The adventures of Thor are very numerous.  The pleasantest, perhaps, is the account of his journey to Jotunheim, to visit his enemies, the giants of Cold and Darkness.  On his way, being obliged to pass the night in the forest, he came to a spacious hall, with an open door, reaching from one side to the other.  In this he went to sleep, but being aroused by an awful earthquake, Thor and his companions crept into a chamber which opened out of the hall.  When day came they found, sleeping near them, an enormous giant, so large, that, as it appeared, they had passed the night in the thumb of his glove.  They travelled with him all day; and the next night Thor considered himself justified in killing this giant, who was one of their enemies.  Three times he launched his mallet with fearful force at the giant’s head, and three times the giant awoke to inquire whether it was a leaf or an acorn which had fallen on his face.  After taking leave of their enormous and invulnerable companion, they arrived at the abodes of Jotunheim, and the city of Utgard, and entered the city of the king, Utgard Loki.  This king inquired what great feat Thor and his companions could do.  One professed to be a great eater; on which the king of giants called one of his servants named Logi, and placed between them a trough filled with meat.  Thor’s companion ate his share, but Logi ate meat and bone too, and the trough into the bargain, and was considered to have conquered.  Thor’s other companion was a great runner, and was set to run with a young man named Hugi, who so outstripped him that he reached the goal before the other had gone half-way.  Then Thor was asked what he could do himself.  He said he would engage in a drinking-match, and was presented with a large horn, and was requested to empty it at a single draught, which he expected easily to do, but on looking in the liquor seemed scarcely diminished.  The second time he tried, and lowered it slightly.  A third, and it was still only sunk half an inch.  Whereupon he was laughed at, and called for some new feat.  “We have a trifling game here,” answered the king, “in which we exercise none but children.  It is merely to lift my cat from the ground.”  Thor put forth his whole might, but could only lift up one foot, and was laughed at again.  Angry at this, he called for some one to wrestle with him.  “My men,” said King Utgard, “would think it beneath them to wrestle with thee, but let some one call my old nurse Eld, and let Thor wrestle with her.”  A toothless old woman entered the hall, and after a violent struggle Thor began to lose his footing, and went home excessively mortified.  But it turned out afterward that all this was illusion.  The three blows of the mallet, instead of striking the giant’s head, had fallen on a mountain, which he had dexterously put between, and made three deep ravines in it, which remain to this day.  The triumphant eater was Fire itself, disguised as a man.  The successful runner was Thought.  The horn out of which Thor tried to drink was connected with the ocean, which was lowered a few inches by his tremendous draughts.  The cat was the great Midgard Serpent, which goes round the world, and Thor had actually pulled the earth a little way out of its place; and the old woman was Old Age itself[329].