THOR CONTENDS WITH THE GIANTS
A Norway legend showing the folly of contending against the forces of nature.
The next day Thor and his friends came to a large city, very gloomy and silent. They walked up to a high building where the gates stood wide open. They crossed the threshold and found themselves in an immense hall where there was a long table with many giants seated about it on stone thrones. They looked very cold and solemn, but Thor’s men were not at all afraid. The head giant said:
“You are Thor, and very welcome, but what can you and your friends do to entitle you to enter here?” Loki spoke up and said:
“I am famous for eating; I can beat any one at that.” The head giant ordered the table filled with food, and told a long, lean, hungry man to begin at one end, and Loki to begin at the other. Loki ate to the middle of the table and met the other man half way; but Loki had only eaten the food, while the other man had devoured bones, plates, table cloth and all.
“What else can you do?” said the head giant. This time the countryman who had cracked the goat’s bone spoke up and said:
“I can run faster than any one here.” Then the head giant took them all out to a great field, and selected a slender lad and started him and the countryman on a race. The countryman ran like the wind in a gale; but the slender lad ran past him on around the field and past him again and again.
“You must do better than that,” said the head giant, “or we shall think you are mere braggarts. What can you do, Thor?”
“I can drink more than anybody here,” said Thor.