Fishing for the Midgard Serpent

The second time Thor encountered Jörmungandr, he knew exactly what he was looking for.

That made a difference.

The first time, he had fallen victim to Útgarða-Loki’s deceptions. He had believed he was trying to lift a cat, only to discover afterwards that what he had held in his hands, concealed by an illusion, was the Midgard Serpent. He had felt her weight, her resistance and that immense strength that seemed anchored to the very foundations of the world.

Jörmungandr had felt him too.

Something had remained between them ever since.

Thor knew the prophecy. He knew that a day would come when the serpent would leave the ocean and the two of them would face each other at Ragnarök. He even knew how that battle would end: Mjölnir would shatter Jörmungandr, and Thor would walk nine steps before falling dead from her venom.

That belonged to the future.

Thor had never been particularly good at waiting.

The journey that brought him to Hymir had begun for a far less glorious reason: the gods needed a cauldron.

An enormous one.

The Æsir wanted to hold their feasts and needed a vessel large enough to contain enough drink for such a gathering. The problem was finding one. The cauldron they sought belonged to Hymir, a giant who lived far from the halls of the gods, near a sea whose waters turned dark even beneath a clear sky.

Thor arrived at his home during the search and stayed long enough to discover that Hymir was a difficult man to impress.

This annoyed Thor.

Hymir was large even for a giant, old, strong and accustomed to the ocean. He knew those waters as a hunter knows his forest. He knew where to find fish, when the whales came and, above all, how far a boat could safely venture before reaching places even giants preferred to avoid.

One morning, he announced that he was going fishing.

Thor stood up.

“I’m coming with you.”

Hymir looked him up and down.

Perhaps Thor had assumed a less imposing appearance for the journey. Perhaps the giant simply enjoyed provoking him. Whatever the reason, the expression on his face was the one usually reserved for a child who has just offered to help with a man’s work.

“The sea is cold.”

Thor waited.

“We’ll be going a long way out as well.”

“I know how the sea works.”

Hymir frowned.

“You’ll want to turn back before I’m finished.”

Thor smiled.

“Then you’ll have to row back yourself.”

Hymir held his gaze for a few seconds, then grunted and began preparing the fishing tackle.

“Get your own bait.”

That, at least, was simple enough.

Thor left the house and walked towards the giant’s cattle. Hymir owned enormous animals, beasts bred in lands where even domestic creatures seemed to have been given more than their fair share of the world. Thor walked through the herd until he found the largest bull.

Its name was Himinhrjóðr, the one who bellows towards the heavens.

It was a magnificent animal.

Thor looked at the bull, and the bull looked at Thor.

The conversation ended there.

When Hymir arrived, he found the god returning with the head of his finest bull.

For several moments, the giant was unable to speak.

Thor held up the bait.

“I’ve got one.”

Hymir’s expression made it clear that this was not exactly what he had meant.

The boat was sturdy, though Thor would later think it could have been sturdier.

Hymir sat down, expecting to take the oars, but Thor beat him to them. He gripped the wood, braced his feet and began to row.

The boat shot forwards.

Hymir had to grab the gunwale.

Thor rowed in long, steady strokes. Each time the blades bit into the water, the sea parted around them and the little boat sped across the surface as though fleeing from something. The shore began to shrink behind them.

They passed the waters where men fished.

Thor kept going.

They reached deeper water, where Hymir usually cast his lines. The giant told him to slow down, prepared his hooks and before long managed to catch two whales.

It was a catch that could have fed a family for months.

Thor did not even seem impressed.

He kept rowing.

Hymir looked towards the shore, then down at the water.

“That’s far enough.”

Thor drove the oars into the sea again.

“There’s good fishing here,” Hymir insisted.

“For you.”

The giant studied the horizon. The sea had changed colour and the waves were longer now. Beneath the boat lay depths neither of them could measure.

“Stop.”

Thor kept rowing.

Hymir knew those waters, and he knew what lay beyond his usual fishing grounds. Men might be ignorant of it and fish might lack the intelligence to worry, but giants preserved older tales.

Somewhere beneath them rested Jörmungandr.

The serpent encircled Midgard with her body, holding her own tail between her jaws. There she remained, hidden beneath enough water to crush any ordinary creature.

Waiting.

Hymir looked at Thor again.

Then he understood.

“You know where we are.”

Thor drew the oars into the boat.

“Yes.”

Hymir felt something cold run down his spine, and this time it had little to do with the wind.

Thor prepared his line.

He did not use an ordinary hook. What he intended to catch was no ordinary fish either.

He took Himinhrjóðr’s head and fastened it to the enormous hook. Blood still clung to the severed flesh, and its scent began to mingle with the salt of the ocean.

Hymir watched him.

“This is madness.”

Thor checked the knot.

“Then just watch.”

“You know what lives down there.”

Thor looked up.

“Yes.”

It was the way he said it that worried Hymir.

Thor stood, held the line in his hands and cast the bait into the sea.

The bull’s head struck the surface and disappeared.

The line began to run.

Thor let it slide through his hands as the hook descended, passing through sunlit waters and continuing down into ever darker reaches. Small fish scattered. Larger ones approached, drawn by the blood, then fled when they sensed something they understood better than the gods did.

The head continued to sink.

It reached the darkness.

Down there, the ocean was different.

The world of men lay far above. Storms were rumours on the surface and sunlight a memory that never reached those depths.

Something moved.

Jörmungandr opened her eyes.

She had learned many things during the years she had spent encircling Midgard. She knew the vibrations made by whales. She recognised ships by the distant sound of their hulls. She could tell a storm from an earthquake and knew when the great shoals of fish were passing through the waters above.

This was different.

Blood.

The serpent slowly raised her head.

She found it.

Flesh.

Bone.

A creature with a heart might have recognised a trap.

Jörmungandr was hungry.

She opened her jaws.

And bit.

The line snapped taut with such violence that the boat spun across the water.

Hymir fell against the side.

Thor closed both hands around the line and for a moment stood perfectly still.

Then he smiled.

“Found you.”

Far below, Jörmungandr felt the iron bite into her mouth.

The serpent thrashed.

The ocean answered.

A violent jolt ran up the line, and Thor had to brace one leg against the inside of the boat. Jörmungandr pulled towards the depths with enough force to drag entire ships beneath the waves.

Thor pulled towards the sky.

The wood began to creak.

Hymir scrambled upright.

“Let her go!”

Thor did not even look at him.

The serpent thrashed her head again. The line sliced through the water and the boat listed dangerously. A wave broke over the side.

Thor wound the line more securely around his hands and pulled.

The muscles in his arms tightened. His shoulders seemed to broaden as his feet sought purchase against the planks beneath him.

Jörmungandr plunged deeper.

Thor pulled again.

The boat groaned.

Then it happened.

The planks gave way beneath his feet.

Thor crashed through them.

Water poured through the holes, but the god kept descending until his feet found something solid below.

The seabed.

There he stood, his body thrust through the boat, his feet planted firmly on the seabed, using the earth itself for leverage.

Hymir stared at him in horror.

Thor pulled again.

This time Jörmungandr began to rise.

The serpent climbed out of the darkness, first through waters that had never known light, then into regions where the great fish swam. Creatures fled before her while, miles below, the rest of her body writhed.

At the surface, the sea began to boil.

Hymir saw bubbles.

Then foam.

Then something dark turned beneath the boat.

The giant forgot the two whales, his bull and even the fact that he had wanted to show Thor which of them knew the ocean better.

“Thor…”

The god kept pulling.

The water exploded.

Jörmungandr emerged.

Her head burst from the sea beside the boat in a fury of foam, blood and seawater. She was far larger than Hymir had imagined. Her scales gleamed darkly beneath the sky, and the mangled head of the bull hung from her open jaws.

Venom and foam poured from her mouth around the hook.

Thor looked up.

And for the first time, they saw each other.

The god of thunder gazed upon the Midgard Serpent.

Jörmungandr gazed upon the son of Odin.

Something happened then that no prophecy had needed to explain.

They recognised each other.

Jörmungandr remembered the strength that had pulled at her from the depths years before, the invisible hand that had lifted her while Thor believed himself to be struggling with a cat.

Now she could see the man behind that strength.

Thor understood too.

He had felt that weight.

He had fought against it.

This time he could look directly into the eyes of the creature that would one day kill him.

Jörmungandr opened her jaws.

Venom fell upon the water and hissed.

Thor held the line in one hand.

With the other, he reached for Mjölnir.

Hymir saw the hammer.

He saw the serpent too.

Then he looked at the boat, which was filling with water.

To Thor, the moment must have seemed perfect. His enemy was before him, caught on a hook, forced to show her head. All he had to do was raise Mjölnir and strike.

From Hymir’s point of view, there were a few drawbacks.

The first was that they were in the middle of the ocean.

The second was that the Midgard Serpent was trying to destroy the boat.

The third was that Thor appeared ready to start Ragnarök from a fishing boat.

“Thor!”

The god raised Mjölnir.

Jörmungandr thrashed.

Hymir drew his knife.

Thor saw the movement too late.

The giant cut the line.

The tension vanished.

Jörmungandr fell.

For a moment, her enormous head remained above the water, her eyes still fixed on Thor as the ocean began to close around her.

Thor hurled Mjölnir.

The hammer flew through the air.

It struck amid water, foam and scales.

The sea roared.

Then Jörmungandr disappeared.

Only the waves remained.

Thor stood motionless, staring at the place where the serpent had sunk. Then he looked at the severed line in his hands before finally turning towards Hymir.

The giant realised he had made a mistake.

Perhaps he had saved their lives.

At that particular moment, it hardly mattered.

Thor hit him.

Hymir went flying out of the boat and landed in the sea.

Thor drew a deep breath as Mjölnir returned to his hand.

Then he looked around.

The boat was half flooded, his legs had punched through the bottom planks, Hymir was floating some distance away and the two whales were still tied where the giant had left them.

Thor surveyed the wreckage.

He had had better days.

The stories disagree about exactly what happened in those moments.

In the account Snorri Sturluson would write centuries later, Hymir cuts the line when Jörmungandr emerges, and Thor hurls his hammer after the serpent as she sinks back into the sea.

The ancient Hymiskviða preserves a different version, one that is more difficult to interpret. There, Thor manages to haul the serpent up to the side of the boat and strikes her monstrous head with Mjölnir before Jörmungandr returns to the sea. The poem leaves some details in darkness, as stories that have survived for too long often do.

Perhaps that is fitting.

No one in that boat had any reason to tell the story in quite the same way.

Hymir would have remembered the fear.

Thor, the missed opportunity.

Jörmungandr, the hammer.

The ocean kept the rest.

The one thing every version needed to preserve was that the serpent survived.

She had to.

Her death belonged to another day.

Much later, when Ragnarök finally came, Jörmungandr would release her own tail and rise from the depths. Her body would writhe around Midgard, the ocean would sweep across the land and the serpent’s venom would poison the air.

Thor would come looking for her.

That time, no giant would cut the line.

Nor would there be a boat too small for what was happening, or a bull’s head swinging from a hook. The god of thunder and the Midgard Serpent would meet upon a world that was ending.

Thor would raise Mjölnir.

Jörmungandr would strike.

And the prophecy would be fulfilled.

Thor would kill the serpent.

Then he would walk away from her corpse.

One step.

Two.

Three.

He would keep walking as the venom spread through his body.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

He would take the ninth.

And fall.

That is why that day’s fishing became something far greater than an adventure about a god, a giant and an impossible catch. It was a rehearsal for the end of the world, the moment when two enemies destined to destroy one another finally looked into each other’s eyes.

Centuries later, men who knew the story would carve it into stone: Thor gripping the line, the bull’s head used as bait, the serpent rising from below and the god’s foot breaking through the boat.

Perhaps it was Thor’s strength that fascinated them.

Perhaps it was the enormity of the monster.

Or perhaps they understood the most unsettling thing about the story.

Thor had gone out to sea in search of the creature that would one day kill him.

He found her.

He had her before him.

And when he looked Jörmungandr in the eyes, he raised the hammer anyway.