Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

described in detail in the fourth chapter of Eyrbyggja Saga. It had pillars, with ‘god-nails’ in them, the holy ring, a sacrificial bowl in which blood was caught when animals were sacrificed to the god, and images of Thor and other deities.

Here, as well as the bowl of blood and the ring, we have emphasis on the importance of the high-seat pillars. In Scandinavian halls these were the carved wooden pillars flanking the seat of honour, and we see from this and other passages that they also stood in Thor’s temple. Thor, as became a god with special dominion over the realm of the sky and over storms, had special power over sea journeys. His worshippers prayed for fair weather and favourable winds, but they did more. Many of those whose arrivals in Iceland are chronicled in Landnamabok acted like Thorolf. As they neared the shores of the island, they flung the high-seat pillars overboard so that the god himself might guide them to land. It seems likely that a figure of Thor himself was sometimes carved on these pillars, for there is one specific reference in the sagas to a seat, presumably the high-seat, with Thor carved upon it.

Of the connexion between the thunder god and the great trees of the forest, more will be said below. For the moment we may note the reference to god-nails in the pillars of Thor’s temple. A possible clue to the significance of such nails is found in seventeenth-century accounts of heathen religion among the Lapps. They are said to have kept an image of the thunder god in the form of a rude block of wood, with a man’s head carved at the top, and two sticks for arms, one holding a mallet. Scheffer¹ says:

Into his head they drive a nail of iron or steel, and a small piece of flint to strike fire with, if he hath a mind to it.

If the nails in the pillar were indeed used for the ritual kindling of fire, we might see an explanation of the strange myth about the duel between Thor and Hrungnir the giant, told by Snorri (see p. 41) and also recounted in ninth-century poetry. The giant was armed with a whetstone and a stone shield. When Thor appeared with thunder and lightning, he hurled his hammer at Hrungnir while the giant hurled the whetstone at him. The whetstone was smashed to pieces, and one small piece remained in Thor’s head, and is said to be there still.

Such a fantastic incident must either be based on obscure poetic imagery or on ritual practice. One suggestion made by Dumezil¹ is that the double duel between the giant and Thor and their two supporters, Mist-Calf and Thjalfi, preserves memories of an initiation ritual, a mock demon being set up for the youth to vanquish, while the myth of the god’s combat was taught to him as the inner meaning of the ceremony. The strange fact of the whetstone being left in Thor’s head might be explained by the Lapp practice of using the head of the thunder god as a source of fire. The whetstone of the giant, encountering the iron hammer of the god, would be equivalent to the kindling of fire with flint and steel, and this in turn represented the flash of the lightning.

Association of fire with Thor’s temple is made in a late saga, Kjalnesinga Saga. Here the temple is described in the usual way, but it is also stated that the altar was made of iron on top:

This was the place for the fire which was never allowed to go out. This they called the sacred fire.

This has been usually rejected as an invention of the saga-teller, perhaps imitated from a classical source. It is probable, however, that the association between Thor and fire was a genuine one. It was with fire that Thorolf went round his land, claiming it in the name of the god, and there is some reason to believe that the fires of cremation might be connected with Thor as well as with Odin. There is evidence that a perpetual fire burned in the temple of the thunder god of the Old Prussians, within an oak tree sanctuary. Thor’s power over the lightning, the fire from heaven, must not be forgotten, and this aspect of the god was, as we will see, further emphasized by the imitation of thunder within the temple itself.

3. The Hammer of Thor

The image of Thor in the temple usually carried a hammer, and we hear much in the myths concerning this weapon of the god. Snorri tells us that the Aesir proclaimed that the hammer Mjollnir was the greatest treasure which they possessed, since it enabled them to hold Asgard secure against the giants. Clearly this hammer was something more than a weapon. It was used at weddings to hallow the bride, for this explains the ruse employed against the giants in the poem Prymskvi?a (pages 44–5). Thor was disguised as a bride because he knew that the moment was bound to come when the hammer would be brought out and laid in his lap, and he would thus get it back into his own hands. This use of the hammer symbol may be of very great antiquity in the north. Scandinavian rock-engravings of the Bronze Age show figures brandishing a weapon which resembles an axe or hammer, and in one group a large figure raises one of these over two small figures standing together, which has led to the suggestion that this is some kind of marriage ritual.¹ There is, however, an enormous gap in time between these early rock carvings and the Viking age, and more corroboration is needed before such a claim can be accepted.

We know that the hammer was raised to hallow the new-born child who was to be accepted into the community, and it seems also to have been used at funerals, since at Balder’s death it was fetched to hallow the funeral ship before this was set alight. When Thor had feasted on his goats, he made the sign of the hammer over the bones and skin in order to restore them to life (see page 32). In this new life given by the god, we can see a possible significance in the use of the hammer at sacrifices and funerals, concerning which more will be said below.

Like that of the Christian cross, the sign of the hammer was at once a protection and a blessing to those who used it. An early king of Norway, Hakon the Good, who became a Christian, was bullied into attending autumn sacrifices, and he strove to protect himself from the heathen rites by making the sign of the cross over the cup passed round in honour of the gods. When the company objected, one of his friends defended Hakon, saying:

The King acts like all those who trust in their strength and might. He made the mark of the hammer over it before he drank.¹

Men were accustomed in the tenth century to wear the symbol of Thor in the form of a hammer-shaped amulet on a chain or cord round their necks. Some of these have been found in silver hoards in Denmark and Sweden, and there is an obvious resemblance between the little hammers and the square, equal-armed crosses with figures of Christ on them which were worn at about the same time. Possibly the wearing of Thor’s symbol came into fashion as a reaction against the Christian one worn by those converted to the new faith. A mould in which both hammers and crosses were cast can be seen in the National Museum at Copenhagen, and indicates that the silversmiths were prepared to satisfy all tastes in religion. The hammer amulet was also used at an earlier period, though in a slightly different form. Small amulets which resemble long-handled hammers and which may be Thor’s hammers were found by Fausset in graves of an Anglo-Saxon cemetery at Gilton, Kent.²

A very significant use of the hammer is that mentioned by Saxo, who tells us that large models of it were kept in the temple of Thor in Sweden, and that in 1125 these were carried away by Magnus Nilsson:

He took care to bring home certain hammers of unusual weight, which they call Jupiter’s, used by the island men in their antique faith. For the men of old, desiring to comprehend the causes of thunder and lightning by means of the similitude of things, took hammers great and massy of bronze, with which they believed the crashing of the sky might be made, thinking that great and violent noise might very well be imitated by the smith’s toil, as it were. But Magnus, in his zeal for Christian teaching and dislike to Paganism, determined to spoil the temple of its equipment, and Jupiter of his tokens in the place of his sanctity. And even now the Swedes consider him guilty of sacrilege and a robber of spoil belonging to the god.

Gesta Danorum, XIII, 421 (Elton’s translation)

Saxo evidently believed that the hammers, like the chariot, were used in some kind of ritual to imitate the noise of thunder.

The hammer-shaped weapon is similar to the double axe of antiquity, which also represented the thunderbolt, and which was shown in various forms in temples of the ancient world. Among the early Germanic peoples the god Donar, Thor’s predecessor, was considered to resemble Hercules, the mighty male figure armed with a club who battled against monsters, and part of the resemblance was evidently due to the weapon which the god carried. This identification was accepted by the Romans, and there are inscriptions to Hercules from the Roman period, raised by the German soldiers in western Europe. Tacitus tells us¹ that the praises of Hercules used to be chanted by the Germans as they went into battle, and that they believed he had visited