Chapter 3 – The Yule Bog

The first floor of the house is split in two, the smaller part being the kitchen, which ends with the island counter, and the bigger part being the living room, which is centered by a giant, open fireplace in which the Yule Log burns brightly. The fireplace is built up from the floor in natural, uncut stones, with a wide rim serving as a coffee table, and is surrounded by leather arm chairs and couches. The floor, on this day, was strewn with hay and bits of red ribbon, and despite the comfy chairs, Sigyn was sitting crossed legged in the middle of it all on the floor. 

“Well, at least straw doesn’t stain like blood does,” Max said in a hushed voice as he and Ian were walking down the stairs. Ian shrugged, as if to indicate that Sigyn could easily make straw worse than the blood from their first night, but he also took a step further down the staircase, braving whatever Viking tradition the goddess was engulfed in today. 

By the time Loki got out of bed, Max and Ian were sitting on the floor too, trying their best to shape the straw the same way Sigyn did. Around them stood small bucks made out of bent straw and held together with red ribbon. Sigyn’s stood nicely on all fours – the ones Max and Ian had made are slightly more… let’s just say they never stood on all four legs at the same time, those of them capable of standing at all. The legs were uneven, the backs were bent, the heads were turned or crooked or disproportionate to the body. The ribbon holding the bucks together twisted and rippled where they should be straight and even, and all in all the bucks made by the two beginners looked either like they belong in a hospital or in Australia with the other freaky animals. 

Loki took one look at the scene and burst out laughing. Sigyn sent him a disapproving look, but even she couldn’t help smile a little bit at the sight of the poor Bogs. 

“What the heck?” Ian called indignantly. “We did our best,” he defended their wonky creations. Loki missed the last step on the staircase from laughing too hard and only just managed to catch himself before face planting on the floor. “Seriously, not all of us can just magically master any skill in the first try!” Sigyn bowed under too, bending over from laughter. Ian looked indignantly between the two of them, thinking they were being extraordinarily rude. Sigyn held up a hand as if to beg for a moment. 

“It’s not you,” she managed to get out between choked laughs. Loki looked over at her still laughing softly. Sensing his stare she looked up, but the moment their eyes met they broke down in laughter again. 

“Okay, what is it?” Max demanded unamused. Loki took a deep breath to steady himself, but then bent over double again, unable to contain the gleeful laughter bubbling inside him, bursting out every time he looked at the poor bogs. It took a full five minutes of thigh slapping laughter before either of them had gotten it out of their system enough to compose themselves again. 

“I wanted to experience the Yule celebrations from a human perspective this year,” Sigyn explained, a hand still on her stomach as if to sooth the laugh induced pain. “That’s why I’m making these.” Neither Ian nor Max understood what that had to do with anything. 

“Let me tell you a story,” Loki said and took a seat on the leather couch. And so began a very long explanation, by the end of which even Max and Ian were kind of amused by their failed attempts at Yule Bog making. 

“It all started when Thor lost Mjolnir,” Loki told the tale. “The Jotun Thrym had taken it, and as ransom for it’s return he demanded Freya as his bride. Freya, of course…” 

“Self centered as she is,” Sigyn interrupted. “What?” she snapped at Loki’s annoyed stare. “She is self centered, and selfish – thinks the whole world revolves around her just because she is pretty.” Since her marriage to Loki, Sigyn hasn’t really been on the best of terms with the other gods and goddesses, all of whom seem to constantly forget that it was Odin who first made Loki his blood brother. It had been particularly hurtful for Sigyn to see Freya, who isn’t even an Aesir, to be given every concern, every gift, and every pamper session, when Sigyn herself has been all but forgotten by her family. 

“Freya didn’t want to marry some Jotun,” Loki continued. 

“Thought it beneath her,” Sigyn mumbled under her breath. 

“She bluntly refused,” Loki said with an air of finality. “Even when I suggested she just pretend, that she went to Utgard and went along with the wedding preparations until we could get our hands on Mjolnir again. She wanted nothing to do with it – and, frankly, it was Thor who let Mjolnir get stolen, so I don’t see why Freya had to be the one to clean up his mess. And before you say anything, no, I had nothing to do with the stealing either, for once it wasn’t actually me who caused the trouble.” Ian sneaked a glance over at Sigyn to see if she agreed that Loki didn’t do it, but she bit her tongue and refused to look up from the Bog in her hand. 

“Instead I came up with the idea that if we couldn’t get Freya to Utgard, we would just have to take someone else disguised as Freya. Now, I admit it might have been possible to find someone more similar to fair, slender, blonde Freya than big, gruff, ginger Thor – but, hey, you can’t blame me for wanting to make the most of the situation, and like I said, it was Thor who lost the stupid hammer, so it served him right to be the one to go dressed as Freya. I went with him, dressed as his hand maiden, to make sure things went smoothly. Now, it was a marvelous wedding, better than I could have hoped for, but first we did have a few obstacles getting there. 

“The first day’s journey went well enough, and we got fairly far, but when night overtook us, we decided to seek shelter with a farmer and his family. As a thank you for the shelter Thor offered his goats from the chariot for dinner, knowing that he could bring them back to life again the next morning. He gave strict instructions that the bones may not be broken, and that they should be placed back on the skin of the goats once the meat had been eaten. He was very clear about that, that much I will give him. But the son of the farmer, Thjalfi, was a big fan of marrow, and he decided that if the goats could survive being slaughtered and eaten, they could survive a broken bone too, so he broke the bone and sucked the marrow out. 

“When morning came and the goats sprang to life as usual Tanngrisnir had a limp. Thor was furious. His face did that thing where it turns redder than his beard, the vein in his forehead was popping, ready to blow, and his fists were balled up, ready to punch anything and anyone that came too close. It was only the farmer’s offer to send his children, the boy Thjalfi and the girl Roskva, with us to serve as Thor’s servants that stopped Thor from killing the whole family.” 

“And this is why we find your bogs so lovely,” Sigyn explained when Loki paused. “Because it is the yearly offering of straw bogs that gives life to Thor’s goats – which means at some point Thor is gonna look at his goats, and their legs will be uneven, their backs bent, their necks twisted – and he will have no idea why, or who is responsible.” 

“Asgard will have quite the day trying to calm him down,” Loki said with a satisfied smile. 

“But…” Max mumbled, the idea of a furious Thor somehow finding out that it was their straw bogs that disfigured his beloved goats sending shivers down Max’s spine. 

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Sigyn assured him. “It could be hundreds of years before the goats live through all the other lives granted them by the straw bogs, no one will remember your bogs by the time Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr get to them.” Max looked sideways at Ian. Both of them share the same look of dread. 

“The thing is…” Ian said, not daring to look up at their friends. “Traditions change. It is possible there aren’t as many straw bogs being made these days as there used to.” Ian might have had a point there, or maybe not, since the Yule Bog is now sold in stores. If the mass production is more or less than every Viking home making a Yule Bog every year is hard to determine, but at the very least Max and Ian’s Bogs were not the only ones made this year. This, of course, none of the residents on the little island knew about, but equally obvious was it that they could not change anything with worry, and therefore Loki was soon back to his story – and Ian made a mental note to google the practices around the Yule Bog next time he was somewhere with Wi-Fi. 

“Okay, so we traveled on from there, now with Thjalfi and Roskva with us, but we left the chariot and the goats behind so Tanngrisnir could have time to heal.. Needless to say we traveled significantly slower now. And so, once more, darkness overtook us. That night we slept in what we had thought to be a vast hall with strange side corridors, but which turned out to actually be a glove belonging to the giant Skymir. The next night we made it to Utgard, and sought shelter with Utgard Loki – yes, a name sake, but a very different character. He agreed to let us stay on the condition that we prove ourselves, saying ‘No one stays here unless they can show some immense skill’. I went first into the challenge, saying that no one can eat faster than I.” 

“This is true,” Sigyn commented needlessly, for both Max and Ian had noticed this for themselves. 

“A Jotun called Logi came forward to accept my challenge,” Loki continued, but his voice was now slowly getting harsher, more forced, and less joyful. “A long trencher loaded with meat was brought in and placed between us so that we could each start from one end and meet in the middle.” There he paused briefly, and then, without his usual descriptions or high speed retellings, he simply said: “When we were finished I had eaten all the meat on my side as fast as he had eaten his, but he had also devoured the bones and the trencher.” A bitter pause marked the end of that part of the story, and Ian and Max assumed this meant Logi was declared the winner. 

“Next up was Thjalfi,” Loki continued, and now his voice was returning gradually to its usual cheery self. “The little boy was as fast a runner as any you had seen, so he volunteered to run a race with anyone who dared. Hugi volunteered, and a course was set up for them outside. And by Odin’s eye could that boy run. He ran as if Tanngrisnir himself was chasing him as revenge for the broken leg, thunder springing from its hooves, lightning flying behind it as it went. The boy ran like his life depended on it, and still Hugi ran faster. Three rounds they ran, Thjalfi running like fire itself, and Hugi still somehow beating him. In the final round Thjalfi had barely made it to the halfway mark before Hugi had completed the race.

“Now, Thor is a proud man, and he did not let himself be discouraged by what he had seen. He proudly announced that no one could drink as well as he – a fact which is usually quite true, that man does love his mead, and he drinks plenty thereof. A drinking horn was brought to him, and he was informed that a great drinker could empty this horn in one breath, a lesser drinker might need two, but no one had ever not been able to finish it in three. Thor gave a proud smirk and put the rim of the horn to his lips and drank. And he drank. And he drank. And he drank. And he did not inhale. His face started changing color, but he kept going. But the horn did not seem to empty. Finally he had to give up and take a breath. He heaved in air as if he had not felt it in his lungs since Odin hung from the branches of Yggdrasil. Then he put his lips to the horn again, and he poured the liquid into his mouth. It started running down the sides of his mouth, staining his clothes, dripping down to his feet, but little did it help. Soon he was gasping for air again, the horn still not empty. Stubbornly he put the horn to his lips for the third time, and he gulped and swallowed and turned more and more purple, but still the horn did not empty. But Thor refused to give up. Not until he passed out and the horn started spilling on the floor did he stop trying.

“When we finally managed to wake him up again he was furious. Utgard Loki taunted him, saying he was less than what he was said to be, but kindly offered him another test to prove himself. Thor immediately accepted, before any protests could be made. The new challenge seemed simple enough: to lift the household cat off the floor. Thor laughed in the face of this challenge, went over, put a hand beneath the belly of the cat, and lifted. But even Thor, strong as he undeniably is, had trouble lifting the cat. He took both arms to use, and you could see the muscles bulging through his clothes as he used every ounce of strength to lift the little cat off the floor. But the cat simply stretched, letting Thor lift up its belly, but keeping its feet planted on the floor. Thor took a deep breath, and with a mighty heave he put the cat over his head, held up in stretched arms as high as Thor could reach, but the cat maintained one paw on the ground, smirking down at Thor as if this was the greatest game in the world. 

“Eventually, huffing and puffing from exhaustion, even Thor had to accept that there was no way he would be able to lift the cat off the floor. The Jotuns laughed at him. He tossed the cat aside and yelled so his voice rang through the hall and crashed into the walls: ‘I will wrestle any of you in here, for I am angry now, and you do not stand a chance against me!’ Utgard Loki looked around for volunteers with a laughing smile on his face, but no one came forward. ‘I am afraid they all pity you and would consider it beneath them to fight you.’ At this Thor flew into a fit of rage, shouting profanities, hitting anything within reach, tossing anything in his way against the walls so it clattered and broke. In the end Utgard Loki took pity on him and called forth his old wet-nurse, Elli. Elli was wrinkled and bent over with age, walking by the aid of a cane. But Thor was furious at this point, and anything within hitting distance was hit, including the old Elli. Elli, however, was stronger than she appeared, and Thor’s fist moved her not. In a state of red hot fury he threw everything at her, but she stood as unshaken as if he was throwing nothing but feathers at her, as if his punches were nothing more than loving pads, as if his strength was nothing more than that of an ant – great for its size, but nothing compared to that of a human. Then, with one lazily moved arm, Elli robbed Thor of his balance and sent him falling to the floor. 

“‘Enough,’ Utgard Loki said. ‘You have none of you proven yourself fit to stay under my roof, but I do take pity on you, and beds and food shall be given you for the night. Tomorrow you must depart, and these events shall forever haunt you.’ And so it was. Our last night before making it to the wedding we spent at the grace and kindness of a Jotun. I swear, Thor did not close an eye all night, he was busy mumbling angrily to himself, trying to justify his losses. 

“In the morning we departed as agreed, and that evening we made it to the house of Thrym. Thor dressed in a wedding dress and veil, and I dressed as his hand maiden – and let me tell you, I looked amazing. I was rocking that dress.” 

“It’s true,” Sigyn acknowledged. “He brought it with him back and every once in a while he would put it on just for fun – and he did look amazing.” Loki’s eyes glazed over in a wondering stare. 

“I’m gonna have to try to get that back from Asgard somehow,” he mumbled to himself. Max and Ian just stared at him – nothing against drags, but a whole lot against storytellers who forget to finish their stories. “Right,” Loki finally said, noticing Max’s annoyed stare and Ian’s angry glare. “So, we got dressed, and we entered the hall where an army of Jotuns had gathered to watch Thrym marry Freya. Thrym of course was delighted to see his bride, so much so that he did not seem to notice the obvious size difference. They sat down at the wedding banquet, and then started the real trouble. Between having to dress up as a woman, having, just the night before, been beaten in every single contest, and now being surrounded by Jotuns and unable to kill them all, Thor was in a mood, a really bad mood. And he decided the best way to deal with his emotions was to eat. He ate an entire ox, eight salmon, plus all the food prepared for the ladies. On top of that he went through several barrels of mead. 

“It fell on me to explain this, for Freya, absurd behavior. ‘The bride to be has been so love sick and so anxious to meet her husband that she has not slept in days,’ I assured Thrym – and by Mimir’s grace he believed me. Thrym looked like a love sick little boy, and before I could stop him he had lifted up “Freya’s” veil to kiss his bride. His face contorted in disgust when he saw Thor’s angry eyes, furrowed and bushy brow, and hard nose – Thor’s mouth (and beard) thankfully being hidden still by a second veil. ‘The bride has also not been able to sleep for excitement at coming here,’ I hurried to say, and by Heimdall’s watchful eyes Thrym believed that too. 

“Thor, seeing fit then to remember his mission, asked kindly – or as kindly as his rough voice could manage – if it was possible he could see Mjolnir. Thrym, wanting to deny his lovely bride nothing at all, sent for the hammer. The instant Thor had his hand around it’s handle he threw off the veils and slaughtered every Jotun there. 

“He forbade me from ever telling anyone about the events of the journey – but, let’s just say a few select humans have somehow gotten a hold of the story regardless.” Loki ended his tale with a wide grin, and Max and Ian couldn’t help smile in a satisfied kind of way as well. Sigyn shook her head at the floor, a smile on her lips too. 

“And we all know that a tale told by Loki will always be the entire truth and nothing else.” 

What Loki, and presumably Thor and Thjalfi, hadn’t realized, but which have made it into the myths is that Logi, the Jotun who beat Loki in the eating competition, was none other than fire itself. Hugi, who ran the race against Thjalfi, was none other than thought itself. The horn from which Thor drank was connected to the ocean, and the tide was very low after Thor’s drinking efforts. The cat that Thor could not lift was none other that Jormungandr in disguise. The old woman, Elli, whom Thor wrestled, was old age. No one can consume faster than fire, run faster than thought, drink the ocean, lift the world serpent from the world, or withstand old age. All of this, however, Ian found out one day as he was doing a bit of research – just to be able to keep up with what his friends were talking about. He immediately called up Sigyn and relayed the whole thing to her – to which she admitted she knew already, Jor had spilled the beans, and they had decided letting Loki have one loss on his record was well worth keeping a secret like this. And so, as far as either of them know, both Thor and Loki have been proven defeatable, and that idea they will keep for a while yet. Who knows how long that secret will last though, or what other secrets might be revealed over the course of the remaining nine days of Yule.