Of Thor & Giants

The following tales contain mainly Norse myths of Thor and Loki, including their adventures and dealings with giants and the dwarves (dwarfs).

All of the stories come from two main sources, the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda.

Snorri Sturluson, an Icelandic poet and historian, wrote the Prose Edda (1222-23). Snorri was believed to be a chieftain. The Prose Edda was sometimes called the Younger Edda or Snorra Edda. It has been divided into two sections: the Gylfaginning ("The Beguiling of Gylfi"), and Skáldskaparmál ("The Language of Poetry").

The Poetic Edda was also called the Elder Edda. There were over 30 poems in the Poetic Edda, which was divided into mythological and heroic sections. In this page, we are interested in the mythological section, which contains a number of myths about the gods dealing with giants and dwarves.

There may be one or two tales which are unrelated to Thor or Loki, such as the Wooing of Gerd where the god Freyr sent his servant to woo Gerd. But since Gerd is a giantess, the story is not out of place.

You may find other tales dealing with the giants or dwarves in relation to Odin on the Search for Wisdom page.

Please note that a few of the tales may be found on other pages. So, I have placed links here to these other pages. This saves me the trouble of repeating the same tales twice.