Skrýmir

Skrýmir is the giant so large the gods sleep in his glove. On the road to Útgarðr, Thor and his companions take shelter for the night in what they think is a great hall — and at dawn find it was the thumb-end of this enormous giant's mitten. Skrýmir travels with them, striding ahead with all their food knotted in his bag, and three times in the night Thor brings his hammer down with killing force on the sleeping giant's head — and three times Skrýmir merely stirs and wonders whether a leaf, an acorn, or a little bird-dirt has fallen on him. He is, it turns out, Útgarða-Loki himself in disguise, and the hammer-blows Thor thought had missed had in truth cut three deep valleys into a mountain the giant slipped between himself and the strokes. Skrýmir is the first and largest of the Útgarðr illusions — the giant whose sheer impossible scale makes the mightiest god feel, for the length of one humiliating night, like a child.