Welcome to The Edda or Whatever, where I’m spilling the tea on Norse mythology. We’re breaking down the Prose Edda, a mediaeval Icelandic textbook that also low-key recaps most of what we know about the Norse gods today, but we’re doing it with a little bit of style and a whole lot of sass. (Not to mention ass!) If you’ve ever wondered, “wasn’t Þórr like the himbo of the Norse gods?” (he was) or, “didn’t Loki get dicked down by a literal horse?” (he did), then shut up, I’m getting to it.
Thirsty for Þórr
So if you’ve been following along, you’ll know that our boy Gylfi is engaged in an epic game of Q&A for his life. We’ve been calling his interlocutors a throuple because they’re three indistinguishable guys all stacked up. The throuple have told us all about the various Norse gods and their fuckery — both the figurative fuckery of their bizarre behaviour and also the more literal fuckery of Loki. Apparently horse dick is not enough for Gylfi.
Still thirsty for more (knowledge, obviously) Gylfi asks about Þórr (Thor, obviously obviously). He says something like, “If Þórr is so great, has no one ever beaten him?” The throuple shifts uncomfortably in their extremely elaborate three-way BDSM sex swing apparatus and say they don’t wanna talk about it.
If they are unable to answer a question, Gylfi wins the game. Apparently Þórr’s greatness is not the hill they are going to die on because they immediately sell him out: “Okay, we’ll give you the tea, but you totally can’t tell anyone else.”
They say that one day, Þórr is having dinner with some peasants and he kills a few goats to eat. He tells them to throw the bones in a pile, but the peasants’ kid breaks one bone to eat the marrow. When the goats magically reassemble themselves the next day (totally normal, I guess), one of them has an injured leg. Þórr is about to murder them all when he suddenly feels bad. Nice guy that he is, he takes their children as slaves instead.
And he expects us to pat him on the back? That is some heterosexual bullshit.
Grabbing pussy
So Þórr, Loki and their newly enthralled slaves (or “unpaid interns,” as they’d be known today) are on an adventure. They encounter a giant who agrees to carry all their stuff and travel with them. When Þórr is unable to open the giant’s bag, he decides to kill him in his sleep. When Þórr hits him with his magic little hammer, the giant asks if he had been hit by a leaf! Þórr’s masculinity is fragile af, so he is further enraged and tries two more times. The giant likens the subsequent attacks to an acorn falling or getting pooped on by a bird. Poor little Þórr!
The next morning, the giant is gone. Þórr, Loki and the kids arrive at a castle and meet its king. His name is also Loki, but they refer to him as Outside-Loki. He says they can only stay with him if they win at some contest. Loki (Inside-Loki, if that helps) loses an eating contest to a guy named Logi, who not only eats all of his food but the whole trough too. Then the slave boy runs a race against a guy named Hugi and also has his ass handed to him. The slave girl does not compete at anything because it is above her pay grade.
Þórr is challenged to empty a drinking horn in less than three gulps, but he doesn’t even make a dent in it. Next, Outside-Loki asks Þórr to pick up his big, grey cat. Þórr fails the pussy-grabbing contest when he is only able to lift up a single one of its feet. In his impotence-pilled roid rage, Þórr demands someone wrestle with him. So they bring out an old lady named Elli and she literally brings him to his knees.
The whole strange sequence of Japanese game show-like contests ends with Þórr utterly cucked.
Stroking some snake
Outside-Loki lets the gang sleep inside despite their humiliating failure. The next morning, Þórr is moping and Outside-Loki whips off his own metaphorical wig, revealing that he is actually the giant from before who Þórr tried to hammer. If the contests sounded sus to you, it’s because they were all plays on words. Logi means “flame,” so of course it was able to consume more than a person. Hugi means “thought,” so of course it was faster than feet. Elli means “old age,” so of course it can bring down even Þórr.
The drinking horn was just a big straw in the sea and Þórr actually drank so much that it lowered the sea levels, causing the creation of tides. And lastly, the cat was actually Jörmungandur, the giant sea serpent that surrounds the world. So all this time he thought he was grabbing pussy, he was actually stroking some snake. (Who doesn’t even need to be stroked because he’s literally sucking himself off 24/7!)
Before Þórr can hit Outside-Loki with his hammer, the giant king and his whole-ass castle promptly disappears.
Þórr must have liked the feeling of a thick (trouser) snake in his hand because he goes out looking for it. (This is not to imply he was dressed like a slut, although I do see him in a crop top and hoochie daddy shorts.) He gets a giant to row him out to sea. He fishes up the serpent and looks it in the eye, but the giant lets it escape. Þórr kills the giant with his hammer and swims back to shore, finally satisfied by violence. You know, just guy stuff.
Morals of the story:
1) Don’t applaud men for doing the bare minimum. Expect better.
2) Violence is not the answer. Okay, fine, sometimes it is. But, like, when in doubt: no violence.
Read more Edda or whatever here. Buy Grayson’s book The Sagas And Shit here.
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