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Thor and Utgard-Loki

Legends & Myths Thor's journey to Utgard

The funniest and at the same time most profound Thor story is a string of defeats – that are none at all. On his journey to Utgard the strongest of the gods loses one contest after another. Only at the end does it become clear: his opponents were Age, Sea and Thought itself.

Thor sets out with Loki and his human servants Thjálfi and Röskva into the land of the giants. The journey leads deep into Jötunheim, to the stronghold of Utgard („that which lies outside the fence“) and its lord Utgard-Loki – not to be confused with the Loki of the Æsir.

Skrymir and the Unopenable Bag

At night the travellers sleep in a vast hall with a side chamber – in the morning it turns out to be the glove of an enormous giant: Skrymir („the braggart“). He wanders on with them and carries the provisions in his bag. But in the evening Thor cannot get the bag open – Skrymir has bound it shut with magic wire. Enraged, Thor strikes the sleeping giant three times on the head with Mjöllnir. Skrymir, though, only mutters, asking whether a leaf or a little acorn has fallen on his head. In truth Thor has struck three deep valleys into a mountain – Skrymir had secretly slipped the mountain in between.

The Three Impossible Contests

In Utgard, Utgard-Loki challenges the guests to contests. And one after another the greatest of them fail:

Loki competes in an eating contest against Logi – and loses, for Logi devours not only the meat but the bones and the trough as well. Thjálfi, the fastest of runners, loses three times to the boy Hugi. Thor himself is to drink from a horn – yet however mightily he draws, the level barely drops. Then he is to lift the household cat – he manages to raise just one paw from the ground. And in wrestling an old nurse named Elli nearly forces him to the floor. The god of thunder, humbled.

The great revelation. At the parting Utgard-Loki confesses the truth: it had all been an illusion of the senses. Logi was wild fire, which consumes everything. Hugi was thought – nothing runs faster. The drinking horn was joined to the world-ocean; Thor's draughts created the tides. The cat was the Midgard Serpent, which encircles the world – Thor all but lifted it out of the sea. And Elli was old age, which wrestles everyone down. When Thor moves to raise his hammer, Utgard has vanished. „Had I known that,“ says Utgard-Loki, „I would never have let you in.“

„Now I tell you the truth …:
you drank so mightily that it was a wonder.“
— after Snorri's Gylfaginning (sense after Karl Simrock, 1851, public domain)
Source. The Utgard journey is told at length in Snorri's Gylfaginning (Prose Edda, c. 1220) – one of the most artfully narrated stories in the whole work. Standard reference: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology.

The moral is surprisingly modern: even the strongest cannot defeat fire, sea, thought and age – but that he came so close to them at all makes his strength all the more awe-inspiring.

Laser-engraved slate plaque with a Thor motif by Glanz & Gravur
Thor and the Midgard Serpent – as a laser-engraved slate plaque from our workshop. Thor motifs in the shop →
From Aachen, for the North. Thor, his hammer and his tales we engrave on slate, wood and glass. Motif plaques among the slate plaques, Thor's hammer as natural jewellery. To the shop.

Read more with us

Thor (Donar) · Thjálfi & Röskva · The Midgard Serpent · The Giants · Loki.

Sources & literature

Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda (Gylfaginning: Thor's journey to Utgard, Skrymir, the contests), c. 1220. German public-domain translation: Karl Simrock, Die Edda (1851). Scholarship: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; John Lindow, Norse Mythology (2001).

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