Thor and the cat he couldn't lift: the myth behind the joke

A god, a cat and a very bad day

If you have ever tried to move a cat off a warm laptop, you already understand this story. Thor, the Norse god of thunder, the one with the hammer and the temper, once tried to lift a cat. He could not do it.

That sounds like a punchline someone made up for the internet. It is actually about 800 years old. The tale is told in the Prose Edda, a book of Norse myths written down in Iceland around 1220 by a scholar named Snorri Sturluson. The stories themselves are older than that.

The trip to Utgard

Thor sets off on a journey with Loki and a couple of human companions. After some odd adventures on the road, they reach a huge hall in the land of the giants. The king there is called Utgard-Loki. He is not the same Loki who travels with Thor, which confuses nearly everyone the first time.

Utgard-Loki is not impressed by his guests. He tells them nobody stays in his hall unless they are good at something, so each visitor has to prove themselves in a contest.

Loki takes on an eating contest and loses. Thor's young companion Thjalfi runs a race and loses. Then it is Thor's turn.

Three tests for the thunder god

First, Thor is handed a drinking horn and told a strong man can empty it in one go. He takes three huge gulps. The level barely drops.

Then Utgard-Loki says the young lads around the hall have a little game. They lift his cat off the floor. It is grey, it is large, and surely it is no trouble for the mighty Thor.

Thor puts his arm under the cat's belly and heaves. The cat simply arches its back higher and higher, the way cats do when you try to pick them up and they have other plans. Thor strains with all his strength. In the end he manages to lift only one paw off the ground.

Finally, Thor is challenged to wrestle an old woman, the king's former nurse. He cannot throw her either, and is forced down onto one knee.

So far, a terrible day for the strongest god in the hall.

The twist: it was never a cat

The next morning, as Thor's group leaves, Utgard-Loki walks them out and confesses. Everything was an illusion.

The drinking horn was connected to the sea. Thor drank so much that the tide went out, which is the myth's explanation for ebb tides. The old woman was Elli, old age itself, and nobody beats old age. Lasting as long as he did was remarkable.

And the cat? The cat was Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent. This is the enormous sea snake that coils around the whole world and bites its own tail. When Thor lifted that one paw, he had nearly pulled the world serpent out of the ocean. The giants were terrified.

Thor is furious about being tricked and raises his hammer, but the king and his hall vanish. Only empty fields are left.

Why a cat?

The storytellers could have disguised the serpent as anything. A rock, a log, a sleeping dog. They chose a cat, and we think that was a very good choice.

Cats have a talent for becoming heavier the moment you want them to move. Anyone who has tried to put a cat into a carrier knows the feeling. The body goes long, the back legs brace, and suddenly a four kilo animal seems to weigh as much as the couch. The Norse audience would have known this too. Cats lived on farms and in homes across Scandinavia, keeping mice out of the grain.

Cats also turn up elsewhere in Norse myth. The goddess Freyja is said to ride in a chariot pulled by two cats. So the animal was already linked to the gods, and to a bit of mystery.

The joke still works

What we love about this story is how human it is. Thor is not beaten by a dragon or an army. He is beaten by a cat that does not want to be picked up, and only later learns there was a good reason.

Next time your cat goes boneless and refuses to leave the sunny spot on the bed, you can tell yourself it is not stubbornness. It might just be holding the world together.

If you enjoyed this one, we have more cat history and culture stories in the archive, and new ones on the way.