Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

them.

The hammer could of course be used as a throwing weapon, and one of the characteristics of Mjollnir was that it would always return to the owner’s hand. In this way it was a fitting symbol of the thunderbolt hurled by the angry god. Both Snorri and Saxo tell us that the hammer of Thor was short in the handle. Snorri accounts for this by a story of interference by Loki when the hammer was being forged (see pp. 42–3). Saxo tells us that Hotherus² hewed off the shaft of the hammer in battle when he put the gods to flight. The idea of a short handle is borne out by the shape of the Danish amulets, and it is noticeable that these all have a metal ring fitted through the handle. If the hammer was thrown through the air, the handle would need to be short, and a ring would make the throw more effective, as in the case of the ‘hammer’ thrown in the Highland games. A hammer with a loop fitted through the handle is shown on a Swedish rune-stone from Stenqvista, where it is used as a sign of Thor’s protection over the grave.

An object very like a hammer or a double axe is also depicted among the magical symbols on the drums of Lappish shamans, used in their religious ceremonies before Christianity was established. The drums themselves were struck with an implement which resembles a hammer, and here we have another connexion with the metal hammers said to be used in Thor’s temple to imitate the noise of thunder. The name of the Lappish thunder god was Horagalles, thought to be derived from ?orr karl, ‘old man Thor’. Sometimes on the drums a male figure with a hammer-like object in either hand is shown, and sometimes this is a kind of cross with hooked ends, resembling a swastika. The swastika, or hooked cross, is a sign found in many regions of the world and known from remote antiquity. It was very popular among the heathen Germans, and appears to have been associated with the symbol of fire. There may be some connexion between it and the sun-wheel, well known in the Bronze Age, or it may have arisen from the use of the hammer or axe to represent thunder, which was accompanied by fire from heaven. Thor was the sender of lightning and the god who dealt out both sunshine and rain to men, and it seems likely that the swastika as well as the hammer sign was connected with him.

The Anglo-Saxons worshipped the thunder god under the name of Thunor. Memories of him survive here and there, like the title of High Thunderer, used for the Christian God in a tenth-century charter of Edward the Elder. We have many instances of the swastika symbol from Anglo-Saxon graves of the pagan period, and it is particularly prominent on cremation urns from the cemeteries of East Anglia. On some of these, to be seen in the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, it is depicted with such care and art that it must surely have possessed special significance as a funeral symbol. Both the swastika and the hammer symbol are found on stones bearing early runic inscriptions in Norway and Sweden, and some of these call on Thor to protect the memorial and place of burial.

The swastika is also found on weapons and sword scabbards. It can be seen on sword hilts from the peat bogs of Denmark as early as the third century A.D. It is clearly marked on a hilt and sword belt found at Bifrons, Kent, in a grave of about the sixth century. By the seventh century, the Christian cross also appears on scabbards, and an elaborate one recovered from the River Seine has the cross and the swastika side by side.¹

It would seem indeed as though the power of the thunder god, symbolized by his hammer, extended over all that had to do with the well-being of the community. It covered birth, marriage, and death, burial, and cremation ceremonies, weapons and feasting, travelling, land-taking, and the making of oaths between men. The famous weapon of Thor was not only the symbol of the destructive power of the storm, and of fire from heaven, but also a protection against the forces of evil and violence. Without it Asgard could no longer be guarded against the giants, and men relied on it also to give security and to support the rule of law.

4. The God of the Sky

The mother of Thor was said to be Earth herself, and in the earliest skaldic verse he is described in phrases meaning ‘son of Earth’. Of his wife, Sif, we know little, except that she had wonderful golden hair; it has been suggested that this was the sign of an ancient fertility goddess, her abundant, shining hair typifying the golden corn. There was an undoubted link between Thor as the thunder god and the fertility of the earth, on which the lightning strikes and the rain falls, causing increase. Adam of Bremen writes of Thor as the most important of the gods, because of this power over the seasons:

They say he rules the air which controls the thunder and the lightning, the winds and showers, the fair weather and the fruits of the earth. … Thor with a sceptre seems to represent Jove.

History of the Bishops of Hamburg, IV, 26

It is in keeping with this link between Thor and the earth, that we find many of the first Icelandic settlers taking with them from Norway not only the high-seat pillars from Thor’s temple, but also earth from between the pillars. Moreover they were careful to hallow the land which they took for themselves in the name of the god before they built their dwellings upon it and sowed their crops.

In his association with the natural world, Thor was thus both destroyer and protector. He was regarded in Viking times as a sure guide for those who travelled over the sea, because of his power over storms and wind. He was the god to be invoked for journeying, and even Helgi the Lean, one of the early Icelandic settlers who had been converted to Christianity, was said to continue to call on Thor whenever he had a sea voyage to make. Thor could call down storms against his adversaries, as when he raised a tempest against Olaf Tryggvason by blowing out his beard, urged on by his worshipper, Raud:

Raud said: ‘Blow out the bristles of your beard against him, and we will resist them stoutly.’ Thor said not much would come of that, but nevertheless they went out, and Thor blew hard into his beard and puffed out the bristles. Immediately a gale came up against the king.

Flateyjarbok, 1, 248

Thor is said in Floamanna Saga (21) to appear to a Christian convert in a dream ‘big and red-bearded’, and to threaten him that it should go hard with him on his journey. He led him to a cliff and showed him great waves breaking over the rocks, saying:

Into such rough seas shall you come and never be delivered from them, unless you turn to me.

Poems quoted in Njals Saga declare that Thor stirred up the storms which shattered the ship of the Christian missionary Thangbrand. Thor’s power over the sea might of course be used more positively to benefit his worshippers, as when he is said to have stranded a whale on the shores of Vineland in response to the prayers of Thorhall, one of the explorers. Thorhall boasted to his Christian companions:

Redbeard has got the better of your Christ! I have done this by my poetry which I made about Thor, in whom men trust.

Eiriks Saga Rau?a

The connexion between the red beard of Thor and the raising of the wind appears to be emphasized. Perhaps the old explanation, that the beard denoted the lightning, is nearer the truth than the popular suggestion that Thor’s beard made him the typical unshaven Viking. The colour of the beard may have been based on the red sky which foretells a storm. Incidentally the fact that one of the most famous worshippers of the god, Thorolf of Most, was known as ‘bearded man of Most’, suggests his beard was something worthy of notice, even among bearded Vikings. We may note that the terrible glare of Thor’s burning eyes is also mentioned more than once in the poetry, and his fearsome voice.

The thunder god with his hammer was, as we have seen, equated with the Roman Hercules. But Donar, the thunder god of the heathen Germans, had other associations more distinguished than this. Adam of Bremen suggested that the god with his sceptre represented Jupiter, and Saxo alludes to Jupiter’s hammers. Others saw the association with the supreme sky god of the Romans. The day sacred to Jupiter, dies lovis, the fourth day of the week, Thursday, was dedicated to the Thunderer throughout the Germanic world. We have ?unresd?g in Anglo-Saxon England, Donnerstag in Germany. It was an important day of the week, and as late as the seventh century Eligius, Bishop of Noyon, had to reproach his congregation because so many of them still kept Thursday as a holy day.¹

It seems that Donar, Thor’s predecessor, like the Greek Zeus, was associated with the great oaks of the forest which covered much of western Europe. The Germans, the Celts (whose thunder god was Tanaros), the