Thunor

Þunor, or Thunor, is the son of Earth and Woden. He is the mightiest of gods and has long been honored for his feats of godly strength and courage. It is no surprise that so many have held him up as their favorite god, and carried his image and worn his symbols to show their devotion. He appears in writings as a brawny, middle-aged man with red hair and a long red beard that sparks when he’s angry, and fiery eyes that glow behind stern eyebrows. He carries a great hammer that strikes like lightning, and drives a wagon on wheels that roll with the sound of thunder.

Thunor is the thunder god, and with the thunder comes the rain. In this respect he is a bringer of a fruitful harvest. With thunder comes also lightning, which oxidizes atmospheric nitrogen so that crops can use it to produce fruits and grains. Primitive farmers probably knew the effects of this. Farmers in Scandinavia still wait until after the thunderstorms of late summer to harvest their crops. Adam of Bremen comments on Swedish belief: “Thor, they say, rules the heavens; he is the god of thunder, wind and rain, fair weather and the produce of the fields.” (von Bremen, 1)

Thunder and the god of thunder are called by the same name in the Old English. The association between the god and the phenomenon is so natural that this philological relationship occurs in nearly all Germanic languages (Grimm, “Donar,” 1). Old English þunor and þundor were synonymous, and the latter survived in the form “thunder.” Still today we use the word, thunder, and unknowingly refer to the god as the source of that mighty sound. Other Anglo-Saxon words meaning thunder include ðunorrad and ðunorradstefn, the second element of these compounds, rað, indicates movement or travel (Turville-Petre, 99). This is reminiscent of the association between the sound of rolling thunder and the sound of Thunor’s wagon wheels rolling across the sky.

While other gods ride on horseback, Thunor drives a wagon drawn by two goats named Tanngrísnir (Tooth-Gnasher) and Tanngnjóstr (Tooth-Grinder). The god is able to slaughter his goats and eat them for dinner, and then use his hammer to bring them back to life in the morning. In the Younger, or Prose Edda, the gifted Snorri Sturlusson tells of an incident in which one of Thunor’s goats is not returned to its proper form as expected. Loki and Thunor were off to Útgard, a land of giants. At evening, the two gods came to the house of a husbandman and decided to stay the night. About dinnertime, Thunor slaughtered his goats and cooked them in a great cauldron. When the mutton was ready to eat, Thunor sat down with Loki? and invited the husbandman and his wife to meat, along with their two children, Thjalfi and Roskva. He asked only that the husbandman and his children should cast the bones on the goat-skins that he had laid on the floor. Thjalfi, the husbandman’s son, split a bone with his knife to get at the marrow and threw the bone on the skins with the rest. The next morning, Thunor took up his heavy hammer and blessed the skins and bones with it. His goats rose up bleating and shook themselves off, but one hobbled on a lame hind leg. Thunor noticed this and declared that the husbandman or his household must not have treated the bones carefully because a thighbone was obviously broken. The husbandman’s legs became weak and he began to feel sick with fear when he saw how Thunor’s brows sunk down before his eyes. His red beard sparked and crackled and the ground trembled, and the god gripped his hammer with knuckles growing white. The husbandman and his wife cried out and prayed for peace and offered anything they owned in return. When the angry god realized their terror, his rage left him and, leaving the goats, he took the children Thjalfi and Roskva for his bond-servants; they follow him still today.

In this story we see Thunor as a quick tempered god, but also sympathetic to the woes of mankind. This is, indeed, consistent with the god’s character. Thunor is the protector of our world, along with the world of the gods.

Thurses and Eotens, two families of giants, live in the Útgard, the wilds that surround our world and the world of the gods. As a force of chaos and unconsciousness, or unawareness, the giants are a constant threat to the world of the gods, that of divine awareness or enlightenment, and also to the world of mankind. Thunor’s task is to protect our worlds and he is thus the greatest enemy of the giants. His hammer is said to be the only object which the giants fear. It is easy to understand the panic that the gods felt when Thunor awoke one day to find his hammer missing, as told in the eddic poem, Thrymniskvitha. This poem is a piece of Norse comedic genius, and it contains a clue about an important function of Thunor in Germanic religion. Thunor shook his beard and told his companion, Loki, that his hammer was missing. From Thunor’s home they traveled to Frea’s hall and asked to borrow her hawk-feather dress. Donning the hawk dress Loki flew to Eotenham, land of the Eotenas, to ask the Eoten king if he had taken Thunor’s hammer. The king, named Thrym, boasted that he had taken the hammer and hid it eight miles deep in the Earth, and that he wouldn’t give it back until he had Frea for a wife. This is suspiciously reminiscent of the old belief that a lightning bolt sends a boulder eight miles into the earth when it strikes. When Thunor heard this he went straightaway to Frea’s hall and told her to put on the Bridal veil, and that she was on her way to Eotenham. The goddess bristled and her necklace snapped; she refused to go with them to Eotenham. So the gods met at council to decide what to do and it was Hama, the whitest of gods, who suggested that Thunor himself should bind on the bridal veil. After some protest from Thunor, the gods dressed him with a pretty cap and gown, a ring of keys and even Frea’s famous Brising’s necklace. With Loki for his maidservant, Thunor drove his wagon to Eotenham to meet Thrym, burning the land and bursting the mountains behind him. At the wedding feast, Thunor ate an ox and eight salmon as well as all of the dainties set aside for the ladies and drank three tons of mead. To calm Thrym, who was becoming somewhat worried, Loki leaned over and told him that Frea had fasted for eight full nights, she was so looking forward to her wedding day. Thrym was touched by Loki’s words and lifted Thunor’s veil to give his bride a kiss. But he stumbled back stammering that Frea’s eyes were frightful and burning with fire. Loki whispered in the king’s ear that Frea had not slept for eight full nights, so hot was her longing for Thrym. At that the giant could wait no longer, he commanded that the hammer be brought to hallow the bride. It was placed on the bride’s knees in the name of the goddess Vor, a goddess of oaths and vows, and probably associated with weddings. Thunor laughed heartily with his hammer in his lap. Taking it in hand, he cracked Thrym’s skull and felled all the giants in the hall. A very important happening in this poem occurs in one of the last stanzas:

“Then loud spake Thrym, | the giants’ leader:
“Bring in the hammer | to hallow the bride;
On the maiden’s knees | let Mjollnir lie,
That us both the band | of Vor may bless.”
(Thrymniskvitha, 30. Bellows)

In both of the stories that I have told, we find Thunor’s hammer used as a tool for hallowing or blessing. It is generally accepted that this is one of Thunor’s most important functions in the Germanic religion.
There are several other sources for the idea of Thunor as a god who hallows. A stanza from the eddic poem, Hymiskvitha:

“…And with him fares | the foeman of Hroth,
The friend of mankind, | and Veur they call him.”
(Hymiskvitha, 11. Bellows)

The last line of this stanza mentions that Thunor, the foeman of Hroth, is known to Mankind by the name of Veur. In fact, Thunor is called by this name three times in the Hymiskvitha and once in the Voluspa. The first element of this word is vé (holy place) and Veur is certainly related to vígja (to hallow) (Turville-Petre, 101). A seventh century clasp found in Southern Germany bears a runic inscription reading Logaþore, Wodan, Wigiþonar. The last of these three names is believed to be that of our god, Thunor, and it is notably similar to a common tenth century Danish inscription, Þurr uiki (may Thor hallow) (Turville-Petre, 100-101). It would follow that Wigiþonar means something like Holy-Thunor, or Thunor the Hallower.
Several symbols important to Germanic Heathenry are associated with Thunor. The most popular amongst modern Heathen is the hammer. We have seen how the hammer was used to protect us from the unwholesome wights of Útgard and how it was used to make things holy; it is natural that it should be a popular amulet to wear around our necks. Many of these small hammer amulets have been found on gravesites in England and Scandinavia. Hammer amulets originating in England, such as the one found near Cuerdale in Lancashire, are unique in shape to the Scandinavian type in that they feature a relatively long shaft. Most of the surviving Anglo-Saxon hammers are wrought in iron, although the Cuerdale hammer is in silver.
For the Anglo-Saxons, the most popular symbol related to Thunor was the fylfot cross, the modern swastika (Wilson, 115). The symbol seems to have had an important connection to death or burial as it was found carved on numerous cremation urns in East Anglia. This is no surprise, because, as we have seen, Thunor plays an important role in protecting holy places and in hallowing things. The fylfot is found carved on weaponry as well, such as the hilt and sword-belt found in Kent (Alan). Perhaps the warrior felt that the symbol would empower him, or the weapon, with the strength of Thunor.

Works Cited
Alan, Stuart. “Other Symbols.” Anglo-Saxon Symbols (2000). Anglo-Saxon Heathenism.
27 March 2003
Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. Teutonic Mythology. Trans. James Steven Carl Stallybrass.
New York: Routledge, 2000.
The Poetic Edda. Trans. Henry Adams Bellows. New York: Princeton University Press, Princeton
American Scandinavian Foundation, 1936.
“Thunder.” Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary. 1996 Ed.
Turville-Petre, E.O.G. Myth and Religion of the North. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1964.
von Bremen, Adam. Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum. 3rd Ed. Hannover: Hahnsche
Burchhandlung, 1917.
Wilson, David. Anglo-Saxon Paganism. New York: Routledge, 1992.