Skrymir

   A king of the giants in Nordic myth. In the Prose Edda it is told how Thor, accompanied by Loki and Thialfi, after various misadventures arrived at Utgard to visit King Skrymir, who had the title of Utgard-Loki, which may be taken to mean the Magus of Utgard. Thor and his companions undergo a whole series of mystifications culminating in a series of matches at the giants’ castle, when Loki is defeated at eating, Thialfi at running, and Thor himself had failed to empty a drinking horn in three draughts, to lift more than one leg of a cat from the floor, and to win a wrestling match with an old woman. The following day on their departure Skrymir explains that Loki was defeated by Logi—meaning fire; Thialfi by thought; that the drinking horn was connected with the sea, and that Thor’s prodigious draughts had lowered the sea levels around the northern coasts—a matter which is referred to in Nordic Creation Legends; that the cat was the Midgard Serpent, the lifting of whose leg had caused vast earthquakes all over the world; while the old woman was Elli, or old age, with whom no one could struggle. When Thor in a fury at having been deceived turned round to strike the giant, everything disappeared.