In Norse Mythology, found chiefly in Snorri Sturluson's 13th Century Prose Edda, specifically the tale of Þjálfi and Röskva, Hugi is the material personification of the thoughts of the playfully malicious giant Útgarða-Loki (also known as Skrýmir, and not the same person as Loki at all). Hugi takes on the appearance of a runner in a footrace, which the farm boy Þjálfi is challenged to run against him, and even when given the best two out of three opportunities to defeat Hugi, Þjálfi finds himself lapped by wider and wider margins each time.
They held the first heat, and Hugi was so far ahead that he turned back to meet Þjálfi at the end of the course. Spoke Útgarða-Loki: "You will need to press yourself forward more, Þjálfi, if you are to win the game; but it is nonetheless true that never have any men come to my house, who seemed to me swifter on foot than you are." They began a second heat, and when Hugi had reached the course's end, and was turning back, there was still the distance of an arrow's flight between him and Þjálfi. Spoke Útgarða-Loki: "Þjálfi appears to me to run this course well, but I do not believe now that he will win the race. No doubt it will be seen presently, when they run the third heat." Then they began the third heat, but when Hugi had come to the end of the course and turned back, Þjálfi had not yet reached mid-course. All watching then agreed that race's winner had been found.
After the conclusion of this and several other rigged competitions put in place by Útgarða-Loki to challenge Þjálfi, his sister Röskva, Thor, and Loki, the giant concludes that even if he can best them all in unfair contests like this, he does not truly want to risk their fully realised anger toward him, and is alarmed at how well they performed in each contest. Accordingly, he reveals that Hugi had been his own thoughts all along, to outpace all other racers, and that his own identity had been Skrýmir all along, who had troubled the party earlier in the tale.
Hugi is not the same entity as Huginn, the raven of Odin which is the manifestation of Odin's thought, companion of Muninn, the raven of memory, but the root of both their names means "thought" and "mind" in Old Norse, and is the etymological origin of the personal name Hugo.
Iron Noder 2022, 28/30