HAMMER in hand and lightning at his whim, Thor is classically associated with bombastic Scandinavian sagas, Asgard, Valhalla and the Vikings. His heavenly home has icy views of the fjords, his father is Odin and these days he looks like Chris Hemsworth. But whatever the popular impression of this all-powerful god – currently swinging his hammer in Thor: Love and Thunder –his historical representation is complex, mysterious, and sometimes controversial. (The Walt Disney Company is majority owner of National Geographic Partners.)
Name of thunder
Etymologically, scholars see Thor as a development of thunraz, an early Proto-Germanic word for ‘thunder’, and it’s in these shadowy ages that the deity’s popularity spread. It’s thought that worship of Thor, or approximations of him, were borne by tribes and cultures moving across Europe during the Migration Period –a turbulent time of changing power and mass movement between 100AD and 500AD that precipitated the collapse of the Roman Empire.
The cover of the Prose Edda, an influential 13th century text bySnorri Sturluson, which along with the Poetic Edda captured many of the oral mythologies of the preceding centuries and contains the tales and characters with which Thor is today associated. His hammer Mjöllniris pictured on the left, second from top.
The Romans, of course, had their own deity of the elements (Jupiter), as did the Greeks (Zeus) and the Vedic Hindu (Indra) amongst many more. But however derivative some aspects of his character may have been, Thor – right from his first appearance in the archaeological record – had his own distinct charisma. Not least because, compared to the more classical gods, he was heathen, worshipped by nebulous groups of people outside of the prevailing faiths and polytheistic beliefs of the age.
We know that he turned up in England, likely brought by Germanic settlers after the 5th century. “Thunor or Thonar was imported by the the Angles and the Saxons,” says Dr Carolyne Larrington, Professor of Medieval European Literature at Oxford University’s St John’s College and author of The Norse Myths: A Guide to their Gods and Heroes.“We don’t know how they worshipped him exactly – but his name turns up in the names of places in south-east England.”
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It was in Scandinavia though, probably towards the end of the 8th century, that worship of Thor really hit its stride – a time that coincided with the rise of the Vikings. Amongst various deities, he became something of a superhero – but it’s hard to say when the god we know as Thor took his first hammer blow in the public consciousness. Not an awful lot was written down, and the culture of writing in Scandinavia didn’t flourish until the arrival of Christianity. Other sources have, however, revealed tantalising glimpses of the thunder god.
One of the the earliest recovered depictions of Thor was this carving of – presumably – the god fishing for the 'world serpent', on a bronze plaque found on Ostergotland, Sweden. It's believed to date from the 8th century.
Photograph by Heritage Image Partnership / Alamy
“We’ve got a carved image of him from Gotland from the 8th century,” says Larrington. “It’s obviously not labelled ‘Thor’, but it’s a picture illustrating him going fishing for the ‘world serpent’, so we know from a story that survives [the Húsdrápa] that it must depict him.”
A very practical cult
Why the Scandinavians found him such a compelling deity– worshipped more than Odin, even–was down to his perceived influence over several important aspects of their day-to-day culture. “He was important in the Viking age because he was the god of weather, and of sailing, and of farmers,” says Larrington. “Particularly for the Norwegians and the Icelanders, which is where, from place-name evidence, his cult seems to have been strongest.”
We don’t have much of an idea of exactly what shape the worship of Thor took, what we do have a resplendent mythology around the deity, his personality, and his effects. Most of these are contained in the 13th century saga Poetic Edda – a kind of compendium of verbal and written Norse mythologies of the previous centuries – and the unrelated but similarly venerable Prose Edda, the latter of which was likely compiled byscholar Snorri Sturlson.
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In the former Thor is depicted as a member of the Æsir deities, the son of Odin, and husband of the golden-haired goddess Sif. His home was the fields of Þrúðvangr, from where he defended the gods’ realm of Asgard. Almost always depicted as a strong, battle-loving man with red hair and a beard, the stories chronicle Thor’s often heroic and occasionally comedic escapades – sometimes in the company of the mischievous god Loki–and provide a rich record of his mythological context.
The village sign of Thursley – Thor's 'lee', or clearing – in Surrey is one of several ways Thor's name made it into village nomenclature, a sure sign of prevailing worship or recognition.
Photograph by Paul Doyle / Alamy
“Of all the Norse gods he seems to be the one who is most interested in humans,” says Larrington. “He has a couple of human servants, and he is often referred to as the ‘protector of mankind’ – this has to do with his qualities as a giant killer. He patrols the lands to the east of Asgard, making sure they don’t invade either the divine world – or the human world.”
Thor was prophesised to die whilst fighting the ‘world serpent’Jörmungandr, a huge monster that encircled the earth and bit into its own tail.The legend, recounted in the Prose Edda, said that when the serpent released its grip, the gods’ realm would be besieged by a cataclysm called Ragnarok. In the stories, Thor slayed the monster, but succumbed to its venom moments later.
Though details beyond Thor’s recorded exploits are few, the god seems to have been held with an esteem above all deities by Scandinavians who followed him – to a deeper degree than might be accorded a figure usually depicted as little more than a divine battering ram. All of which means we may be missing something.
“Lots of Scandinavians incorporated his name into their name–things like Thorbjörn, or Thordis, or Thorbecke–so he was obviously more important on a quite personal level than some of the stories might have you believe,” says Carolyne Larrington. “The myths that survive either make him look a bit stupid, or a kind of macho, violent embodiment of masculinity whose only function was killing giants. But it’s clear, from this evidence around the names, that people had a more personal association with him than that.”
One special hammer
One thing that is consistent from the very first rendering is Thor’s weapon of choice, which has been referenced in everything from Viking amulets to Led Zeppelin songs: Mjöllnir, the original ‘hammer of the gods.’
Left:
Top:
The Gosforth Fishing Stone, as it's so-called, is a c.10th century engraving in the Church of St Mary's in the Cumbrian village of Gosforth, and depicts Thor and Hymir fishing for the 'world serpent'. Carved around the time of the Vikings, this image from Norse mythology demonstrates the strength of the Norse influence in Britain at the time.
Photograph by Stan Pritchard / Alamy
Right: Bottom:
Another representation of Thor battling the world serpent – chronicled in the Prose Edda's Húsdrápa – on a picture stone was found atAltuna, Uppland, Sweden.
Photograph by INTERFOTO / Alamy
“Lots of Scandinavians incorporated his name into their name,so he was obviously more important on a quite personal level than some of the stories might have you believe.”
Professor Carolyne Larrington
As described in the Prose Edda,Mjöllnir was forged by dwarves in the caves of Svartalfheim. The hammer was iron with an accidentally short shaft–caused when the mischievous god Loki, whilst disguised as a winged insect, stung the eye of the dwarf making it, intentionally causing the mistake to win a wager. The resulting hammer was still a fine weapon, and Loki presented it to Thoras a backhanded gift to assist in his defence of Asgard.
The hammer’s powers were manifold: according to the sagas it could slay giants, bless farmland, perform marriages and raise the dead. When flung, it was said to return to Thor’s hand like a boomerang.
So colossal was the power of Mjöllnir, to mortals thunder was said to be the concussive blows of the hammer striking enemies up in the heavens. The Old Norse wordmjollnir could have actually meant ‘lightning’, though from what source the word came remains obscure: its echo can be heard in the Russian terms for the phenomena molnija and Old Slavic mlunuji, suggesting a common pre-Germanic source.
The hammer also seems to have been a conduit for his worship – the other practicalities of which we know little about.
Thor as depicted by sculptor Hermann Freund around 1828. Thor's popularity within the stories of the Prose Edda grew in the 19th century, and led to a number of depictions in art and poetry.
Photograph by Statens Museum for Kunst / Creative Commons
This 10th century mould in the collection of the Museum of Copenhagen, was owned by a craftsman who used it to cast both Christian crucifixes and Thor's hammer pendants, such as the two on the left.
Photograph by Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy
Pendants worn by Vikings are thought to have been a blessing in battle, and possibly a subtle act of heathen defiance against the rapidly-spreading Christianity and its similarly trinkety crucifixes. “We’ve got a 10th century mould from Denmark which allowed the craftsman to use one end of it to cast Thor’s hammers, and the other to cast crucifixes,”says Larrington, adding: “Quite versatile. He was clearly someone who knew his clientele.”
She notes that from Icelandic evidence, when Christian missionaries attempted to convert the Scandinavians away from their gods, “it was always Thor versus Christ, never Odin versus Christ, or Frejya versus Christ. Thor was the one who had to be overcome by the superior virtues of Jesus.”
Enduring legacy
Thor’s profile enjoyed something of a resurgence in the late 1700s and 1800s, when epic poems in German and Scandinavian languages, as well as opulent art,depicted key scenes from the god’s mythology.
“Thor came back again in the 19th century into the nationalist discourse, when the poems and the myths about him were being re-edited as people rediscovered them,” says Carolyne Larrington. He was re-styled as “the protector of humans against enemy forces, and it was very easy to make Thor into the protector of Denmark, or the protector of the Germans, against whoever your current political enemies were.”
Other than the hammer, another symbol that has become more dubiously associated with Thor is the swastika. Long before its appropriation by the Nazis this symbol represented good luck, or strength, and was used widely by Indo-European cultures since well before the time of Christ. It was also inscribed by American aviator Charles Lindbergh on the nose cone of the Spirit of St Louis for luck on his historic crossing of the Atlantic in 1927.