"
At the gate of Utgard--a place so high, that you had to strain your neck
bending back to see the top of it--Skrymir went his way. Thor and his
companions were admitted, and invited to take a share in the games going
on. To Thor, for his part, they handed a drinking-horn; it was a common
feat, they told him, to drink this dry at one draught. Long and
fiercely, three times over, Thor drank, but made hardly any impression.
He was a weak child, they told him; could he lift that cat he saw there?
Small as the feat seemed, Thor, with his whole godlike strength, could
not: he bent up the creature's back, could not raise its feet off the
ground--could at the utmost raise one foot. "Why, you are no man," said
the Utgard people; "there is an old woman that will wrestle you." Thor,
heartily ashamed, seized this haggard old woman, but could not throw
her.
[Illustration: THE GIANT SKRYMIR.]
And now, on their quitting Utgard--the chief Jotun, escorting them
politely a little way, said to Thor--"You are beaten, then; yet, be not
so much ashamed: there was deception of appearance in it. That horn you
tried to drink was the sea; you did make it ebb: but who could drink
that, the bottomless? The cat you would have lifted--why, that is the
Midgard Snake, the Great World Serpent--which, tail in mouth, girds and
keeps up the whole created world.
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