Þjálfi and Röskva: From a Farmhouse to Útgarðr

“Thjalfe, the bonde’s son, had the thigh of one of the goats, which he broke asunder with his knife, in order to get at the marrow, Thor remained there over night.”

“He was appeased, and took as a ransom the bonders children, Thjalfe and Roskva. They became his servants, and have always accompanied him since that time.”

“Then they took one more heat. Huge ran to the goal and turned back, but Thjalfe had not yet gotten to the middle of the course.”

In Gylfaginning, as Anderson translates it, Thor and Loki lodge with a farmer, and Thor kills his two goats for supper. He invites the household to eat and tells them to throw the bones onto the goat-skins. The farmer’s son Þjálfi splits a thigh-bone to reach the marrow. In the morning Thor raises his hammer Mjölnir over the skins, the goats stand up, and one of them limps. Thor’s anger frightens the family into offering all they own. He takes the farmer’s children, Þjálfi and Röskva, as servants, and they stay with him afterwards.

Þjálfi is called the fastest of all men on foot. At the court of Útgarða-Loki he races a young man called Hugi and loses all three heats. Útgarða-Loki later says Hugi was Thought, which no runner can match. Röskva is named among the party that crosses into Jötunheimr, but the account gives her no words or deeds of her own.

The translation used here does not explain either name, and this entry does not guess at them. The two children are the only people in the account who pass from an ordinary household into the god’s company, and they travel with Thor and Loki, later meeting Hugi and Útgarða-Loki, who have their own part in the tale.

Skáldskaparmál mentions Þjálfi again in Thor’s fight with the giant Hrungnir, where he attacks Hrungnir’s clay helper Mökkurkálfi and then tries, without enough strength, to lift the giant’s foot from Thor. That belongs to a different story. The sources give Röskva no further part.