dduane: darthstitch: jaeger-bombasticc: ultrafacts: bryarly: foxfairy5: ultrafacts: Source More

dduane:darthstitch:jaeger-bombasticc:ultrafacts:bryarly:foxfairy5:ultrafacts:Source More FactsYes this could have to do with the fact that Freya the Norse Goddess of love, beauty and fertility drove a chariot pulled by cats.So, if I ever get married, I fully expect a catmobile. One of the other reasons why they gave cats to each other was for their valuable skills as mousers. Cats were able to control rodent populations around their properties.Also, Norse myths are thought to have the earliest literary descriptions of the Norwegian Forest Cat. They were described as large, strong cats that drew Freya’s chariot and were so heavy that not even Thor, God of Thunder, could lift them from the floor. (Source)Not even Thor was worthy.THORIN OAKENSHIELD DID YOU JUST CAT OUT OF YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES AGAIN?! YOU GET BACK HERE YOU TREE OF A DWARF!Unfortunately it isn’t accurate to say that Thor couldn’t pick up a Norwegian forest cat, or indeed the cats who drew Freya’s chariot. But there is a tale of one particular rather unusual cat that Thor couldn’t pick up off the floor, and that’s probably where the confusion arises.In the Snorra Edda or Poetic Edda — specifically the part called the Gylfaginning — we hear about how Thor once went on an expedition into Jotunheim in company with Loki and a couple of newly-acquired bonders, Thjalfi and Roskva. After some adventures the group fetched up in the giants’ city of Utgard, as guests of the local head giant, Utgarda-Loki. They wound up having dinner in Utgarda-Loki’s great hall — and it really was great: everything there was so extremely oversized that Thor and Loki and the others looked like children by comparison with their hosts — and afterwards there were games and challenges for the guests so they could prove how strong or skilled they were.The visitors came off badly in all the contests, because they were all rigged. They were powerful illusions meant to test the guests’ strengths: the kind of contest where you wrestle with a little old frost-giant lady and can’t conquer her (turns out she was actually Old Age in disguise, har har) or are given a big drinking horn to empty in three draughts and can’t manage to empty it (because the other end of it is magically submerged in the sea, har har har) (thus explaining why the “beer” tasted kind of weak after the third draught or so).The giants all made fun of Thor and the others when they lost contest after contest, and Thor was getting increasingly annoyed at not being taken seriously. Finally Utgarda-Loki said, “Well, look, let’s give you something easy to do. Look, here comes the cat. Let’s see you pick the cat up at least.” And Thor went over to the cat — which was as oversized as everything else — and really put his back into the business of picking it up. but he only managed to get one of its hind feet off the ground.Needless to say, all the guests went to bed in a very bad humor. The next morning Utgarda-Loki escorted the group back to the edge of his part of the Jotun realm, and then said to Thor, “I just want you to know that we are really going to be glad to see the back of you. Because you nearly wrestled Old Age herself to a standstill, and who can do a thing like that? Then you did really bad things to the local sea level with those three drafts from the drinking horn; all our boats are beached now, the harbor’s a complete mess. And as for that cat? That was the World Serpent in disguise, and let me tell you, son of Odin, you had us all shitting ourselves there, because if you’d lifted that ‘cat’ all the way up, Midgarthsormr would have come right up off the ocean bottom and shown naked under the sky, and its tail would have fallen out of its mouth, and then nobody knows what would have happened: the world could have ended, maybe. So go the hell home and don’t ever come back here again, right?” And then he vanished just before Thor could bury his hammer in his skull. So that is the tale of The Cat That Thor Couldn’t Lift.* I doubt he had any trouble with the local skogkatts, though. (I speak as someone who was privileged to share one’s company for a decade and a half. They’re heavy, but they’re not that heavy.)And here is a picture of Mr. Squeak, another good example of the breed. In his prime he weighed eighteen pounds, all muscle, and when he got playful, he really liked a log of firewood or a good heavy rock as a toy….*Bonus: See also this interesting paper discussing the light thrown by the Gylfaginning story-sequence on the handling of glima-style unarmed combat contests in old Norse society. -- source link

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