Mythology, Mead, and Mirth: Thor’s Drinking Bout with Loki in Jötunheim
According to the Edda, Thor and his companions came upon the massive castle one day with “a great hall” and entered it. Once inside, Loki “looked slowly on them, and smiled scornfully” before telling the travelers it was “‘late to ask tidings of a long way’” but that if they could perform some skillful feats, they would be allowed to stay the night
Earl Rognvald’s Sons: Einar of the Orkneys and Rolf, Conqueror of Normandy
According to the thirteenth-century Icelandic Heimskringla, before the Viking Rollo became the first ruler of Normandy and of the Normans – the people who later conquered much of England, Ireland, and Sicily – he was known as Hrolf Ganger, or Rolf the Walker. Why the son of Earl Rognvald (Eysteinsson) – the legendary Norwegian nobleman and friend of King Harald Fairhair – ended up creating a powerful ducal dynasty in the early tenth century on the coast of modern-day France is less known because it may have involved his older brother Einar – who at the behest of their father sailed to the Orkneys from their home in Møre (western Norway) and established his own dynastic earldom enduring centuries.
