Útgarða-Loki

Summary

Útgarða-Loki is the king of the giants in the stronghold of Útgarðr, "the Outer Yards", in the giants' land beyond the sea in the east. As Thor's host he defeated Thor and his companions by magic and by deceiving their sight, and his is the longest story Snorri tells about Thor. He is not Loki, the gods' companion: in this same story Loki is one of Thor's party and is beaten by the king's men.

The story begins with a journey. Thor set out in his chariot drawn by two goats, with Loki, and they lodged with a farmer; Thor took the farmer's son Þjálfi and daughter Röskva as servants, left the goats there and went east into the land of the giants. He crossed the deep sea and entered a great forest, with Þjálfi, the swiftest runner of all men, carrying his provisions. When night fell they found a great hall whose door was as wide as the hall itself and slept in it; at midnight the earth shook, so they moved into a side chamber and heard a great roaring. In the morning Thor found a huge man asleep in the forest, snoring, and understood what the roaring had been. He buckled on his belt of strength; the man woke, and Thor, for once, hesitated to strike him and asked his name. He said: my name is Skrýmir, and I need not ask yours, for you are Thor; have you been dragging my glove about? He picked up his glove, and the hall they had slept in was the glove and the side chamber its thumb.

Skrýmir went along with them and tied their provisions together with his own in one bag on his back. When he slept that evening Thor tried to open the bag and could not loosen a single knot. In anger he struck the sleeping giant's head with the hammer; Skrýmir woke and asked whether a leaf had fallen on him. At midnight Thor struck again, and felt the hammer's face sink deep into the head; Skrýmir asked whether an acorn had fallen on him. Near dawn Thor struck a third time; Skrýmir stroked his cheek and said: are there birds in the tree above me? Some twigs fell on my head. Then he told them: you will see bigger men than me in Útgarðr, so do not give yourselves airs there, for Útgarða-Loki's men will not put up with big talk from such little fellows; you had better turn back, but if you go on, head east. And he went off north into the mountains.

They reached the stronghold at midday and had to bend their heads back until their necks touched their backs to see over it. Its gate was barred with a grille that Thor could not open, so they squeezed between the bars. When they stood before the king he looked at them slowly, grinned and said: is this little stripling Öku-Þórr? No one stays with us who does not have some skill beyond other men. Loki said: I can eat faster than anyone here; the king called a man named Logi, a trough of meat was set between them, and Loki ate the meat off the bones while Logi ate the meat, the bones and the trough. Þjálfi ran three races against a boy named Hugi and fell further behind each time. Thor was given the horn the king's men drink from and told that a good drinker empties it in one draught and even the weakest in three; he drank three long draughts and the horn went down only a little. Then he was told to lift the king's cat off the ground; he put his hand under the belly of a big grey cat, which arched its back as high as he raised his hand, and he lifted only one of its feet. Angry, Thor asked for someone to wrestle, and the king called his old foster-mother Elli; the harder Thor strained the firmer she stood, until Thor went down on one knee.

In the morning the king entertained them and walked out of the stronghold with them, and then he told Thor: now that you are outside I will tell you the truth; had I known your strength I would never have let you in, for you nearly brought great disaster on us, and I deceived your eyes. I was the man you met in the forest; I tied the bag with magic iron; I set a mountain between you and your blows, and the three square valleys in the flat-topped mountain are your hammer marks. Logi was wildfire, which burned the trough as fast as the meat; Hugi was my thought, and nothing outruns thought. The end of the horn was in the sea, and when you reach the shore you will see how much it has sunk from your drinking, which is now called the ebb. The cat was the Miðgarðr serpent that encircles all lands, and you lifted it nearly to heaven, so that all who saw it were afraid. Elli was old age, and there is no one who reaches old age whom she does not bring down. Thor raised his hammer and the king was gone; he turned back to smash the stronghold and found only wide and fair plains, and no stronghold. He went home, resolved to meet the serpent, which he later did in Hymir's boat.

The idea the story turns on is that Thor was beaten by things that cannot be beaten because they are not what they seem: fire that eats everything, thought that nothing outruns, the sea that cannot be drunk, the serpent around the world, and old age that brings everyone down. His real strength was greater than anything in the stronghold, so that the king feared him, but the king did not defend his stronghold by strength; he defended it by deceiving the eye. The defeat in this story is a measure of the world: Thor's drinking lowered the sea, his blows cut the valleys, and his hand raised the serpent.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since neither essay mentions him. The name has two parts. The second is Loki, the same name as Loki's, which his page reads as lukaʿ, one who joins cunning to baseness. The first is Útgarða, the genitive plural of Útgarðar, "the Outer Yards", made of two words: út, "out", and garð, the walled enclosure, which the Asgard and Midgard pages read as jarad, open ground where nothing grows. We read út as Arabic ʿatā: the ʿ drops and leaves a long vowel, the long ú of út; t is t; and the weak w drops. Lane gives ʿatā as "he behaved proudly, and was immoderate, inordinate, or exorbitant", the ʿātī as the proud and overbearing, "i. q. jabbār", ʿatat ar-rīḥ, "the wind blew immoderately", and ʿatā said of an old man, "he became advanced in age, and in a declining state", as in "I have reached the extreme degree of old age". On this reading Útgarða-Loki is the Loki of the open ground that exceeds all bounds, which is what the story makes him: everything in his land goes beyond measure, a glove the size of a hall, a stronghold one must bend one's neck back to see, a horn whose end is in the sea, a cat that is the serpent around the earth, and an old woman who is old age itself, the ʿitiyy within the same root. When Thor raised his hammer he found no stronghold, only open plains without a building.

Linguistic Root

Útgarðr and ʿatā

Cleasby–Vigfusson give út-garðar as "the outer building", with the phrase "to throw a man to the out-yards", to cast him out, and in mythology "the 'out-yard', abode of the giant Útgarða-Loki". They set út beside Gothic and Old English ût, English out and German aus.

Lane, under ʿ-t-w: ʿatā, yaʿtū, ʿutuww and ʿitiyy, "he behaved proudly, and was immoderate, inordinate, or exorbitant", or "revolted from obedience", as in the Qur'anic "they turned with disdain from the command of their Lord"; ʿatat ar-rīḥ, "the wind blew immoderately"; ʿatā said of an old man, "he became advanced in age, and in a declining state", or "dried up", like dry wood, whence "I have reached the extreme degree of old age"; ʿātin, proud and immoderate, "i. q. jabbār", and a night ʿātin is intensely dark.

The comparison follows the Juthoor sound laws: ʿ is the consonant that most often drops in the European languages, and it can leave a vowel behind, as it left the long á of Fá- in Fáfnir; t belongs to the dental group; and w is a weak letter that drops. The Asgard page reads garð as jarad, with g answering Arabic j and Norse ð answering d.

The contestants' names

The names of those who beat Thor and his companions are ordinary Norse words. Cleasby–Vigfusson give logi as "a lowe, flame"; hugi as another form of hugr, "thought", the word in the raven's name Huginn, which the Huginn and Muninn page reads as ḥijā; and elli as "old age", quoting the saying "old age has brought all on their knees" and noting that poets call Elli "the antagonist of Thor". The king set against Thor things no one defeats and called them by their names.

Key Mythic Narratives

The goats

The journey begins with the goats: Thor slaughtered them at the farmer's house and fed the household, telling them to throw the bones onto the skins; Þjálfi split a thigh-bone for the marrow, and when Thor hallowed the skins with the hammer the goats stood up, one of them lame, and he took the two children as amends. The story is on the Mjöllnir page.

The glove in the flytings

Thor's adversaries did not forget the night in the glove. In Lokasenna Loki tells him: never tell men of your eastern journeys, since you cowered in a glove's thumb, great hero, and then you seemed no Thor at all; and: Skrýmir's thongs seemed tough to you, and you could not get at your food and nearly fainted from hunger. In Hárbarðsljóð the ferryman Hárbarðr says: Thor has strength enough but no heart; out of fear you were stuffed into a glove and did not dare sneeze or fart lest Fjalarr hear you, Fjalarr being the poem's name for the giant of the glove.

From Útgarðr to Hymir's boat

Snorri joins the two stories: Thor leaves Útgarðr resolved to meet the serpent, and Gangleri then asks whether he ever did, and is told of the fishing trip with Hymir, on which Thor went out alone in the likeness of a young lad and raised the serpent he had lifted as a cat in Útgarðr.

Symbolic Reading

The Norse rereading essay reads the giants' land as the frozen wilderness beyond the mountain ranges where no one lives, the giants as the forces of nature beyond control, Thor's fights with them as man's struggle with a harsh nature, and the serpent around the world as the ocean current. The Útgarðr story says as much in its own words: Thor's adversaries there are fire, the sea, the serpent, thought and old age, all of them nature or man himself, and Snorri makes the story explain things in the world: the ebb from Thor's drinking, and the three valleys from his blows.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Gilgamesh reaches Utnapishtim at the edge of the world, beyond the Waters of Death, seeking a life without end; Utnapishtim tests him to stay awake six days and seven nights, and sleep overcomes him at the start of the test. Thor reaches a stronghold at the edge of the giants' land, beyond the sea, the king tests him, and old age brings him down on one knee. In both stories the strong hero loses to what befalls every human being, sleep or old age, at the house of a host who lives outside the bounds of the world.

Loki, the North's trickster, loses to a greater trickster: he eats against fire, and the king deceives Thor's eyes as Loki deceives the gods. The cat Thor could not lift is the serpent he kills at Ragnarök, so this story is the first meeting between Thor and his adversary in divine combat with sea and serpent.