Roskva in Utgard (Norse mythology)

[persephone_kore]

Title: Roskva in Utgard
Characters: Roskva, Loki, Thor, Thialfi
Fandom: Norse mythology
Summary: Roskva competed in no contests at Utgard, but the humiliation of her brother and her gods doesn't sting any less for that. The giants hitting on her doesn't really help either.
Explanation: This story will make more sense if you're familiar with the

Comments

[persephone_kore]

I shall summarize!

Thor and Loki were on their way to Utgard, a city of the giants, when they stopped at a poor farmer's house for the night. Thor could slaughter the goats that drew his chariot, eat them, and save the bones and skin to resurrect them in the morning good as new, but on this occasion he was furious to discover one of them was limping because someone had broken a bone. Thialfi confessed and Thor calmed down and took the family's two children along as his servants. (Thialfi shows up intermittently thereafter, traveling with Thor, confusing the heck out of a giant he was dueling, that sort of thing. I'm not sure Roskva is ever mentioned again except where Thialfi shows up as Roskva's-brother or whatnot.)

Anyway, the next place they stop for the night is a very odd building that turns out in the morning to have been a giant's glove. They reach Utgard and are sneered at a bit for being tiny, and are told they'll have to prove their talents against the giants. Loki chooses an eating contest, and clears all the food off his half of the table only to discover his opponent Logi has eaten the meat, the bones, and the table itself. Thialfi, evidently the fastest man alive, proposes a footrace; his opponent beats him to the mark and turns around to meet him. Thor's challenges include emptying a long drinking-horn that he's told their worst drinkers can drink off in three (he gets it about a hand's-width down); picking up a cat (he manages to get one foot off the ground); and, when he demands to wrestle somebody, being brought to one knee by (supposedly) the king's old nurse.

After all this, they have a nice dinner and are prevented from slipping off quietly in the morning and given a good breakfast. Then the king takes them out of the city and confesses that the contests were all in some way illusions, and their opponents were the concepts their names meant -- Logi was wildfire, Hugi was thought, and the old nurse Elli was old age. The drinking horn's end was in the sea and Thor actually lowered its level visibly, and the cat was actually the Midgard Serpent and they were horrified when he held a quarter of it up to the sky.

This is after the contests and before they find out what happened. Plus, it's only a few days after Thor picked up Thialfi and Roskva, so she's really not used to the whole "traveling with gods" bit.

[jetamors]

Thanks so much! (And sorry for the late reply, I was traveling this weekend so I got all confused over what I had and hadn't replied to.) Reading your summary now, I kind of feel like I've read this before, but then again a lot of the elements are common to other mythology and folklore.

Now I kind of wonder which challenge Roskva might have done, if she'd been challenged.

[persephone_kore]

I think this is one of the more often retold stories, so you may well have seen it.

Somebody doing their own highly modified retellings stuck her in a spinning contest against a spider, but the other contests are all physical prowess in one way or another. There are warrior giantesses in some of the stories, but I somehow don't think Roskva's under any illusions about matching them. So I kind of made a story out of her not having done any. Although I think making Loki nearly choke on his drink was pretty good, even if it was a total accident. ;)