giant
Elli
Útgarða-Loki's old nurse, who brings Thor down on one knee in a wrestling match because she is Old Age, which no one can withstand.
Elli is the old woman Thor wrestles at Útgarðr, and she appears only in that scene in Gylfaginning. After Thor has failed to drain the drinking horn and to lift the cat, he angrily demands a wrestling match. Útgarða-Loki says that none of his men would stoop to it and calls for "the old woman my nurse … Elli" Gylfaginning 46. The harder Thor grips, the firmer she stands, and in the end he goes down on one knee.
Outside the castle next morning the king calls this the greatest marvel of all. Elli was Old Age, who in the end throws everyone who lives long enough, and Thor held out against her for a long time and fell only to one knee Gylfaginning 47.
The sources tell us nothing more. Her name is an ordinary Old Norse word for old age, and Snorri uses her the way he uses Logi (fire) and Hugi (thought): an idea dressed up as a person.
In the sources
Quoted from the hosted translations; each line is checked against the text when the site is built. Select a reference to read it in context.
let the old woman my nurse be called hither, Elli, and let Thor wrestle with her if he will
none such has ever been and none shall be, if he become so old as to abide "Old Age," that she shall not cause him to fall
