Þjálfi

Þjálfi is the human boy who runs with the gods. Swiftest-footed of all men, he and his sister Röskva became Thor's servants and travel at the thunder-god's side into the giants' country. At Útgarðr it is Þjálfi who is set to the foot-race — the fastest mortal alive against a lad named Hugi, and beaten so badly each heat that the boy has scarcely started before his opponent has turned back. Only afterward is the trick revealed: Hugi was Thought itself, the king's own mind, which nothing that runs on legs can match. Þjálfi is the mortal raised into the company of the gods, fast enough to belong there and human enough to lose — the reminder, in a tale of giants and illusions, of the ordinary swift-footed lad carried along into the great adventures of the Æsir.