Plaster, 1891. Size 380 x 16 9x 183 cm. Inv. no. 132. Donated to the museum by Niels Hansen Jacobsen.

Exhibitions

Charlottenborg 1891.
One-man show at the Free Exhibition Building 1901.

Thor's test of strength

The motif for the sculpture was taken from the Nordic myth of Thor's visit to Utgard. The giant Utgard-Loki tricked Thor, who was strong but not very intelligent, and his companions by challenging them to carry out a series of impossible tasks. Thor was supposed to show his strength by lifting Utgard-Loki's cat.

Accompanying remarks

The following quotation from N. M. Petersen's Nordiske Mytologi (Nordic Mythology) was printed in the catalogue when the sculpture was exhibited in 1891:

A great gray cat ran up across the floor. Thor put his hand under its belly, but no matter how much he tried, the cat arched its back, and he could do no more than make the cat lift one of its paws off the ground.... Utgard-Loki said: "Now I will tell you the truth. I have used a delusion. Everyone was horrified that you could make the cat lift one paw from the ground. It was the World Serpent that girds all the lands. You lifted it so high that it was not far to the heavens."

Designing the World Serpent

It was a challenge for Niels Hansen Jacobsen to try to create a being that was the World Serpent and a cat at one and the same time. The head is that of a feline predator, but with a pointed, angular tongue. The body is that of a serpent, and in order to illustrate its enormous length, Niels Hansen Jacobsen made it visible at several places in the rock. The surface of the World Serpent is dotted with a repeated spiral pattern in relief whose effects of light and shadow take the place of colors in the serpent's motley scaled skin. The depiction of the World Serpent was the first indication of Niels Hansen Jacobsen's desire to work with motifs that are difficult to reproduce in a three-dimensional form.