Thor and Útgarða-Loki: The Contest Thor Could Never Win
Thor and Útgarða-Loki is the longest Thor and Loki story in Snorri's Edda. In Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaginning, chapters 44–47, Thor, Loki and two human servants travel east to a giant king's fortress, where every contest is an illusion. Thor drinks from the sea, lifts the World Serpent and wrestles old age itself, and still loses every round.
Snorri's own narrators are reluctant to tell it. Asked whether anything ever overmatched Thor, the figure called Hárr first insists that "all are bound to believe, that Thor is mightiest" (in Arthur Brodeur's 1916 English translation). Then Þriði, the third of the three, tells it anyway.
The Road East: Goats, Two Servants and a Giant's Glove
In the Old Norse text of Gylfaginning, chapter 44, Thor drives his goat chariot with Loki beside him and stops for the night at a farmer's house. He slaughters both goats, cooks them, invites the family to eat, and tells everyone to throw the bones onto the hides.
The farmer's son, Þjálfi (Thjalfi), splits a thighbone for the marrow. At dawn Thor raises Mjölnir over the hides and the goats stand up alive, one lame in a hind leg. The family begs for mercy as his knuckles whiten on the hammer shaft. His anger passes, and as payment he takes the two children, Þjálfi and his sister Röskva, as bond-servants. Snorri adds that "they follow him ever since."
Leaving the goats behind, the four cross the deep sea into a great forest. At dark they find a huge hall with a doorway as wide as the building. At midnight the ground shakes, so they shelter in a side room while Thor sits in the doorway, gripping his hammer.
At first light Thor finds a giant snoring in the woods. The giant wakes and leaps up, and for once, it is said, Thor lost his nerve and did not strike (our translation of Þór varð bilt einu sinni). He gives his name as Skrýmir (Skrymir) and asks whether Thor has dragged off his glove. He picks it up. The hall was the glove; the side room was its thumb.
Skrýmir joins them and ties all their food into his own bag. That night he sleeps, and Thor cannot loosen a single knot. Furious, Thor hits him on the head with Mjölnir. Skrýmir asks whether a leaf fell on him. At midnight Thor strikes again and feels the hammer sink deep. Was that an acorn? Near dawn comes the hardest blow, to the temple, and Skrýmir blames birds in the tree for dropping twigs on him.
Then he gives advice. The men of Útgarða-Loki, he says, "will not well endure big words from such swaddling-babes." Turn back if you are wise. If not, the castle Útgarðr lies east. He walks off north with the food.
Inside Útgarðr: Five Contests Rigged From the Start
The castle is so tall the travelers tip their heads back to see the top. The gate is locked, so they squeeze between the bars. Inside, giants sit along two benches, and their king, Útgarða-Loki (Utgarda-Loki), smiles over his teeth and asks whether "this toddler is Öku-Thor." Nobody stays here, he says, without some special skill.
Loki goes first, claiming no one eats faster. A trough of meat is carried in, with Loki at one end and a man named Logi at the other. They meet in the middle. Loki has stripped the meat from the bones. Logi has eaten the meat, the bones and the trough.
Þjálfi offers to race anyone, and the king calls a lad named Hugi. In the first heat Hugi finishes so far ahead that he turns back to meet Þjálfi. By the third, Þjálfi is not even halfway when Hugi finishes.
Thor chooses drinking. He is handed a horn and told that good drinkers empty it in one draught and nobody fails in three. It does not look big, only long. Three huge draughts later, the level has barely dropped.
Next, a game for young boys: lift the king's cat. A large gray cat jumps onto the floor. Thor heaves with a hand under its belly, but it arches its back, and at full stretch he raises one paw.
Angry now, Thor demands to wrestle. The king sends for his old nurse, Elli. The harder Thor grips, the firmer she stands, until she brings him down onto one knee. Útgarða-Loki stops the match, and the guests spend the night in good cheer.
The Reveal at Dawn: What Útgarða-Loki Confessed
In chapter 47 the king feeds his guests and walks them out. Only outside does he tell the truth. He worked sjónhverfingar, "eye-illusions," on them from the start, and he was Skrýmir. Had he known Thor's strength, he says, Thor would never have been let in, because the giants came close to disaster.
| What Thor's party faced | What it really was, per Útgarða-Loki |
|---|---|
| Skrýmir's food bag | Tied shut with iron |
| Three hammer blows | A flat-topped mountain slipped in front of each blow; its three square valleys are the hammer's marks |
| Logi, the fast eater | Villieldr, wildfire |
| Hugi, the fast runner | Hugr minn, "my thought" |
| The drinking horn | Its far end lay in the sea; what Thor drank is the ebb tide |
| The gray cat | The Midgard Serpent, which lies around all lands |
| Elli, the old nurse | Old age, which brings everyone down in the end |
The cat is the one feat the king says frightened everyone who saw it. In Brodeur's words, "all were afraid who saw how thou didst lift one foot clear of the earth," because Thor had raised the serpent nearly to the sky. It is the first of his three meetings with the serpent; the fishing trip and Ragnarök follow.
Even the hammer blows were a near thing. The first and lightest, the king admits, would have killed him. Mjölnir did not miss. It hit a mountain.
Útgarða-Loki warns Thor never to come back. Thor swings up his hammer, but the king is gone, and where the castle stood there is only a wide, fair plain. Thor goes home resolved to meet the Midgard Serpent, which in chapter 48 becomes his revenge: the fishing trip with the giant Hymir.
What the Sources Actually Say
The full story survives only in Snorri's Gylfaginning, written in Iceland around 1220. Chapter numbers vary by edition: the heimskringla.no text and Finnur Jónsson's 1907 edition run from chapter 44 (the goats) to 47 (the reveal), Brodeur numbers them XLIV to XLVII, and some modern translations drop numbers entirely.
Two Eddic poems joke about the glove. In Lokasenna, in Bellows's 1923 translation, stanza 60, Loki taunts Thor: "In the thumb of a glove didst thou hide, thou great one, / And there forgot thou wast Thor." Stanza 62 adds that "Rough seemed the straps of Skrymir's wallet." In Hárbarðsljóð, stanza 26, the ferryman Hárbarðr says Thor hid in a glove, afraid "To fart or sneeze lest Fjalar should hear."
Hárbarðsljóð calls the glove's owner Fjalarr, not Skrýmir; Bellows put it down to confused names. We do not know which version is older. The poems do show that the glove joke circulated in verse.
No Eddic poem names Útgarða-Loki. His name means "Loki of Útgarðr," the outer enclosure, and Snorri keeps him distinct from Thor's companion: both sit in the same hall, and the king sets Loki his contest. There is no evidence anyone worshipped him.
Logi, Loki and the Viking God of Fire
In Old Norse, logi is simply the word for flame. In Skáldskaparmál, Snorri's handbook of poetic language, the list of fire names (chapter 77 in the heimskringla edition) sets logi beside eldr, the everyday word for fire, and poetic words such as bál (blaze, pyre) and glæðr (embers). So the plain Norse for fire is eldr, and logi is the flame.
A second Logi appears in Hversu Noregr byggðist, a late legendary account of Norway's settlement. There Fornjótr has three sons: Kári rules the winds, Hlér the sea, and "Logi ruled over fire" (our translation). Whether he is the same Logi as the eater in Útgarðr, the sources never say.
Then there is the name clash. Snorri pits Loki against Logi, and it is hard not to hear a pun. Are the names related? We cannot say. Loki's name has no agreed etymology, k and g are different sounds in Old Norse, and no medieval source connects the two. The link is a modern argument. Jacob Grimm made it in his Teutonic Mythology (volume 1, chapter XII, in Stallybrass's 1882 translation), calling the pairing "no mere play upon words." Richard Wagner's Ring operas then turned Loki into Loge, a fire god serving Wotan. Neither is evidence from the Viking Age.
So who is the Viking god of fire? Honestly, nobody among the Norse gods and goddesses. The Eddas never call Loki a fire god, and Snorri's portrait of him in Gylfaginning chapter 33 is all cunning, no flame. The fire beings are Logi, wildfire inside an illusion, and the giant Surtr, who carries a flaming sword and, in chapter 51, flings fire over the earth and burns the whole world. Neither is a god.
Wearing Thor's Hammer After His Worst Night
It might seem odd to wear the hammer of a god who lost every contest in Útgarðr. Read the reveal again, though. He was drinking the sea, lifting the serpent around the world and wrestling age itself, and the giants admitted they were afraid of him.
The hammer's record holds up too: it cut three valleys into a mountain. Hammer-shaped pendants are among the best-known amulets of the Viking Age, and people still wear a Thor's hammer pendant for the reason this story gets told. Thor does not always win. He keeps swinging.
FAQ: Thor and Útgarða-Loki
Is Útgarða-Loki the same as Loki?
No. In Gylfaginning chapter 46 both sit in the same hall, and Útgarða-Loki sets Loki an eating contest against Logi. Útgarða-Loki means "Loki of Útgarðr," the outer enclosure, and he is a giant king who wins by illusion. No medieval source says the two are one being, although the shared name invites comparison.
Who is Logi in Norse mythology?
Logi means "flame." In Gylfaginning chapter 46 he beats Loki in an eating contest by devouring the meat, the bones and the wooden trough. Útgarða-Loki later reveals that Logi was wildfire itself. A late text, Hversu Noregr byggðist, also names a Logi, son of Fornjótr, who ruled over fire.
Who is the Viking god of fire?
The surviving sources name no fire god. They have fire beings instead: Logi, wildfire personified in Snorri's Útgarðr story, and the giant Surtr, who brings the flames that burn the world at Ragnarök. Loki is often called a fire god today, but that idea is modern: argued by nineteenth-century scholars and staged by Wagner, never stated in the Eddas.
Is Thor half giant?
No source calls him that, but giant blood runs through his family. Snorri counts Thor's mother Jörð among the goddesses, yet makes her the daughter of Night, whose father was the giant Nörfi. Odin's mother Bestla was the daughter of the giant Bölþorn. By Snorri's family tree, Thor has giant ancestors on both sides.
Why does Thor fight the giants?
The sources never give an origin story for the feud. They treat it as his role: Skáldskaparmál lists among Thor's poetic names "Defender of Asgard and of Midgard" and "Adversary and Slayer of Giants and Troll-Women." The defeat at Útgarðr sharpened it, since Snorri says Thor then set out to meet the Midgard Serpent.
Sources
- Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning 44–48, plus 6, 10, 33, 36 and 51. Brodeur translation (1916).
- Snorri Sturluson, Skáldskaparmál: Thor and earth kennings, fire names, the þulur goddess list.
- Poetic Edda: Lokasenna 60 and 62; Hárbarðsljóð 26. English by Henry Adams Bellows (1923).
- Hversu Noregr byggðist, chapter 1.
- Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, volume 1, chapter XII (1882 translation), for the Loki and Logi argument.