and
trees. At nightfall they noticed a house; and as the door, which
indeed formed one whole side of the house, was open, they entered. It
was a simple habitation; one large hall, altogether empty. They stayed
there. Suddenly in the dead of the night loud noises alarmed them.
Thor grasped his hammer; stood in the door, prepared for fight. His
companions within ran hither and thither in their terror, seeking some
outlet in that rude hall; they found a little closet at last, and took
refuge there. Neither had Thor any battle: for, lo, in the morning it
turned-out that the noise had been only the _snoring_ of a certain
enormous but peaceable Giant, the Giant Skrymir, who lay peaceably
sleeping near by; and this that they took for a house was merely his
_Glove_, thrown aside there; the door was the Glove-wrist; the little
closet they had fled into was the Thumb! Such a glove;--I remark too
that it had not fingers as ours have, but only a thumb, and the rest
undivided: a most ancient, rustic glove!

Skrymir now carried their portmanteau all day; Thor, however, had his
own suspicions, did not like the ways of Skrymir; determined at night
to put an end to him as he slept. Raising his hammer, he struck down
into the Giant's face a right thunderbolt blow, of force to rend
rocks. The Giant merely awoke; rubbed his cheek, and said, Did a leaf
fall? Again Thor struck, so soon as Skrymir again slept; a better blow
than before: but the Giant only murmured, Was that a grain of sand?
Thor's third stroke was with both his hands (the 'knuckles white' I
suppose), and seemed to dint deep into Skrymir's visage; but he merely
checked his snore, and remarked, There must be sparrows roosting in
this tree, I think; what is that they have dropt?--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 ways. Thor and his companions
were admitted; invited to take 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
Utgar