The Serpent on the Line: Thor's Fishing Trip for Jormungandr

Thor is Mjolnir's wielder and the gods' chief defender against the giants, traveling by chariot pulled by two goats he can slaughter and restore. The poem Hymiskvida, preserved in the Poetic Edda, tells a different kind of confrontation, one fought from a boat rather than a chariot. Traveling to the giant Hymir's hall under the pretext of borrowing a great cauldron, Thor takes a fishing trip out to sea with his reluctant host, having first killed one of Hymir's prize oxen for bait by tearing off its head. Rowing farther out than Hymir wants to go, Thor baits his line with the ox head and hooks Jormungandr, the Midgard Serpent, the monstrous offspring of Loki. Thor hauls the serpent's head up to the boat's edge and raises his hammer to kill it on the spot, and the poem gives two endings depending on the source, in one Hymir cuts the line in terror before the blow lands and the serpent sinks back into the sea, in another Thor strikes and the serpent survives regardless, setting up their final battle at Ragnarok. Either way, the episode is the one story in the corpus that puts Thor's and Jormungandr's fated final combat on display in miniature, centuries before it is due to happen.