The Deception at Utgard
Thor brought Loki along, because Loki was useful on journeys even if he was unreliable in everything else. They walked east on foot, and at a farmstead they stopped for the night. The farmer was poor and had nothing to offer, and his family stood with empty hands and frightened eyes, because you did not want to disappoint a thunder god. Thor said it was no problem. He slaughtered his own goats, skinned them, cooked the meat in a pot, and shared with the whole family.
He told everyone to place the bones on the skins, whole and unchewed. That was his only condition. Whole bones on the skins. The farmer's son Þjálfi was hungry, and hungry boys do not think far ahead, and he cracked a thighbone and sucked the marrow out. It tasted good. It was the last time it tasted good.
The next morning Thor swung Mjolnir over the skins and the goats rose up, alive again, from the pile of bones. But one of them limped. It set its hind leg down gingerly, like an old man with gout, and Thor saw it and his face went white and then red and he gripped Mjolnir so hard his knuckles cracked. The farmer understood. His family understood. Þjálfi understood. They fell to their knees, all four of them, and Þjálfi wept, and his sister Röskva wept, and the farmer begged for mercy. Thor's angry eyes were the worst eyes they had ever seen.
Thor took Þjálfi and Röskva as servants instead. Þjálfi was the fastest runner among humans, and Röskva was capable and quiet. Sometimes it is cheaper to forgive.
They continued on foot: Thor, Loki, Þjálfi, and Röskva. Toward evening they found a hall in the forest, enormous and empty, with an opening as wide as a river mouth. They lay down to sleep in the innermost room. In the middle of the night came a rumbling that shook the ground like an earthquake. They fled into a side corridor and slept uneasily until dawn seeped in. In the morning Thor went outside and found a giant snoring beside them. The hall had been his glove. The side corridor was the thumb. The giant was so large Thor stood looking up at his face like a mouse at the foot of a tree.
The giant's name was Skrýmir, and he was jovial in the way that enormous creatures sometimes are: friendly because he did not need to be mean. They walked together for a day, and Skrýmir carried their provisions in his own bag. In the evening he told them to eat, but the knot on the provision bag would not open. Thor pulled and pulled. He who had killed giants and broken chains and lifted whole oxen stood there struggling with a bloody knot as though his fingers were made of sausages. It was humiliating.
Thor waited until Skrýmir fell asleep, lifted Mjolnir with both hands, took his stance, and struck him on the skull with everything he had. Everything. The blow would have shattered mountains. Skrýmir woke, yawned, and scratched himself. "Did a leaf fall on me?" Thor struck again, harder, with a cry of effort. Skrýmir said: "Was that an acorn? It tickled." The third time Thor struck so hard the hammer sank in to the shaft and his arms went numb from the force. Skrýmir scratched his head and wondered if there were birds in the tree.
Thor stood there with Mjolnir in his hand and felt for the first time in his life that he might not be the strongest. It was a feeling he had no words for.
Útgarða-Loki's hall was so vast Thor had to crane his neck back to see the top of the gates. Inside, giants sat at long tables drinking from vessels the size of bathtubs, and the food smelled of roasting and fat, and the laughter was as loud as thunder. Útgarða-Loki himself sat in the high seat looking down at them with a smile that said he already knew who they were, what they wanted, and precisely how it was going to end. He was not impressed.
"Everyone who stays here must be the best at something," said Útgarða-Loki, and his voice carried through the entire hall without being raised. "What can you do?"
Loki said no one ate faster than he did. He was hungry and arrogant and he meant it. They set out a trough full of meat, long as a bench, and Loki was pitted against a man called Logi. They sat at opposite ends and ate toward each other until they met in the middle. Loki ate all the meat. Loki was fast. But Logi ate the meat, the bones, and the trough. Loki lost, and his face revealed that he did not understand how.
Þjálfi said he was the fastest runner in all the worlds, and it was close to the truth. He was set to race a boy called Hugi. Þjálfi was fast. Þjálfi was the fastest human the gods had seen. In the first race Hugi was there and back before Þjálfi reached the halfway mark. In the second Hugi was already on his way back when Þjálfi had gone an arrow-shot. By the third there was only wind where Hugi had run, and Þjálfi stood gasping and bewildered.
Thor said no one drank more than he did. They gave him a horn. It was long but no wider than other horns he had drunk from. "Most people empty it in one draught," said Útgarða-Loki. "No one needs more than three." Thor drank. He drank until his face turned red as blood and his lungs burned and his stomach felt like a lake. The level barely dropped. He drank again, with a roar of frustration. And again. The horn was still nearly full. It was the most humiliating thing Thor had ever experienced, and it got worse.
"Lift my cat," said Útgarða-Loki. A grey cat came sauntering in, large but seemingly ordinary. Thor grabbed it around the middle, braced himself, and the cat arched its back upward but barely moved. Thor went red in the face, sweat poured off him, he strained with everything he had, with a fury that should have lifted mountains, and at last, with a roar that made the tabletops bounce, he managed to lift one of the cat's paws from the floor. One paw. Útgarða-Loki nodded slowly and said: "Well, it is quite a big cat."
"Wrestle my old grandmother," said Útgarða-Loki. Thor looked at him. Útgarða-Loki was serious. An old woman came shuffling into the hall, bent and grey, with hands like gnarled branches. Thor, who by this point had lost everything resembling dignity, grabbed her. The old woman stood like a stone. Thor wrestled, twisted, pulled, used every hold he knew, and the woman did not budge. Then she pushed back, slowly, steadily, like a river rising, and Thor went down on one knee.
The thunder god, the strongest creature in all the worlds, had lost to an old woman. It was the quietest moment of his life.
The next morning Útgarða-Loki walked them to the gate, and his tone was different now, low, and there was something that could have been respect in his voice. "I will tell you the truth, now that you are leaving and will never come back. Logi was wildfire. No one can eat faster than fire. Hugi was my thought. No one can outrun thought. The other end of the horn was in the sea, and you drank so much the tide fell. Go to the shore and see the mark you left in the ocean, Thor. The cat was Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent, and you lifted it until the giants went pale with terror, because we thought you were going to pull it out of the sea. And the old woman was Old Age. No one defeats age. But you withstood her longer than any living creature should be able to, and when you went down on one knee the whole hall shook."
He paused a moment. "Skrýmir was me. The blows you dealt me struck three valleys into the mountain behind me. If you had hit true I would have been dead. The knot was forged iron. No knot in the world, Thor. Forged bloody iron."
Thor lifted Mjolnir to crush him, but Útgarða-Loki and his hall were gone. Just an empty meadow in the morning light, with dew on the grass and birdsong. Thor stood there for a long time. Then he went home, and he seldom spoke of Útgarðr, but he never forgot that he had lifted the serpent. Almost. That was the word that burned. And he decided that the next time he met Jörmungandr it would not be almost.