Thor Fishes for the Serpent

You remember the grey cat that Thor couldn’t lift in Útgard? It was really the Midgard Serpent, the monster that lies in the sea around the whole world, biting its own tail. Tonight Thor goes looking for it, with a fishing line.

The head of the biggest ox in Jötunheim, Marcos. And tonight’s story is one the Vikings really loved: we know, because they carved it on stones, long before anyone wrote it down. Tonight we talk about what Thor could and couldn’t do.

The Midgard Serpent (Jörmungandr) is one of the three monstrous children of Loki. Odin threw it into the sea, where it grew so large that it surrounds the whole of Midgard and bites its own tail. Thor and the Serpent are fated enemies: at the end of the world, they will kill each other.

In the poem Hymiskvida and in Snorri’s Prose Edda, Thor visits the giant Hymir and goes fishing with him. Thor tears the head off Hymir’s finest ox to use as bait. Hymir catches two whales at once, but Thor rows further out, onto the open ocean, casts his line, and the Serpent takes the bait. Thor pulls so hard that his feet break through the bottom of the boat and stand on the sea floor. Just as he raises his…