In the story of Utgarda-Loki ("Loki of the Outlands") from the Prose Edda, Thor is traveling with his human servant Thjalfi and the trickster god Loki when he meets a giant named Skrymir who offers to carry their food bag for them but ties it so tightly that even the mighty Thor cannot open it. It is at this point that he begins to encounter Thor – first at the castle of a giant and then on a fishing trip.
Once Odin has thrown Jörmungandr into the sea, the serpent begins to grow (just as Fenrir does on land) until he reaches such enormous lengths he encircles Midgard, the realm of the mortals.
The story of Odin kidnapping Loki’s children and binding them in one way or another comes from chapter 34 of the Gylfaginning of the 13th-century Prose Edda by Sturluson. Jörmungandr’s brother Fenrir, however, would be Odin’s sworn enemy and – for reasons never really made clear – Thor would be Jörmungandr’s. When he was only a fairly small serpent, Odin had flung him into the sea hoping he would drown. Jörmungandr had good reason to find fault with Odin. Among the many antagonists who threatened the established order, Jörmungandr is often featured and almost always in conflict with the god of thunder and Odin’s son, Thor. Sturluson’s Prose Edda drew on works like the Ragnarsdrápa and Húsdrápa to create a complete narrative from the different stories (and different versions) of the world of the Norse gods and the ancient heroes they inspired. 1179-1241), who preserved the oral traditions in written form. It is unclear why Christian monks preserved the pagan tales except in cases where they are only citing them to attack and dismiss the earlier belief system, but by the 13th century the tradition of preserving older myths was established, and its greatest contributor was the Icelandic historian and mythographer Snorri Sturluson (l. Scandinavian mythology was, with virtually no exception, written down by Christians…all writing, whether in the international language of the church or in the vernacular, was the result of the conversion to Christianity, which brought with it the technology of manuscript writing.
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