Thor finally raises the hammer, there is no one there to hit.