How Thor Lost His Thunder: The Changing Faces of an Old Norse God [1 ed.] 0367889021, 9780367889029

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How Thor Lost His Thunder

How Thor Lost His Thunder is the first major English-language study of early medieval evidence for the Old Norse god Thor. Today, Thor is commonly imagined summoning lightning and thunder with his hammer while battling against monsters and giants. This book examines the basis of these images within the Iron Age and early medieval evidence. In doing so, the cultural background of Thor’s cult and mythology is explored and some of his lesser known traits are revealed, including a possible connection to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Iceland. This geographically and chronologically far-reaching study considers the earliest sources in which Thor appears, including in evidence from the Viking colonies of the British Isles and in Scandinavian folklore. By tracing the changes that have occurred in Old Norse mythology over time, this book questions fundamental popular and scholarly beliefs about Thor for the first time since the Victorian era, including whether he really was a thunder god, and prompts new inquiries into areas like the afterlife beliefs of Thor’s worshippers. Considering evidence from across northern Europe, How Thor Lost His Thunder challenges modern scholarship’s understanding of the god and of the northern pantheon as a whole and is ideal for scholars and students of mythology and of the history and religion of medieval Scandinavia. Declan Taggart is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of English at University College Cork. His research interests include Old Norse mythology, religion and literature, together with the role of human cognition in shaping religious concepts.

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How Thor Lost His Thunder The Changing Faces of an Old Norse God Declan Taggart

How Thor Lost His Thunder The Changing Faces of an Old Norse God

Declan Taggart

First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Declan Taggart The right of Declan Taggart to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Taggart, Declan, author. Title: How Thor lost his thunder : the changing faces of an Old Norse God / Declan Taggart. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2017. | Series: Routledge research in medieval studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017029203 | ISBN 9781138058194 (hardback : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781315164465 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Thor (Norse deity) | Mythology, Norse—History. | Folklore—Scandinavia. | Scandinavia—Social life and customs. | Scandinavia—Religion. Classification: LCC BL870.T5 T34 2017 | DDC 293/.2113—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017029203 ISBN: 978-1-138-05819-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-16446-5 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To my parents, Rita and Aidan Taggart

Contents

Figures Tables Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1

Introduction

x xi xii xiv 1

1.1 Justifications and the limits of the study 2 1.2 Vikings, religion and other controversies 4 1.3 Orthography 5 2

Sources

9

2.1 Categories of sources 10 2.1.1 Eddic and skaldic poetry 10 2.1.2 Eddic prose 13 2.1.3 Iconography and runic inscriptions 15 2.1.4 Contemporary historiography and ethnography 17 2.1.5 Conclusions 18 2.2 Variety and change 19 2.2.1 Why is it important? 19 2.2.2 Why did it happen? 21 3

Naming thunder 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5

Ancient *Þunraz 29 Vagna verz: the wagon man 36 A roaring rider 43 Onomastics 48 In summary 51

29

viii 4

Contents Eddic thunder

64

4.1 Snorri Sturluson’s Edda 64 4.2 ‘All the mountains shake’: Lokasenna 65 4.3 Volcanic imagery: Þrymskviða and Hallmundarkviða 69 4.4 Making an impression 75 4.5 The strongman of Old Norse myth 78 4.5.1 Guardian of the gods 80 4.5.2 Enduring strength 83 4.5.3 Inversions 85 5

Non-eddic voices 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

6

7

An Icelandic Jove 97 Adam of Bremen 99 Saxo Grammaticus 103 An isolated parallel in a lausavísa by Þjóðólfr Arnórsson 107

Mythological objects 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6

97

114

Closer attention to Þórsdrápa 114 Assorted other poets 117 The intriguing case of Þorsteinn bæjarmagn 119 Snorri: its fullest expression 125 Mythological fingerprints 127 The motif of throwing 143

Mundane objects 7.1 Thunderstones 153 7.1.1 A geographical split 153 7.1.2 Thunderstones and Mjǫllnir 155 7.1.3 Beyond literature 158 7.2 The hammer 161 7.2.1 The roots of Mjǫllnir 161 7.2.2 Blessing with a word or a weapon 162 7.2.2.1 The word 163 7.2.2.2 The weapon 173 7.3 Summing up 184

153

Contents 8

Conclusions

ix 191

8.1 A thunder god? 191 8.1.1 Climate 194 8.1.2 Genre 197 8.2 Changing faces 198 Index

204

Figures

3.1 6.1 6.2 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5

The Nordendorf Fibula I The Altuna stone The Hørdum stone The Virring rune-stone The Karlevi rune-stone The Gårdstånga 3 rune-stone The Læborg rune-stone The Stenkvista rune-stone

30 135 136 170 175 176 177 178

Tables

6.1 6.2

The brandished weapon coalition A comparison of motifs from the fishing trip

128 133

Acknowledgements

Formal thanks are due to the editors of Scripta Islandica and Saga-Book for their permission to reproduce material modified from my articles ‘All the Mountains Shake’ (Scripta Islandica, 67 [2017]) and ‘Stealing his Thunder: An Investigation of Old Norse Images of Þórr’ (Saga-Book, 41 [2017]). I am also grateful to the various organisations who funded and supported me in various crucial ways during the PhD that this book is based upon: the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Aberdeen, the Viking Society for Northern Research, the Royal Historical Society and the Spalding Trust. More recently, I am obliged to the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy and Stockholm University’s Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender studies, who funded and hosted me respectively during the productive and happy stay in 2016 when I began work on this book. And I would like to thank Laura Pilsworth and Morwenna Scott, my editor and her assistant at Routledge, who have been unfailingly gracious and supportive. When I finished my PhD, my acknowledgements were already lengthy. Now that I have re-worked my thesis, too many people to mention are due my gratitude for their advice, friendship and good humour. Needless to say, this book’s defects and errors are my responsibility. I remain enormously indebted to my doctoral supervisors at the University of Aberdeen, Stefan Brink, Tarrin Wills and Karen Bek-Pedersen, who have not stopped sharing with me stories of bovine resurrection, metaphorically walking me through arcane poetic structures and literally walking me through Scandinavia’s sacral landscapes, even though they’re not getting paid for it any more. I owe almost as much to my many unofficial supervisors and proofreaders at the Centre for Scandinavian Studies in Aberdeen. Many of the ideas of this book arose in conversation with them, and I have learned so much more from their friendships about dvergr sexuality, jǫtunn emancipation, magical bishops, medieval Eucharistic rites and the domestic lives of goats than I ever thought possible or probably desirable. I am newly indebted to Olof Sundqvist, my mentor at Stockholm University and one of the nicest people I have ever met. His insights into Old Norse religion have become a great influence. The same is true of the thoughts of Lisa Collinson and Alaric Hall, my PhD’s examiners, without whom this

Acknowledgements

xiii

book would be much inferior. I have been lucky enough to receive assistance and friendship from a number of scholars. In particular, it is a pleasant duty to thank David Braine (greatly missed), Terry Gunnell, Carolyne Larrington, Maths Bertell, Edith Marold, Peter Jackson, Egil Asprem, Erik Östling, Torun Zachrisson, Gunnar Ternhag, Ingrid Lyberg, Filip Missuno, Jens Peter Schjødt, Jesper Sørensen, the attendees of the Comparing the Medieval North workshop, Johnni Langer, PhD students and post-doctoral researchers at Aarhus University, and Connor and Leithan Organ. Without my earliest teachers in Old Norse literature, John McKinnell, David Ashurst and Matthew Townend, I would never have considered this career path. They are among the small number of people who I have found truly inspirational. Thank you too to the friends I grew up with, like Damian Maguire, Michael McLaughlin, John Bradley, Niall McEnhill, Stephen Maguire and Patrick Griffin, and to newer friends and family, like Francisco García, Consuelo Losquiño, Elena García and Fidel Tobías, for making up some of the rest of that number. Finally, I owe much to Irene García Losquiño, who is still the same precious source of creative thinking, energy and advice on how to be kinder in criticism that she was when I finished my PhD, and to my parents, siblings and wider family members, who no matter where I have travelled, have always remained my home. I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to do this or anything else without all of them.

Abbreviations1

Dan. Ger. Lat. MnE Norw. OE OHG OI ON OS OSw PGmc PIE Swed.

Danish German Latin Modern English Norwegian Old English Old High German Old Icelandic Old Norse Old Saxon Old Swedish Proto-Germanic Proto-Indo-European Swedish

Note 1 Abbreviations to the titles of primary and secondary literature are expanded in the bibliography.

1

Introduction

In my first draft of this introduction, I tried to imagine a modern-day reunion of the Old Norse gods. I pictured them sitting in awkward silence in a circle, limp tea sandwiches hanging from their hands, paint peeling from the wall of their conference room, and names like Lýtir and Bil markered in black onto stickers on some of their chests. In the end, I gave up. The image never really worked, not even in a fictionalised modernity in which Þórr (MnE Thor) and the other pre-Christian gods of Scandinavia walk the earth and enjoy conference coffee. Today, while the dísir (sing. dís) are largely unknowns and the álfar (sing. álfr) have been eclipsed by the elves of twentieth-century science-fiction and fantasy – while even Óðinn and Loki are relatively obscure – Þórr is profiting from a cultural renaissance for medieval Scandinavian culture, judging from his frequent appearances in popular literature, music, cinema and video games (on modern appropriations of Old Norse myths, see O’Donoghue 2007, pp. 163–199). It is safe to assume he would not get invited to a divine twenty-first-century þing. Yet Þórr has changed and changed again over the centuries. Thanks to some extent to the influence of the Marvel cinematic universe, the archthunder god in the twenty-first-century West is blond, clean-shaven and blue-eyed, the perfect vision of what, to some of the world, is the stereotypical Scandinavian (cf. O’Donoghue 2007, pp. 130, 146, 197–198). Other modern versions differ. One of Þórr’s original Marvel artists had already portrayed the character, for a different comics company, as a ginger, bearded villain – though he was really a mobster in disguise (Kirby and Simon 1942). The authors of the Danish Valhalla comics also elected for a red-bearded Thor (e.g. Madsen et al. 1979), cleaving closer to those sagas which identify the god by the redness of his facial hair (e.g. Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss, ch. 8; Eiríks saga rauða, ch. 8). The mythological poems that remain do not speak at all of the colour of Þórr’s hair, though he is bearded in Þrymskviða (st. 1:5).1 The prevailing vision of Þórr in popular culture differs from that of the Viking Age, and the way an Icelandic fisherman from that period conceived of the god might not have matched the account of a counterpart on a Danish island like Læsø. For scholars, this is crucial. If a major part of an argument

2

Introduction

is based on an assumption – such as the idea that Þórr was uniformly thought of as a thunder god across the whole of the North – that turns out to be incorrect, then it undermines the conclusions that are drawn and may reinforce those erroneous assumptions for future scholars. The main purpose of this monograph, therefore, is to undertake a rigorous philological dissection of medieval representations of the Old Norse deity Þórr, investigating variety in these representations and focusing in particular on thunder, the god’s most popular association in modern scholarship and culture. My hope is that from my contribution can come a more realistic and reliable model of historical conceptions of the god, giving scholars and other interested parties a sounder basis to work from.

1.1

Justifications and the limits of the study

Modern representations of Þórr revolve around two basic and arguably complementary characteristics: strength and control over thunder. The many comics and novels centred on the god take titles like The Mighty Thor, Thor: Man of War, Thunderstrike, The Adventures of Thor the Thunder God, Thor the Viking God of Thunder, God of Thunder, Thor: God of Thunder (no relation), Thor: Ages of Thunder, Thor: Blood and Thunder, The Mighty Thor, Thor: The Mighty Avenger and, of course, Thor the Thunder Cat. The (nonfeline) comic-book protagonist is routinely depicted mid-hammer blow, his weapon and background bathed in silver or gold by crooked jags of lightning. Recently, a newly discovered species of shrew native to the Democratic Republic of Congo was designated the Thor’s hero shrew (Scutisorex thori) after the deity, from a correspondence between the unusual power of the shrew’s vertebrae and Þórr’s reputation for strength (Johnston 2013; Stanley et al. 2013).2 The popular conceptualisation is echoed in many academic studies of the Old Norse deity and in influential handbooks. In his Dictionary of Northern Mythology, for example, Rudolf Simek epitomises Þórr as ‘[t]he Germanic god of thunder, the strongest of the æsir and the giant-killer among them’ (1993, s.v. ‘Thor’). Hilda Ellis Davidson introduces Þórr as ‘the northern thunder-god’ and refers to him later as ‘thunder-god and deity of the sky’ as well as ‘protector of homes and the community’ (1988, pp. 1, 135), while Jan de Vries’s still-prominent Altgermanisches Religionsgeschichte denotes Þórr repeatedly as a Donnergott ‘thunder-god’ (1970, § 413, 415, 416). Mads D. Jessen’s examination of Þórr’s cognitive appeal works from the assumption that Þórr was a god of ‘war and weather (especially thunder)’, citing associations like his goats and linking the god’s hammer Mjǫllnir with the production of thunder and lightning (2013, pp. 325–327). And Martin Arnold’s recent survey of the evolution of Þórr begins with the observation that the figure’s single ever-present characteristic is ‘his devotion to protecting humanity from ill’ and goes on to label him ‘[m]aster of both thunder and lightning’ (2011, pp. xi, 11. See also e.g. Turville-Petre 1964, p. 81; Raudvere 2008, p. 237; Schjødt 2008; and further instances could be adduced).

Introduction

3

In the past, Lotte Motz (1996, pp. 40–41, 48, 55–57) and Ellis Davidson (1965, pp. 3, 5) have both questioned the validity, at least in Iceland, of characterising Þórr as a thunder god. Motz is particularly vehement and argues that the few connections she can find, chief among them the etymology of the name Þórr (see Section 3.1), are ‘not matched by descriptions in the texts’ (1996, p. 55). The most circumspect textbooks limit themselves to an overview of the sources, rather than naming Þórr as particular kind of god: in John Lindow’s Handbook of Norse Mythology, for example, the entry on Þórr focuses on his giant-slaying on that basis, without any mention of thunder or lightning (2001, s.v. ‘Thor’), while another, discussing a major poem about the god, refers to Þórr’s thunder-god label as an ‘assumption’ (2001, s.v. ‘Thrymskvida (The poem of Thrym)’). Elsewhere in the same book, though, Lindow does tag Þórr as ‘the thunderer’ (2001, s.v. ‘Interpretatio germanica’); the characterisation is apparently somewhat ingrained even in scholars wary of it. The scholarly mantra about standing on the shoulders of giants remains true. Yet, every so often, researchers should peek over those shoulders to check the working out being done by the giants, and that is doubly important in cases like this, when the characterisation of Þórr as a powerful thunder god has achieved such ubiquity and is so fundamental to modern conceptions of the Old Norse god. At the same time, it is impossible, even in the time and space allotted to this book, to make a comprehensive study of the entirety of medieval and pre-medieval evidence related to Þórr. As a consequence, I am indebted to previous works of scholarship in this field, from Helge Ljungberg’s monumental though never finished Tor (1947), which collates information from many sources and a comparative perspective, through a wide spectrum of articles to Martin Arnold’s Thor: Myth to Marvel (2011), the most recent long-form discussion in English dedicated to the god. Arnold’s monograph follows representations of Þórr from their earliest extant forms to incarnations in twentieth-century popular culture and, while it is useful for its restatements of sensible positions taken by other scholars on early conceptions of the god, its real contribution concerns the post-medieval reception of the god and medieval Scandinavian culture more broadly. The commentaries of most value to this book are Arboe Sonne’s Thor-kult i vikingetiden (2013) and Maths Bertell’s Tor och den nordiska åskan (2003), though they adopt very different analytical stances. Both successful in their own way, Thor-kult i vikingetiden is stridently revisionist – cynical even – in its approach to previous scholarship and to the merits of many of the sources that must be utilised to build any understanding of pre-Christian worship of Þórr. Even if Arboe Sonne overstates the case, his thesis nonetheless points to the merit of re-examining the depictions of Þórr found in pre-medieval and medieval source material to wipe away any residue left on them by centuries of academic and popular inquiry. A study of the cultural exchange behind certain mythological motifs in the literature of Þórr, Bertell’s work is more hopeful and constructive than Arboe Sonne’s. Though this book

4

Introduction

challenges the primary tenet of Tor och den nordiska åskan that Þórr was a thunder god, many of Bertell’s findings, regarding Þórr’s characterisation as a protector, for example, are complementary to my research, while the cross-cultural scope of Bertell’s work makes it a fascinating storehouse of materials that could not find room here. The views of Bertell, Arboe Sonne and many other scholars will necessarily be cited, challenged and modulated throughout this book. Despite the limits of time and space placed on this study, it should be plain from the wide range of sources that are used whether the key motifs of thunder, lightning and strength were consistently important and, moreover, possible to evaluate variation in representations of Þórr in their textual and extra-textual contexts. Regarding these key motifs, explicit statements of a connection with Þórr will be sought. In the first instance, this is to avoid circular reasoning – attributing thunder as an underlying concept when rumbling occurs in a text, for example, because thunder is expected to be there. Secondly, if thunder was an essential Þórr attribute for the Viking Age and medieval societies that produced and transmitted stories about him, then it is natural to expect that this would be unambiguous in their texts and that an investigation would not need to be exhaustive to find it.

1.2 Vikings, religion and other controversies The validity of terminology that will be used throughout this investigation, in particular Viking and Viking Age, has been questioned in the past (see further Ambrosiani and Clarke 1998; Richards 2005, pp. 2–6). As is the case with any attempt to assign discrete boundaries to the ceaseless processes of history, the Viking Age is a constructed aid to comprehension, though one that has achieved currency through ongoing usefulness. The convention offers a facilitative schema for research and pedagogy, if its conditionality is acknowledged and made open to ongoing re-evaluation (cf. Brink 2008, p. 5). In this spirit, the practice of marking the beginning of the Viking Age at the raid on Lindisfarne monastery in Northumberland in AD 793 and its end with the battle of Stamford Bridge in AD 1066 will be followed here, though these dates can be quibbled with according to the criteria – geographical, archaeological, linguistic, art historical, religious – used to derive them (e.g. Ambrosiani and Clarke 1998, p. 33). Viking is itself a term with uncertain origins. It can be related to the Old Norse nouns víking ‘expedition’ and víkingr ‘someone on an expedition’, and seems in these cases to have had a special connection with military voyages (for a broader introduction to the possible senses and etymologies, see Brink 2008, pp. 5–7). I will use Viking here in its common, extended modern English sense, in which a Viking could be any member of the Nordic peoples in this period (though, admittedly, the word can have a stress on their violent activities, which is of lesser relevance here). The words myth, mythology and religion will appear frequently in this book, but offering standard definitions of them is not easy. Perhaps most

Introduction

5

importantly, these terms are not synonyms, though a myth might in some circumstances be described as an expression of religious thought. Beyond that, delimiting myth is difficult: if it is restricted to religion, then the extensive mythologies of sport, nationalism and music are excluded; if it is held to be fictional or exaggeration, then the sacred quality of many myths for the peoples who created them is needlessly discounted; even attempts to limit mythology to narratives are contested by Old Norse poems like Hávamál, predominantly a collection of gnomic statements, and Grímnismál, which occupies most of its duration with inventorying cosmology. Therefore, only a stipulative definition will be offered. In this book, mythology will be understood as a cultural artefact or collection of such artefacts (in this case concerned with supernatural agents) that fulfils a mental or emotional function for its audience in relation to aetiology (whether of the structures and protocols of society or cosmology); consolation (regarding, for example, the existence of an afterlife or protective agents); embroidering ritual; entertainment (the majority of Old Norse myths centre on conflict, whether physical or intellectual); and/or the preservation of culture (the concern for preserving poetic synonyms in the Old Norse poem Alvíssmál, for instance, does not satisfy any of these other categories).3 A myth will be taken to be a single artefact that meets any combination of these criteria. On a tangentially related note, the term text will be used to refer to oral as well as written compositions. Regarding the continuing debate over defining as religion what the sources themselves entitle forn siðr ‘ancient custom’ (e.g. Hákonar saga góða, ch. 14), the term religion seems to me an accommodating one as a framework for intra- and cross-cultural comparisons, encompassing the many Old Norse cultural practices under discussion. As such, and following similar arguments by Andreas Nordberg (2012, pp. 119–122) and Anette Lindberg (2009), the term religion will be employed throughout this book. A less controversial distinction can be made between Old Norse and Old Icelandic (on the linguistic and literary bases for this differentiation, see Meulengracht Sørensen 2000, pp. 8–9; Nordberg 2012, p. 122). Old Norse can denote the culture, religion and literary production of Norse speakers in both Iceland and mainland Scandinavia (though the language must have had two distinct Viking Age dialects, now referred to as East and West Norse). Literature from Iceland cannot always be distinguished linguistically or based on historical information from that of lands further east. Where this is possible, however, and the delineation is required for the arguments of this book, it becomes more appropriate to discuss texts from Iceland as Old Icelandic.

1.3

Orthography

The groups of deities in Old Norse mythology are often referred to using unnecessarily heterogeneous orthographic styles. Some group names are routinely capitalised, like Æsir or Vanir, as if they were ethnonyms, even while

6

Introduction

others (for instance, dvergar, álfar and jǫtnar) are not.4 As the precise semantics of these terms – whether they are ethnic or racial markers, demonyms, or even circumscribing a kin group – are not clear and likely change from text to text and period to period, none will be capitalised in this book. Italicisation will be used, however, to reflect that the words are Old Norse, with different connotations to their modern cognates (for example, dwarfs from dvergar [sing. dvergr] and elves from álfar). Italics will otherwise be reserved for distinguishing foreign words within an English sentence, citing linguistic forms (i.e. Þórr the name but Þórr the god), distinguishing motifs in Section 6.1.5 and marking the titles of books, long poems and journals. Translations from foreign languages are my own unless otherwise marked.

Notes 1 This poem can be found in a collection of Old Norse poetry called the Poetic Edda, which will be introduced in Section 2.1.1. Gustav Neckel and Hans Kuhn’s edition (1983) of this collection is preferred in this book, retaining its emendations, spelling and punctuation, though poem titles are rendered in their most popular form. 2 The name was also partly given in honour of Thorvald Holmes Jr., a collections manager at Humboldt State University’s Vertebrate Museum. 3 Whilst mythology may have played a role in ritual performances in Iceland and Scandinavia, the assertion finds little support in Old Norse evidence, perhaps thanks to the nature of the sources’ survival. The medieval Christian interlocutors through whom we receive most of our written evidence for this religion may have looked too unfavourably on material linked with ritual to preserve it or simply had no need to do so. On Viking ritual and its relationship with myth, see further Hultgård 2008, pp. 215–217 and Clunies Ross 1994, pp. 12–14. 4 The æsir (sing. áss) are one of the groups of gods in Old Norse cosmology, while the jǫtnar (sing. jǫtunn) are the giants (though without necessarily being bigger in size than the æsir). The other primary group of gods is the vanir (sing. vanr).

Bibliography Primary sources Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss. In Þórhallur Vilmundarson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, eds (1991) Íslenzk fornrit, 13. Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag. Eiríks saga rauða. In Einar Ól. Sveinsson and Matthías Þórðarson, eds (1935) Íslenzk fornrit, 4. Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag. Hákonar saga góða. In Snorri Sturluson (1941) Íslenzk fornrit, 26. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag. Kirby, Jack and Joe Simon (1942) ‘The Villain from Valhalla’. Adventure Comics, 75. New York: D.C. Comics. Madsen, Peter, Henning Kure, Hans Rancke-Madsen and Søren Håkansson (1979) Valhalla 1- Ulven er løs. København: Carlsen Comics. Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn, eds (1983) Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern; Vol. 1: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Þrymskviða. In Neckel and Kuhn 1983.

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Secondary sources Ambrosiani, Björn and Helen Clarke (1998) ‘Birka and the Beginning of the Viking Age’. In Anke Wesse, ed., Studien zur Archäologie des Ostseeraumes: von der Eisenzeit zum Mittelalter: Festschrift für Michael Müller-Wille, pp. 33–38. Neumünster: Wachholtz. Arboe Sonne, Lasse Christian (2013) Thor-kult i vikingetiden: Historiske studier i vikingetidens religion. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum. Arnold, Martin (2011) Thor: Myth to Marvel. London: Continuum. Bertell, Maths (2003) Tor och den nordiska åskan: Föreställningar kring världsaxeln. Stockholm: Stockholms Universitet. Brink, Stefan (2008) ‘Who Were the Vikings?’ In Brink with Price 2008, pp. 4–7. Brink, Stefan with Neil Price, eds (2008) The Viking World. London: Routledge. Clunies Ross, Margaret (1994) Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Society; Volume One: The Myths. Odense: Odense University Press. de Vries, Jan (1970) Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte. 3rd edn. 2 vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Ellis Davidson, Hilda (1965) ‘Thor’s Hammer’, Folklore, 76: 1–15. ——— (1988) Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hultgård, Anders (2008) ‘The Religion of the Vikings’. In Brink with Price 2008, pp. 212–218. Jessen, Mads D. (2013) ‘Religion and the Extra-Somatics of Conceptual Thought’. In Armin W. Geertz, ed., Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture, pp. 319– 340. Durham: Acumen. Johnston, Richard (2013) ‘Shrew Has a Spine of Godly Strength’, Nature Lindberg, Anette (2009) ‘The Concept of Religion in Current Studies of Scandinavian Pre-Christian Religion’, Temenos, 45: 85–119. Lindow, John (2001) Handbook of Norse Mythology. Oxford: ABC-CLIO. Ljungberg, Helge (1947) Tor: Undersökningar i indoeuropeisk och nordisk religionshistoria, vol. 1: Den nordiska åskguden och besläktade indoeuropeiska gudar; Den nordiska åskguden i bild och myt. Uppsala: Lundequistska Bokh. McKinnell, John (2005) Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben (2000) ‘Social Institutions and Belief Systems of Medieval Iceland (c. 870–1400) and Their Relations to Literary Production’. In Margaret Clunies Ross, ed., Old Icelandic Literature and Society, pp. 8–29. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Motz, Lotte (1996) The King, The Champion and The Sorcerer: A Study in Germanic Myth. Wien: Fassbaender. Nordberg, Andreas (2012) ‘Continuity, Change and Regional Variation in Old Norse Religion’. In Catharina Raudvere and Jens Peter Schjødt, eds, More Than Mythology: Narratives, Ritual Practices and Regional Distribution in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religions, pp. 119–151. Lund: Nordic Academic Press. O’Donoghue, Heather (2007) From Asgard to Valhalla: The Remarkable History of the Norse Myths. London: I. B. Tauris. Raudvere, Catharina (2008) ‘Popular Religion in the Viking Age’. In Brink with Price 2008, pp. 235–243.

8

Introduction

Richards, Julian (2005) The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schjødt, Jens Peter (2008) ‘The Old Norse Gods’. In Brink with Price 2008, pp. 219–222. Simek, Rudolf (1993) Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Trans. Angela Hall. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Stanley, William, Lynn Robbins, Jean Malekani, Sylvestre Gambalemoke Mbalitini, Dudu Akaibe Migurimu, Jean Claude Mukinzi et al. (2013) ‘A New Hero Emerges: Another Exceptional Mammalian Spine and its Potential Adaptive Significance’, Biology Letters, 9.5 Turville-Petre, E.O.G. (1964) Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

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Sources

A vivid, hermeneutically problematic tradition has withstood the traumas of time to be pored over by the elbow-patched scholars of the twenty-first century and others. Old Norse mythology can be partly deciphered from the jewel-eyed snakes etched around the edges of a tenth-century monument to a deceased man, in verses describing supernal mafiosi murdering a rival paterfamilias and shaping his brain matter into clouds, in German ethnography stitched together from the reports of travellers and borrowings from ancient authorities – in other words, from bewitching, at times stirring, works of art that cannot be relied upon as faithful representations of the beliefs of Viking Age adherents of Þórr, Óðinn or any of the other Germanic gods. Viking Age religious cognition is not itself available for scrutiny. Mythology is composed of expressions of religious conceptualisation, which, because of the compromises inherent to transmuting thought into art, reflect rather than capture cognition (cf. Clunies Ross 1994, p. 18). This is only the first issue that must be addressed when attempting to comprehend and elucidate this body of sources. The span of time and geography circumscribed here is enormous and casually encompasses dramatic shifts in ideology, economy, technology, landscape, language and social organisation. Many of the depictions of Þórr central to modern scholarly investigations were not composed by followers of that or any other Old Norse god but by Christians, hundreds of years after the official conversion of their country to Christianity.1 The sort of comparison ordinarily made to illustrate the complexities this introduces asks readers if they would feel comfortable utilising a textbook written by a twenty-first-century Scientologist in Canberra as a primary source on the spread of Anglicanism in the eighteenth century. Furthermore, the number of mythological narratives and concepts – and variant forms of them – not recorded by these Christians or anyone else is uncountable, though some are hinted at in works that do remain, such as Snorri Sturluson’s Edda. Regarding the sources that are extant, matters of audience, politics, technique, transmission and tradition have affected how each was composed and handed down to us. The form of Old Norse mythology that endures is therefore diffuse, piecemeal and in places contradictory. As John McKinnell has written, ‘Any wise commentator on Norse mythology ought to begin by acknowledging

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frankly that we know rather little about it’ (1994, p. 13). Reconstructing the reality of it, and of its cultural background, is a challenge. Yet the reality of historical investigations is that any reconstructed image of the past is inevitably partial. The past cannot be recreated whole and with complete fidelity; rather the challenge is to assemble a model that satisfies particular research questions while acknowledging the problems with the materials and techniques used in its construction (see Schjødt 2009, pp. 18–19). To address this challenge, I will, in general, limit my scrutiny to early medieval and Viking Age witnesses to belief in the god, the provenance of which will be mainly the regions now known as Scandinavia (understood here as Norway, Sweden and Denmark) and Iceland, alongside contemporary historiography dealing with these areas. Comparative evidence, even from other northern religions like those of the Finns and Sámi, will be only selectively addressed, where it can elucidate Old Norse witnesses, even though these other northern cultures are becoming increasingly recognised for their value to a judicious understanding of the Old Norse religious ecology (e.g. Bertell 2003; Bertell 2013; Laidoner 2012; Price 2002; Tolley 2009). To further manage the scope of the project, the majority of my sources will be textual, with some support from material culture. This is also in line with my policy of examining only explicit statements of Þórr’s association with thunder, lightning and strength: as invaluable as archaeology can be, the symbolisms of objects are liable to require too much reference to literature to satisfy that condition (McKinnell 2005, pp. 48–49). The following sections will discuss the main qualities of the types of sources of Old Norse mythology most central to this book, paying special attention to their credibility as witnesses to and capacity to record pre-Christian religion. Because scholars have dealt with these problems before effectively and in depth, I will pay particular attention here to areas of importance for this study. Readers without a background in the field should begin with McKinnell’s Both One and Many, which provides a well-considered and succinct overview of the material, especially in its consideration of the individuality of the voices behind sources (1994, pp. 13–27). Margaret Clunies Ross’s introduction to Prolonged Echoes is less useful for those without previous experience in Old Norse literature but is recommended for the approaches it takes to old problems of interpretation, which still feel fresh today, over twenty years after publication (1994, pp. 20–33).

2.1 Categories of sources 2.1.1

Eddic and skaldic poetry

Old Norse poetry is normally considered divisible into two separate taxonomies: eddic and skaldic. The distinction is somewhat artificial (though cf. Clunies Ross 2005, pp. 10–11), but, broadly speaking, eddic poems are anonymous, deal with heroic or mythological subject matter, and are simpler

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in terms of metre and style.2 Many of the best-known eddic poems can be found in an Icelandic manuscript called the Codex Regius (a.k.a. GKS 2365 4to), written c. 1270, and are customarily divided into ‘mythology’ and ‘legend’, though the latter is discounted from my investigations as, while many of Old Norse gods do surface in these accounts of heroes and heroines, Þórr never does. A wealth of eddic poetry, both major and minor, is recorded elsewhere.3 In particular, many stanzas are only extant because they have been quoted in the Edda of the Icelandic politician, poet and antiquarian Snorri Sturluson (see Section 2.1.2) and in a fantastical genre of Icelandic prose called fornaldarsǫgur. The material from the Codex Regius and a changing assemblage of other eddic poems (customarily including Baldrs draumar, Rígsþula, Hyndluljóð and Grottasǫngr) are frequently collected and published as the Poetic Edda (e.g. Neckel and Kuhn 1983). Much of skaldic poetry, on the other hand, can be assigned to the imagination of a known author and engages its audience with a more highly wrought metre and a syntax construction that can deviate radically from prose word order.4 Subject matters can encompass topics like the majesty of elite members of society, Christian devotion, and – very rarely – love or slander (Clunies Ross 2005, pp. 41–43); typically mythological content is limited to kenningar, but several important and early skaldic poems do take confrontations between Þórr and other supernatural beings as their subject matter, and this group of texts will be important to this study as probable documents of pre-Christian religion. Kenningar are complex circumlocutions, usually compound words or noun phrases like fárskerðir ‘harm-diminisher [i.e. the Christian God]’ (Leiðarvísan, st. 11:1) and faðir Magna ‘father of Magni [i.e. Þórr]’ (Þórsdrápa, st. 22), which draw from a pool of standardised imagery (see Turville-Petre 1976, pp. xlv–lix, especially pp. xlvii–liii on the mythological content of kenningar). They can be found in eddic poetry (the mythological lay Hymiskviða is rife with them, for instance) but are commonest and most fully developed in skaldic works. In both eddic and skaldic forms of poetry, expression is terse and often allusive, perhaps as a consequence of abbreviating tales to fit into poems or even into single stanzas. The narrative recounted over the entirety of one eddic poem like Þrymskviða is more readily comprehended than the stitched-together vignettes making up another like Vǫluspá, for example, but in general Old Norse poetry is easily followed only by those with pre-existing knowledge of its adventures and characters. Modern scholars are forced to rely on deduction from parallel sources, analogous material from elsewhere within the Germanic-speaking world (or even farther afield), and speculation. Snorri’s creation of a guidebook (discussed below) proposes that these breaches in knowledge were already opening early in the medieval period. Even with such aids, gaps and confusions remain in modern understandings of the poetry that can make discerning genuine variety in conceptions of Þórr difficult.

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Old Norse literature originates in an oral culture. Poems could have been transmitted in this way for hundreds of years before they were written down and could have been changed by misremembering or intentional re-composition.5 Þrymskviða might have been fashioned at any point – or many points – between the ninth and thirteenth centuries (see Fidjestøl 1999; McKinnell 2000) – yet Iceland (the country of origin for most manuscripts containing this poetry) officially converted to Christianity in approximately AD 1000. Because Christianisation occurred during a period in which poetry was still being composed and transmitted orally, Christian tenets probably influenced the poetry used here as the basis of a study of pre-Christian mythology. The Poetic Edda may preserve stories, views and themes in forms that are altered to the point that they misrepresent pre-Christian conventions or that were simply composed by Christians – and, in truth, Old Norse religion was in contact with Christianity and other traditions long before history’s official conversion moments (see, for example, McKinnell 1994, pp. 120–127; McKinnell 2008; Schjødt 2012, pp. 265–267). The elaborate rules governing skaldic poetry’s structure could have made that form more resistant to modification. Snorri himself promotes this perspective, proclaiming in the prologue to Óláfs sǫgu ins helga inni sérstǫku that the poetry will, ef rétt er kveðit ‘if it is recited correctly’, remain unchanged in the course of communication (though, of course, as a compiler of histories who uses skaldic poetry as a primary source, Snorri has a vested interest in the form’s reputation). With the attributions of many stanzas to named poets, and thereby to particular time periods, skaldic poetry is therefore thought to be the more reliable type of Old Norse poetry as a record of Viking Age artistry and religion. While attempts are occasionally made to date eddic poems (and some skaldic poems) using less reliable criteria like subject matter, style or linguistic and metrical criteria, these are vulnerable to, for example, conscious archaism by younger authors (see further Fidjestøl 1999). Certain skaldic ascriptions have nonetheless been shown as spurious (and perhaps intentionally falsified) using these tools (Turville-Petre 1976, pp. lxvii–lxviii). Without skaldic poetry’s rigidity of form, eddic poems are more likely to have been vulnerable to mutation and alteration and could have existed in many different variants concurrently. The design of Vǫluspá in the Codex Regius diverges in very meaningful ways from that of Hauksbók (a fourteenth-century Icelandic manuscript) and from quotations and prose re-renderings of the poem in Snorri’s Edda (see Dronke 2011, pp. 61–92). Whilst some furcation may have occurred in the course of manuscript transmission, rather than before it was written down, this situation demonstrates the challenge for a scholar searching for an orthodox rendition of Old Norse thought. As the Poetic Edda stands today, few texts occur in more than one early medieval version, but the potential for change should guard against taking the poems that survive as definitive forms of mythology as well as against looking for some hypothetical ur-text. The premise of an orally transmitted

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poem having a specific point of conception may be misleading, and no one configuration of a poem is inherently more meaningful and valuable than any other, unless an inquiry is aiming to illuminate that particular configuration or to clarify another topic through reference to it. If, in these sources, a record of change in pre-Christian myth is being sought, then eddic poetry is an untrustworthy guide and skaldic poetry difficult to decode and stingy in the quantity of its mythological material. Yet juxtaposing the two, along with other types of sources, can reveal genuinely older motifs and narratives, like the tale of Þórr’s fishing trip (see Section 6.5) or the æsir’s dealings with a jǫtunn named Þjazi (see Simek 1993, s.v. ‘Þjazi’), and illustrates that not all the mythological artistry documented in medieval manuscripts originates in the minds of Christians. 2.1.2 Eddic prose The Edda of Snorri Sturluson is a prose collection of tales from Old Norse myth and legend dated to c. 1221–25 and split into four sections: a prologue, Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál and Háttatal.6 Of particular interest here are Gylfaginning, which focuses on the mythology related in eddic poetry, and Skáldskaparmál, a treatise on poetic diction that is largely concerned with skaldic poetry, both of which preserve detailed narratives about Þórr. Snorri frequently quotes poetry in support of prose renderings of these stories, and in many cases this is the only location in which these verses can today be found. In fact, a lot of the material, prose and poetry, cannot be found elsewhere, which makes this Edda a critical source for modern scholars. Without Snorri’s anthology, the allusions of poems like Vǫluspá or Hárbarðsljóð (in which Þórr and a ferryman fractiously compare past deeds) and numerous kenningar would be unintelligible. Þórr’s fight with a jǫtunn named Hrungnir is evidently a key mythological incident, for example, being referenced throughout eddic poetry, often in moments of considerable tension (e.g. Grottasǫngr, st. 9:1; Hárbarðsljóð, stt. 14:4, 15:2; Hymiskviða, st. 16:2; Lokasenna, stt. 61:5, 63:4; Sigrdrífumál, st. 15:6), but the two extant medieval versions of the story are only found in manuscripts of Snorri’s Edda (Skáldsk., ch. 17). However, for all that it is fundamental to modern scholarship, the Edda is a problematic source. Snorri was a Christian, not someone for whom the stories were part of a living religion, and his Edda was produced more than two hundred years after Iceland’s official conversion, leaving ample time for details to alter or be forgotten. The two iterations of the myth of Þórr’s fight with Hrungnir – one in prose and the other a skaldic poem offered in support – differ in several ways, the most marked of which is an extended prologue to the combat in the prose. There, Snorri incorporates elements like a horse-race, a formal challenge and the construction of another jǫtunn from clay and a horse’s heart, who wets himself before the duel. These may have been invented by Snorri or come from another source known to him – Snorri

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hints at and clearly knew many texts and stories that have not survived.7 Either way, conflicting accounts remain, and the reliability of Snorri and his unknown sources is difficult to assess (see further Lindow 1996). Elements of the Edda certainly have been manipulated to fit with Snorri’s aims for the text.8 The work conceives a coherent and organised divine pantheon and cosmological history, belying the inconsistencies found elsewhere (Clunies Ross 1994, pp. 30–33). Arguably similar endeavours are made by the poets of Vǫluspá, which tracks a path from creation to Ragnarǫk (the eschatological events of Old Norse mythology), and Vafþrúðnismál, an encyclopaedic overview of Old Norse cosmology and cosmogony in the form of a wisdom competition. Some in the Viking Age, at least, evidently had an idea of how various myths could be pieced together and consciously preserved this viewpoint, but there is no indication of a mythography as monolithic as Snorri depicts it (though containing its own inconsistences [Gylf., p. xv]); rather the poetic cosmologies of Vǫluspá and Vafþrúðnismál contain numerous contradictions (McKinnell 1994, pp. 87–128; Taggart 2013, especially pp. 23–25, 64n). At points, Snorri’s own quotes undermine him, and at others he wrestles with the divergent accounts handed down to him to join them together. For instance, one of the major events of the mythic history laid out in Gylfaginning occurs in Chapter 48 when Þórr goes fishing, which in some poems ends with the death of the Miðgarðsormr (a huge sea serpent who acts as Þórr’s nemesis) and in others seems not to (cf., for example, Húsdrápa, st. 6, with Þórr’s fishing, st. 6). Snorri notes both possible endings but opts to allow the snake to live to struggle against Þórr again later, as it fits better with the narrative trajectory of his text, which marches the æsir inexorably toward Ragnarǫk (Meulengracht Sørensen 1986, pp. 270–275; cf. Snorri Sturluson 2012, ch. 29, based on the Uppsala manuscript of the Edda, which imparts a slightly different ending). Even so, the hesitations over the fishing trip’s ending point to a conscientiousness on Snorri’s part. His stated intent, and the task clearly undertaken in Skáldskaparmál in particular, is to educate his audience so that they can understand the allusions of past poets (Skáldsk., ch. 1), which entails a scrupulous approach to reproducing sources if Snorri is not to undermine the purpose of his enterprise. Misunderstandings are to be expected, however, given the growing obsolescence of Old Norse religion in Snorri’s time, and so too might modifications and omissions be, where myths clash with Snorri’s Christianity.9 This can be problematic, given the amount of faith that must be placed in the Edda to make any sense of the scraps of mythology found in other sources. Scholars can be easily misled by their unavoidable reliance on Snorri, if their (understandable and widely held) aim is to explore pre-Christian traditions, rather than appreciating it primarily as a guide to the mind of Snorri Sturluson, thirteenth-century Icelander, and, less reliably, to the society and literary culture of which he was a part.

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2.1.3 Iconography and runic inscriptions In 1955, an amulet of sheet copper measuring 5.2 x 4.9 cm and with 143 letters adorning its front and back was discovered in the village of Södra Kvinneby in Sweden (Öl SAS1989;43). The letters used are runes, graphemes from one of the runic alphabets utilised by various Germanic-speaking peoples before the adoption of the Latin alphabet (and in some areas alongside it for many years). Though well preserved, their meaning is unclear. Conflicting interpretations have been offered over the years. Compare, for example, Hǣr rīsti ek þǣR berg, Bōfi, meR . . . þǣR eR vīss. En brā (h)aldi illu frān Bōfa. Þōrr gǣti hans meR þēm hamri. . . . Flȳ frān illvǣtt! Fǣr ækki af Bōfa. Guð eRu undiR hānum auk yfiR hānum. Here may I carve (or I carved) protection for you, Bōfi, with . . . is sure for you (=you can depend on). And may the lightning keep evil from Bōfi. May Thor protect him with that hammer. . . . Flee from the evil being! It (?) will get nothing from Bōfi. Gods are below him and above him.10 and H(ǣ)R’k i kūri (ī)ms undiR guþi (æ)RR berk’ Būfi mǣR fūlt ī hūþ es þǣR vīs in br(ā) alt illu frān Būfa Þōrr gǣti hans mēR þǣm hamri (e)s Ām hyRR Haf ekka, Ām Flȳ frān, illvētt FæRR ækki af Būfa guþ eRu undiR hānum auk yfiR hānum. Herein I cower, under the god of soot. I, Būfi, carry a festering sore in my skin. You know where the glistening one is – keep evil from Būfi! May Thor guard him with the hammer with which he strikes Āmr. May you have the affliction, Āmr! Be gone, evil being! The affliction leaves Būfi, there are gods below him and above him.11 Readings differ as often as they overlap and in ways that are crucial for understanding the protagonists of the inscription.12 Þórr features as a hammer-wielding guardian in both, for example, but his use of lightning is only

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cited in the former; the latter, instead, envisages Þórr taking on a role in sickness prevention. Not all runic inscriptions are as equivocal as the Kvinneby amulet’s, but neither are most as generous in length or easily read (cf. Vikstrand 2008, pp. 1012–1013). Inscriptions referring to mythological incidents not told more fully elsewhere are typically incomprehensible to modern audiences. The 3.85 m-tall Rök rune-stone (Ög 136) from Östergötland in Sweden, for example, is carved on five sides with snatches of stories, but, of all the luminaries enumerated there, only Þjóðríkr (Theodoric the Great) and Þórr are definitely otherwise known (see Harris 2006, pp. 45–49; cf. Holmberg 2015 for a recent and novel approach). Even then the allusions are obscure and most of the material on the stone has become impenetrable. Often runes, like those on the Rök rune-stone or Kvinneby amulet’s inscription, pose as many questions as they answer and can only be deciphered through reference to literary sources, if they can be at all. Observations on picture stones and other examples of Viking Age and medieval Scandinavian iconography are potentially similarly precarious. Although depictions of myths and legends are widely found and frequently vividly realised, many cannot be securely allied to a known story or even supernatural figure, without which their imagery and meaning is vague. As a result, interpretations can feel a little forced – an image on Gotland’s Ardre VIII stone (SHM 11118:VIII), for example, has been connected with Þórr’s fishing trip, yet lacks many of the elements customary to that story, including those found in iconography elsewhere, such as Miðgarðsormr, a hammer and a foot coming through the bottom of the boat (cf. Meulengracht Sørensen 1986, pp. 262, 269). On the other hand, the figure does bear a striking similarity with another a few inches below it on the stone, in which someone seems to be spearing fish. Iconography can be interpreted in many ways, and scholars are often, as Neil Price has argued very well, too confident in their attributions to one deity or another, without acknowledging the breadth of mythology, legend and other kinds of story that must have been in circulation in the cultural ecosystem (2006). For some studies, however, careful explorations of identity are unavoidable – a study of Þórr cannot use this type of source without first establishing which pictures are relevant, which itself can only be accomplished through comparison with the motifs of literary texts. In addition, the stones bearing iconography and runes have been altered by the passage of time; many of those that have not had their imagery worn by the elements to the point that it is illegible have lost a layer of colourful paints or have been recently repainted in potentially misleading ways (McKinnell 1994, p. 18). Another problem is separating imagery and inscriptions by worshippers of Old Norse deities from later adoption and reinterpretation (on Christian rune-monuments, see Sawyer 2000, pp. 124–125). McKinnell points out imagery of Þórr’s fishing trip, for instance, that has been manipulated to demonstrate the superiority of the new faith over the old (1994, p. 18).

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Such a range of problems face modern commentators on Viking Age mythology that they could justifiably wonder what utility runes and iconography have at all. Yet these sources have much to contribute. For this study, their main benefit is in substantiating mythological prose and poetry, and in acknowledging that certain motifs had standing outside of Iceland, the communities of the thirteenth century and the mind of Snorri. Inscriptions and iconography can be difficult to date (Williams 2008, p. 285, and references there), but they are resistant to change in a way that oral texts are not. Material shared between eddic prose and a Gotlandic picture stone, therefore, has demonstrably held its shape across the expanse of time and geography that lies between the making of a carving on one island in the Baltic Sea and ink soaking into a manuscript hundreds of years later on another in the middle of the Atlantic. Naturally, a marker of stability like this is thought-provoking and helpful to a study of change and variety. Elements of belief not apparent, or at least not emphasised, in prose or poetry can be accessed in these sources, from the lines engraved onto stones or wood but also through analysis of an object’s relationship with its artistic context and a phenomenological understanding of its locality. The interactions of a cultic place with its surrounding landscape might be detected in the spatial organisation of monuments around it (Tilley 1994), and long-term linguistic changes (for example, the evolution in the god’s name from Þonar to Þórr) can be evidenced by comparing runic evidence (cf. García Losquiño 2015). Runic inscriptions and iconography can conceivably offer a lot to an investigation of change in Old Norse religion. Their mythological content, however, can only be obtained through comparison with literature. 2.1.4 Contemporary historiography and ethnography McKinnell encapsulates the biggest issue with medieval and pre-medieval Christian historical treatises as well as anyone: ‘[t]hese have the obvious disadvantage of being the work of outsiders who had no sympathy with heathenism and were likely to misunderstand it’ (1994, p. 18). While a valuable resource for investigators of Old Norse mythology and religion, these observers often re-cast Old Norse deities and stories about them in a more negative light, euhemerising them as a group of troublesome charlatans who misrepresented themselves as divinities (see further Simek 1993, s.v. ‘Euhemerism’), and omitted details that were deemed too sacrilegious to record, as useful as they would be to modern scholars (for example, Adam of Bremen 1917, IV, ch. 27). Snorri should properly be placed among this number as well for the euhemerising framework he places around the tales of his Edda. While this qualifies that material, it also allows Snorri to retain features of Old Norse mythology in a Christian environment (see further Clunies Ross 2005, pp. 179–184; Snorri conducts a similar exercise in Ynglinga saga, ch. 1–10, the start of his history of Norway’s kings). Less immediately overt, but as important for our consideration of their representations of Þórr, is

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the mark left on these texts by an inheritance of classical literature. Rome still evidently loomed over the literature of the period, and this is reflected in many of these texts’ explanations of the northern deities as the pantheon of Mercury, Mars and Juno by another name, a practice entitled interpretatio Romana (see Simek 1993, s.vv. ‘Interpretatio romana’, ‘Interpretatio christiana’, ‘Interpretatio germanica’; McKinnell 1994, p. 19). Þórr is most identified with Hercules and Jove (see de Vries 1970, § 413–415; Jove is often called Jupiter), and even where such conflations are not explicit, they could have influenced the conceptions of Þórr formed by his worshippers and external observers. Although external viewpoints can be found in Old English and Old High German material, the two sources of most consequence to this book are Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum ‘Deeds of the Bishops of the Hamburg Church’ (labelled Hamburgische Kirchengeschichte in the edition I use), especially the chapters portraying a temple in Gamla Uppsala, and Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum ‘Deeds of the Danes’, a retelling of Danish history until the twelfth century that moulds many old myths into new shapes. The limitations discussed above will be become apparent when these texts are encountered in Chapter 5, alongside mannerisms distinctive to these sources that make them more intractable still. Nonetheless, both relate unique information on customs, places and stories; their study must be careful but can ultimately prove worthwhile. 2.1.5 Conclusions In view of such a litany of concerns, one begins to empathise with the impulse att källkritisera till förlamning ‘to source criticise to paralysis’ (as Arboe Sonne’s mode of investigation is portrayed in a review by Bertell [2015, p. 49]). Research into even a major god like Þórr must work through half worn-away carvings, abstruse snatches of poetry and information buried among glorifications of the Christian church. Of all these issues, Christianity’s influence is particularly striking. Many of these sources are forged out of an interfaith conversation, by Christians negotiating with a pagan heritage (or indeed foreign ethnographers dealing with alien beliefs) through the prisms of Biblical and classical religious traditions. And the possibility remains of elements that appear patently Christian, such as a diluvian myth found most clearly in Snorri and reminiscent of Genesis 6–9, having arisen separately or exemplifying the syncretism of the pre-Christian religion (cf. Taggart 2013, pp. 23–27). The weight of sources only found in Snorri’s work and, perhaps, on the Rök rune-stone reminds scholars that the extant tales of gods may be only a sliver of those composed and told in the long nights of an Icelandic winter and indicative in many cases only for the very last stage of pre-Christian religion (Turville-Petre 1964, p. 90). Even for that contracted period, these sources may be a misrepresentative or misleading sample, if the individuality

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apparent in Snorri’s Edda is echoed in other sources (on the scope for individuality in Old Norse-Icelandic composition, see McKinnell 1994). When examining these sources for change, modern commentators must judge if information missing from one version of a narrative has been intentionally omitted (to focus instead, for instance, on imagery more suited to a particular effect), was unknown to the composer or was lost in the course of its transmission. Yet, as challenging as locating and reconstructing pre-Christian narratives or motifs is, whether concerning Þórr or any other figure, it is not an utterly desperate objective. While the incredulity of an Arboe Sonne can be a healthy reminder of the above sources’ assorted complications, the task of scholars is made easier by the range and properties of the sources that are available. A verbose but late composition like Snorri’s Edda can be fruitfully compared with something that is earlier but harder to decipher, such as a picture stone, to gauge the age range and function of motifs and to begin teasing out change and variety. Not every possible reading of a source might be eliminated with such a methodology, revealing indisputable kernels of fact about Viking Age worship, but from the provisional truths that are produced can be constructed pragmatic and edifying models of Old Norse mythology and religion.

2.2 2.2.1

Variety and change Why is it important?

Pre-Christian mythological narratives from Scandinavia and Iceland were first constructed in a period preceding manuscript production in Scandinavia. Besides the limited information that could be conveyed in a runic inscription or the contours of iconography, therefore, most narratives were perpetuated within an oral tradition that relied upon the human memory. A consensus of scholarship now accepts that, due to the resulting mutability of information within this culture, geographical and chronological diversity was a feature of Old Norse religious practice and mythology (e.g. Brink 2007; Gunnell 2015; McKinnell 1994, especially pp. 20–21; Nordberg 2012; Schjødt 2009; Schjødt 2012; Svanberg 2003). This diversity can easily be perceived within the myths and legends that remain. The choice of endings to Þórr’s fishing expedition is probably the most renowned example, but, for example, McKinnell is also able to discern several contrasting strands to Loki’s characterisation across the breadth of the mythological corpus (1994, pp. 29–55), and it can be seen even in the finer details, like the taxonomies assigned to a mythic being called Reginn. Sometimes a dvergr (Vǫluspá, st. 12:7), Reginn is, at other times, a man but a dvergr of vǫxt ‘dvergr in stature’ (Reginsmál, prose introduction; cf. Bertelsen 1905–1911, vol. 1, p. 163), and at others again a jǫtunn (Fáfnismál, st. 38:2).13 Place names are also a useful source for tracking the vicissitudes of a

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deity’s popularity. Ullr’s name, for example, occurs in a high enough density of toponyms in areas of Scandinavia that it is possible to infer that the god once had a much healthier cult following than is indicated by the few scanty references that survive in the eddur (i.e. Poetic Edda and Snorri’s Edda) or skaldic texts (Brink 2007, pp. 116–118).14 An extensive narrative tradition could once have matched this popularity. Mapping toponymic evidence and archaeological finds across Scandinavia imputes varying degrees of importance to Þórr (see Section 3.4; Brink 2007, pp. 113–116; Nordeide 2006). For scholars of Old Norse religion, acknowledging the existence of this diversity is imperative. Good analysis can be undermined by failing to consider the complexities arising from this circumstance, which our sources, as the products of singular moments in history, usually abridge. These narratives and texts must have evolved through many different iterations. Characters may have been changed, a motif as major as Þórr’s lightning being added or removed from the god’s characterisation. Stories were sometimes blended with each other, in just the way that myths, sagas and folk tales have been intermingled in Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, the adventures of a Þórr-like hero named Þorsteinn bæjarmagn (see further Section 6.3). The provenance of a change is often unrecoverable, beyond the termini provided by broadly datable material like skaldic poetry or archaeological finds. An apparent change in one text, such as the elements of Þórr’s fight with Hrungnir that are only found in Snorri’s Edda, could often have originated in a lost source. Some changes may come and go without ever being recorded. An awareness of such possibilities is vital to fully understanding not only mythological concepts, images, objects and texts but also their relationship with their social and literary context; often it is through specifically examining variation or change, rather than an instance of a motif in isolation, that the world behind these sources is revealed (for a good example of this, see McKinnell’s analysis of variation in mythic eschatological ideologies: 1994, pp. 87–128). Old Norse mythology is spoken of as part or evidence of a belief system (cf. McKinnell 2005, pp. 1–3), but religion can be disconnected, inconsistent and, in the end, unsystematic. Loose ends are unavoidable if Old Norse mythology and legend are approached openly. Inconsistencies, problematic motifs and untraceable cameos disfigure any attempt to create a historical narrative of a belief system of the Germanic-speaking peoples and of Þórr’s place in such a narrative. Diversity was not always given the attention that it warrants as a preliminary to research perhaps precisely because its incongruities and complications are anathema to the romantic vision of a coherent, unified cultural tradition and people that can be at the heart of historians’ synopses of the Viking Age.15 Yet, rather than looking on the denting of this conceit as disappointing, this development in scholarly thinking should be viewed as evidence, as McKinnell puts it, of ‘vitality of thought’ in Viking Age culture (1994, p. 26). Such vitality is itself exciting and worthy of study.

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2.2.2 Why did it happen? Religious diversity is worthy of study and will be a part of the investigations of this book. More central, however, will be change. I investigated this phenomenon directly in the PhD thesis on which this book is partly based, studying the processes involved in the transmission of religious concepts through a framework developed from the social sciences and particularly the Cognitive Science of Religion (Taggart 2015). Here I am interested in change more generally in Þórr’s mythology, and especially in its basis in factors like social and ideological developments, the attractiveness of ideas, creativity, the physical environment and memory. The last of these is central: the operations of memory offer a lot of room for ideas to mutate or be lost, especially given the methods that were used in the composition and memorisation of Old Norse literature (or, at least, as much as we have reconstructed of those methods so far). According to Pascal Boyer, human minds do not simply copy the concepts that are communicated to them: at every moment, our minds are reconstructing – and thereby contorting and elaborating on – the information perceived in our environments, including that conveyed by other people. Of all the concepts, religious and otherwise, created in this process, very few remain in the memory, are communicated to others, and can be recalled by them so that they retain a semblance of the original concepts. The rest are not entertained for more than an instant, are not easily formulated or communicated, or are not easily remembered by others (Boyer 2002, pp. 37–38. See also Heslop 2014, p. 42; Boyer and Bergstrom 2008, p. 114; and especially Schacter 1999). Our memories can be reliable receptacles for cultural products like the mythology of Þórr; they can also be imperfect, forgetting, distorting details and creating false recollections (Schacter 1999). Without the external reservoir of mind provided by writing, such limitations are a problem for worshippers hoping to sustain orthodoxy in arenas like religion or law. As evinced by texts that preserve traditional knowledge like Vafþrúðnismál and Alvíssmál, Old Norse society was conscious enough of this issue that poets sometimes stored cosmological information like the source of dew (Vafþrúðnismál, st. 14:4–6) or poetic synonyms for vindr ‘wind’ (Alvíssmál, stt. 19–20) within sophisticated framing narratives. Indeed, the way in which conflict is staged in poems like these on the basis of memory and knowledge is a manifest indication of the value placed on these qualities as a form of wisdom in this literary culture. Similarly, in the course of a fresh consideration of the historicity of saga narratives, Ralph O’Connor is able to argue persuasively for the importance of truth claims to Icelandic prose, regardless of texts’ actual fictitiousness (in a modern understanding of the word) and their authors’ awareness of the fallibility of memory (2005; on a comparable awareness among skalds, see Heslop 2014, pp. 30ff.). Later Norse societies, at least, seem to have correspondingly valued the elderly for the veracity and depth of their memories; at an earlier point, this could have

22

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been a feature in the transmission of sacral information (Brink 2014; cf. Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir 2014, pp. 233–235). Accuracy in information transmission and retention was obviously a concern. Other oral cultures have dealt with this in various ways. For example, in Vedic oral tradition, and perhaps early Buddhist tradition too, children were taught sacred texts by rote for years before they were instructed in the meaning of the words (Anālayo 2009). This may have been paralleled in early Norse cultures by, for instance, the þulur (mnemonic lists used to communicate poetic synonyms and names) and legal chants that can be espied in high medieval Scandinavia (the transmission of law before writing in Scandinavia is very uncertain. See Brink 2005, pp. 86–88, 96–98; Brink 2014; Simek 1993, s.v. ‘Þulur’).16 All share a formulaic patterning that is evidently meant to assist in preserving the information. However, the kind of semantically vacant, mentally exhausting transmission employed for the Vedas is impractical outside of specialist realms and appears at odds with the value much of this mythological writing had as entertainment. Methods of this ilk may, though, have played a role in the memorisation of skaldic poetry, which, after all, is governed by quite rigid lexico-grammatical rules and communicated among a trained elite (cf. Heslop 2014, pp. 17–18; Bergsveinn Birgisson 2008, pp. 165–166). Old Norse texts would not have been so free of meaning to those learning them, however, as the Vedic texts were to neophyte Brahmins. In other societies, famously, texts are improvised in their retelling from an inventory of formulaic expressions, according to the metrical demands of a verse, thereby retaining material in a seemingly counterintuitively transformative fashion.17 With this system, known as oral-formulaic composition, motifs can be lost in each recreation of the text, but oral societies (as with individuals and groups in literate cultures, presumably) disagree over the latitude allowed before a work stops being a version of a text and starts being a new text altogether (Harris 2008, p. 195). The occasional appearance of formulae allows that oral-formulaic composition could have been a feature of the Old Norse cultural landscape, but it is generally, if cautiously, agreed that Old Norse poetry was more memorised than improvised (Harris 2005, p. 117). The studied entanglement of skaldic poetry’s construction, in particular, makes it unlikely that they were modified spontaneously during performance. Early Scandinavians may have made use of non-literary external mnemonic aids. A good argument has been made, for example, that scraps of runic inscription, like those of the Rök rune-stone, acted as a spur to memory, conceivably even of whole tales (Widmark 1997. Cf. Brink 2005, pp. 83–88). In a similar way, the use of ekphrasis in Haustlǫng, Húsdrápa and Þórsdrápa, three skaldic works about Þórr, may point to iconography as a store for cultural memories too (though, on these occasions, texts were composed anew in connection with the imagery, rather than established works being recalled).18

Sources

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It is difficult to say much about the actual circumstances of the transmission of Old Norse mythology, especially in its eddic mode, given how little is truly known about the mechanics of its composition and performance. Stories may have altered substantially as older material was iterated on for new compositions, and both eddic and skaldic poetry were strongly reliant on individual memory for their transmission from person to person, with perhaps minor improvisation allowed in recitals of the former. Textual machinery like alliteration and metre certainly contributed to immutability in skaldic poetry, and probably eddic to a lesser extent. Yet the fallibility of these aids and the unreliability of individual memory accommodates textual instability, even to the point of changes occurring in the makeup of major characters like Loki, Reginn and Sigurðr fáfnisbani – not to mention Þórr.

Notes 1 Whilst Iceland and the Scandinavian area officially converted to Christianity at various points from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, cultural change was a much slower process. A useful conspectus can be found in Brink 2008a; for a medieval account of the conversion of Iceland, see Íslendingabók, ch. 7. 2 For a meticulous guide to the common features of and distinctions between these kinds of poetry, see Clunies Ross 2005, pp. 21–28 and the further references at p. 6 (5n). On the historical partitioning of Old Norse poetry, see Clunies Ross 2005, p. 7. 3 On the construction of the Poetic Edda and other significant manuscripts containing eddic poetry, like AM 748 4to and Codex Wormianus, in which can be found Baldrs draumar and Rígsþula, respectively, see Harris 2005, pp. 68–69. 4 For a more detailed introduction to skaldic poetry, see Clunies Ross 2005, pp. 13–18, or the accessible and still-relevant Turville-Petre 1976. A detailed treatment of skaldic metrics can be found in Ellen Gade 1995. 5 The question of whether some or all eddic poetry was originally composed orally or in writing has produced a great deal of debate. Whilst the matter is not fully settled, it is at least possible to say that its structures and styles reflect an oral literary mindset and that many of the poems have their roots in pre-Christian stories. See further Harris 2005, pp. 111–126. 6 The identification of the Edda’s creator has been questioned in the past. For a full description of the issues and a brief biography of Snorri, see Gylf., pp. xii–xvi. As his identity does not play a key part in this book and given the strength of arguments for Snorri’s authorship, the label Snorri will be used here. 7 Such hints can be found in Gylf., ch. 23 (which contains two stanzas from a presumably longer poem concerning the marriage between Njǫrðr, a being from the land of the vanir according to Snorri, and Skaði, apparently one of the jǫtnar), in the two lines of a poem of unknown length labelled Heimdalargaldr (Gylf., ch. 27) and in a stanza from another otherwise unknown poem about Þórr’s encounter with a jǫtunn named Geirrøðr (Skáldsk., v72), for example. 8 As evidenced by Snorri’s presentation of ljósálfar ‘light-álfar’, døkkálfar ‘darkálfar’ and svartálfar ‘black-álfar’ in Skáldsk., ch. 35, which has been shown to be rooted in Christian theology (Hall 2007, pp. 24–25). On Snorri’s sources more generally (though with a focus on Skáldskaparmál and the Latin background to his work), see Faulkes 1993. 9 McKinnell (2005, pp. 44–45) summarises neatly the impact of Snorri’s Christianity on this text. Certain mythological episodes have been proposed as fabrications

24

10 11 12

13 14 15

16 17

18

Sources arising where Snorri does not have access to the myth behind a kenning and is forced to interpret it himself (see e.g. Frank 1981). Transcription and translation from Westlund 1989, pp. 43, 52. The translation given there has been edited for formatting. Transcription and translation from Louis-Jensen 2005, pp. 194–195. Many scholars have analysed these amulets but no real consensus has been reached. Ivar Lindquist, for example, returned to the subject repeatedly without achieving a satisfactory resolution. For detailed breakdowns of previous research and further references, see Arboe Sonne 2013, pp. 35–43, Bertell 2003, pp. 197–201 and McKinnell and Simek 2004, pp. 65–66. Snorri and the author of Vǫlsunga saga avoid characterising Reginn with reference to one group or another, which may implicitly be an acknowledgement of the confusion over his racial identity (Skáldsk., ch. 39–40; Finch 1965, ch. 13). The argument that Ullr was once more prominent comes from the probable appearance of his name on the third-century Thorsberg chape (DR 8; KJ 21), one of the oldest known objects inscribed with runes (Williams 2000, pp. 156–158). For a deconstruction of nationalistic interests behind modern views of the Viking Age, see Svanberg 2003, though Svanberg’s overall conclusions can be dubious and seem at least partly derived from his commitment to polemic. His text is best consulted with the critique provided by Nordberg 2012, pp. 132–136 in mind. A primer in the relevance of the oral heritage to high and late medieval legal culture can be found in Brink 2008b. See also Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir 2014, pp. 227–247, especially pp. 231–232. For a history of this theory up to 1985 (including in relation to Old Norse tradition), see Harris 2005, pp. 109ff. Opinions do not seem to have changed much by the time Clunies Ross attempted another overview thirty years later (2005, p. 103). On the development of ekphrasis as a literary genre, see Fuglesang 2007. Further potential mnemonic aids are itemised in Brink 2005, pp. 93–98.

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Harris, Joseph (2005) ‘Eddic Poetry’. In Carol Clover and John Lindow, eds, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide, pp. 68–156. 2nd edn. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ——— (2006) ‘Myth and Meaning in the Rök Inscription’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 2: 45–109. ——— (2008) ‘Eddic Poetry as Oral Poetry: The Evidence of Parallel Passages in the Helgi Poems for Questions of Composition and Performance’. In Susan E. Deskis and Thomas D. Hill, eds, ‘Speak Useful Words or Say Nothing’: Old Norse Studies, pp. 189–225. New York: Cornell University Library. Hermann, Pernille, Stephen A. Mitchell and Agnes S. Arnórsdóttir, eds (2014) Minni and Muninn: Memory in Medieval Nordic Culture. Turnhout: Brepols. Heslop, Kate (2014) ‘Minni and the Rhetoric of Memory in Eddic, Skaldic and Runic Texts’. In Hermann, Mitchell and Arnórsdóttir 2014, pp. 14–50. Holmberg, Per (2015) ‘Svaren på Rökstenens gåtor: En socialsemiotisk analys av meningsskapande och rumslighet’, Futhark, 6: 65–106. Laidoner, Triin (2012) ‘The Flying Noaidi of the North: Sami Tradition Reflected in the Figure Loki Laufeyjarson in Old Norse Mythology’, Scripta Islandica, 63: 59–91. Lindow, John (1996) ‘Thor’s Duel With Hrungnir’, alvíssmál, 6: 3–20. Louis-Jensen, Jonna (2005) ‘Södra Kvinneby’. In Johannes Hoops and Heinrich Beck, eds, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, pp. 193–196. 2nd edn. Vol. 29 of 35. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. McKinnell, John (1994) Both One and Many: Essays on Change and Variety in Late Norse Heathenism, with an appendix by Maria Elena Ruggerini. Roma: Il Calamo. ——— (2000) ‘Myth as Therapy: The Usefulness of Þrymskviða’, Medium Ævum, 69.1: 1–20. ——— (2005) Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. ——— (2008) ‘Völuspá and the Feast of Easter’, alvíssmál, 12: 3–28. McKinnell, John and Rudolf Simek with Klaus Düwel (2004) Runes, Magic and Religion: A Sourcebook. Vienna: Fassbaender. Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben (1986) ‘Thor’s Fishing Expedition’. In Gro Steinsland, ed., Words and Objects: Towards a Dialogue Between Archaeology and History of Religion, pp. 257–278. Oslo: Norwegian University Press. Nordberg, Andreas (2012) ‘Continuity, Change and Regional Variation in Old Norse Religion’. In Raudvere and Schjødt 2012, pp. 119–151. Nordeide, Sæbjørg Walaker (2006) ‘Thor’s Hammer in Norway: A Symbol of Reaction Against the Christian Cross’. In Andrén, Jennbert and Raudvere 2006, pp. 218–223. O’Connor, Ralph (2005) ‘History or Fiction? Truth-claims and Defensive Narrators in Icelandic Romance-sagas’, Mediaeval Scandinavia, 15: 101–169. Price, Neil (2002) The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. ——— (2006) ‘What’s in a Name? An Archaeological Identity Crisis for the Norse Gods (and Some of their Friends)’. In Andrén, Jennbert and Raudvere 2006, pp. 179–183. Raudvere, Catharina and Jens Peter Schjødt, eds (2012) More Than Mythology: Narratives, Ritual Practices and Regional Distribution in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religions. Lund: Nordic Academic Press.

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3

Naming thunder

For any study of Þórr, and one examining change and variety in his major associations in particular, a natural starting place is with the god’s name. In this chapter, I will first examine the etymology of Þórr and a selection of other heiti ‘names’ and kenningar that were used to denote the god or closely related mythic beings. This will be followed by a shorter reflection on the information that personal and place names related to the god can provide. There is not the space here to analyse every name (or compound of a name) connected with Þórr; those that have been chosen reflect my wider interests in this book in thunder and lightning and in mythological diversity.

3.1

Ancient *Þunraz

The most obvious testimony to a link between Þórr and thunder and/or lightning is the name by which the god is known in the majority of texts: Þórr and variations on the name like Vingþórr, Tyrkjaþórr, Ásaþórr and Ǫkuþórr. Words cognate with Þórr include MnE Thor, OS Thunar, OHG donar, and OE þunor, all of which have a common root in PGmc *þunra- ‘thunder’ and some of which retain the possibility of referring to either ‘thunder’ or this Germanic deity (de Vries 1962, s.v. ‘Þórr’). This family of names has patently been attached to a Germanic deity from very ancient times from the number of cognates found throughout the Germanic languages and from the Nordendorf Fibula I, a sixth-century, Bavarian brooch that is inscribed with the name wigiþonar ‘wigi-Þórr’ alongside a wodan (i.e. Óðinn) and, possibly, a logaþore (Figure 3.1; see further McKinnell and Simek 2004, pp. 48–49). That the name Þórr was coined at all indicates that there was a reasonably intimate connection between this god and thunder at one stage, and this inscription offers a terminus ante quem for the creation of that connection. Regarding the origins of the name, more is difficult to say. Not enough evidence exists to speculate whether the deity was initially a personification of thunder, for example. In later sources Þórr has numerous heiti (Ljungberg 1947, pp. 207–220) and, by way of comparison, Óðinn ‘frenzied, possessed’ is far from that god’s only name and does not signal a dominant mythological quality either (Dutton 2015, pp. 67–69), though these are the

Figure 3.1 The Nordendorf Fibula I (Clockwise from top left: front, back, detail) Photograph: Kunstsammlungen und Museen Augsburg, Römisches Museum, Inv.Nr. VF 51/278 and Andreas Brücklmair

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only hints that *Þunraz may once have been one theonym among many that later became dominant.1 Cognates of Þórr represented the god across the Germanic-speaking region, yet an association with thunder may not have continued to be relevant centuries after the name was coined. The meanings of words change over time. Etymology is not an incontrovertible guide to their denotations and connotations, even if it is frequently an effective philological tool. Rather, historians seeking to better understand the contemporary significance of words like Þonar or Þórr might look more reliably to the pragmatics of their cultural and syntactical environments of usage (cf. Barr 1961, 34ff.), where available. This is especially true of proper nouns proprialised from common nouns: often when a word becomes a name, etymological semantics are lost to everyday usage, even when they can still be found by those specifically etymologising the name. Even where proper nouns remain homophonic with a common noun, as the case is with OHG donar, linguists agree that the common noun’s signified does not necessarily have descriptive value for the parallel proper noun (see Kiviniemi 1975).2 In everyday usage, for the majority of people using the god’s name Þórr, they were likely just talking about the god Þórr without any connotation of thunder, in the same way that the name Agnes Baker doesn’t immediately summon thoughts of either ‘chastity’ or bread-rolls for a fluent English speaker. The use of Þórr (or some reworking of that name) is not, therefore, an unequivocal validation of an association between this deity and thunder in the Viking Age, long after it was first coined. This is particularly the case in Iceland, where no cognate of þórr seems to have survived in the sense of ‘thunder’ at all – words like þruma and reið are preferred. In Sweden, by contrast, an archaic word for thunder is tordön; in Denmark and Norway, torden is used. Both terms are formed from cognates of þórr (Norw. Tor, Swed. Tor, Dan. Tor) and ON dynr ‘noise’ in those languages (Hellquist 1922, s.v. ‘tordön’). As Elof Hellquist proposes of the Swedish variant, these may not be derived from a connection with the god, but rather simply from the sense of ‘thunder’ – Hellquist contends that a construction implicating Þórr the god should involve a genitive form of the name, i.e. *torsdön (1922, s.v. ‘tordön’). A Swedish dialectal form Hellquist offers as comparison, torshåla ‘Þórr’s cave’ (i.e. the wellspring of thunderclouds, according to Hellquist), does demonstrate that the god had some folkloric currency in eastern Scandinavia as a cause of thunder (1922, s.v. ‘tordön’), but, admittedly, relating this to Viking Age thought is difficult without records of earlier uses of the word. Correspondingly, too little is known about the contemporary usage of -þonar and how long had passed since the name was coined to seize upon the Nordendorf Fibula I as proof that Þonar was a thunder god in sixth-century Bavaria, though the fibula does attest to the existence of a deity with this moniker in that area and period. The other elements of the Nordendorf Fibula I’s inscription are intriguing as well, particularly wigi-, the less easily deciphered element of wigiþonar,

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and the putative theophoric names wodan and logaþore that appear alongside it. These are of value here as a route into distinct aspects of pre-historical representations of Þórr and his Germanic equivalents. As with many of the oldest runic texts, however, the meaning of these pieces of the Nordendorf Fibula I’s inscription remain uncertain and may never be understood with absolute certainty. Three viable etymologies have been put forward for wigi- (and the alternative reading of the runes wigu- posited in Findell 2012, p. 130), relating it to PGmc *wīxjanan/*wīȝjanan ‘consecrate’, PGmc *wīxanan/*wīȝanan ‘fight’ and ON ving- ‘horse penis’ or ‘swinger’ (for clear accountings of these possibilities, see Findell 2012, pp. 129–130; de Vries 1962, s.v. ‘Vingþórr’).3 The hyper-masculinity implied by a reading of wigi- as ‘horse penis’ finds a parallel in, for example, the ironic feminisation of the deity in Þrymskviða as well as the overtly masculine behaviour of Þórr in that poem and others (see further Chapter 4). Both ‘swinger’, if it is assumed to entail ‘swinging a weapon’ rather than pursuing the same sexual theme as ‘horse penis’, and ‘fight’ can be compared with the literary glorification of the deity’s prowess in conflict (see especially Section 4.5). The compounding of wigi- ‘fight’ and -þonar ‘thunder’ would also seem to draw on an intuitive connection between violence and the power of lightning. That, however, is difficult to maintain on the basis of wigiþonar alone: although it might have made sense to attribute lightning’s divine overseer a role in battle, either element of wigiþonar could have been semantically limited to denoting the god when the name was coined (so that the name was understood as ‘battle-Þonar’ rather than ‘battle-thunder’, for example). These elements cannot be assumed to have a relationship with one another any more than, for example, the parts of the Þórr by-name Ǫkuþórr have for Snorri (see Section 3.2) or those of most dithematic Germanic personal names (Þorsteinn ‘Þórr-stone’, Hakþórr ‘Ocean-Þórr’ and Bergþórr ‘Boulder-Þórr’ – Norse personal names such as these generally have no meaningful link between their component elements [Schramm 1957; Vikstrand 2008, p. 1012]). If wigi- came from *wīxjanan/*wīȝjanan ‘consecrate’, the inscription would demonstrate a long-term consistency to this deity’s functional import, anteceding by four centuries mythological and runic passages in which Þórr vígja ‘consecrates’ (the Old Norse form of *wīxjanan/*wīȝjanan), or is called upon to consecrate, an object or individual (Þrymskviða, st. 30; Gylf., ch. 44, 49; McKinnell and Simek 2004, pp. 118–121, 127. The semantics of vígja are investigated in Section 7.2.2). If wigi- (or wigu-) could be matched with any of these etymologies with complete confidence, the Nordendorf Fibula I would offer a potential terminus ante quem for a major aspect of the conceptualisation of the Viking Age Þórr (assuming the property in question did not fade away and return later), yet none can be discounted. The final element of interest here from the Nordendorf Fibula I may be the most problematic for scholars. Also scratched onto the back of the object are

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two other potentially theophoric names. The first of these, wodan, is noncontroversially connected with Óðinn (Findell 2012, pp. 129, 267), but the other logaþore is a puzzle.4 Each of the etymologies proposed for logaþore is as knotty but plausible as the others (for further commentary and suggested interpretations, see Findell 2012, pp. 128–129). Two scholarly interpretations of this word will be summarised here, nevertheless, as a starting point for discussing the context in which Þonar was worshipped and continuity with later treatments of Þórr in Scandinavia and Iceland. The first of these interprets logaþore as ‘deceivers’ or ‘sorcerers’ and as part of a derogatory Christian description of Wigiþonar and Wodan (see Düwel 1982, p. 84).5 Despite traces remaining from Romanisation of the region, indications are that sixth-century Bavaria was largely unconverted to Christianity (Wood 1994, pp. 307–311), which, from this view of the inscription, could make the Nordendorf Fibula I a marker of mission efforts or of the hostility of a submerged Christian population toward a more dominant cultural force. Hostility to non-Christian gods would demonstrate social tension and in a shape that is a familiar Christian response to Germanic beliefs and practices. Similar views are encountered in (related) Anglo-Saxon sermons by Ælfric of Eynsham and Wulfstan II, Archbishop of York in the tenth and eleventh centuries (Pope 1968, vol. 2, pp. 681–686; Bethurum 1957, pp. 221–224), and the ninth-century Old Saxon Baptismal Vow, which puts Thunær ende Uuôden ende Saxnôte ‘Thunær [i.e. Þórr] and Wōden and Saxnōt’ on a par with the works and words of the devil (Braune 1921, p. 166). An Old Icelandic adaptation of Ælfric’s sermon survives in the fourteenth-century manuscript Hauksbók (Eiríkur Jónsson and Finnur Jónsson 1892–1896, pp. 156–164), and it is far from the sole manifestation of this perspective from Iceland. In Flóamanna saga, for example, Þórr is a vindictive and semi-demonic figure who alternates between attempts to seduce a Christian convert and threatening his former worshipper with disasters that are then inflicted upon him (ch. 20–21). Eiríks saga rauða (ch. 8–9) gives a similar richly negative interpretation of the god. Even in a more charitable rendering like Snorri’s Ynglinga saga, euhemerised forms of Óðinn and other Old Norse deities rule over great swathes of the world essentially through lies and magic (ch. 1–10; Þórr appears in ch. 5). To an extent, the Old Icelandic texts adopt elements of pre-Christian characterisation: Þórr controls sea winds and the waves in Flóamanna saga, for example, as he does elsewhere (though those powers may not be exclusive to Þórr: see e.g. ch. 3., n. 17). The petty antagonist of that saga, however, is otherwise recognisable only in name as the warrior deity of myth or the ástvinr ‘dear friend’ of his priest Þórólfr Mostrarskegg in Eyrbyggja saga (ch. 4).6 From these comparisons, if logaþore should be interpreted as ‘deceiver’ or ‘sorcerer’, the Nordendorf Fibula I is more valuable as a witness to contemporary interfaith interactions than to worshippers’ conceptualisations of Wodan and Wigiþonar and may attest to the same homogenising characterisation of Germanic deities as false idols or deceitful men.

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The other leading interpretation of logaþore construes it as the name of a third deity and most likely an earlier form of Lóðurr, the title of a mysterious figure that several – though not all – rímur identify as Loki (Haukur Þorgeirsson 2011, p. 37; Klingenberg 1976, pp. 168–169; cf. Laidoner 2012, pp. 62–63).7 The appearance of Wigiþonar here with Wodan and possibly another deity is important for evidencing an approximation of a divine Germanic pantheon in this period and place. In the paradigm of Old Norse mythology depicted especially (but not uniquely) in Snorri’s Edda, Þórr belongs to a divine family unit with his father Óðinn at its head (e.g. Skáldsk., ch. G55; an extensive pantheon is enumerated in Lokasenna as well, among other places). Other windows into Old Norse religion, such as the apparent Þórr by-name Ásabragr ‘first of the æsir’ (Skírnismál, st. 33:2; Þórs heiti, st. 1:2) and Adam of Bremen’s account of a temple at Gamla Uppsala, deviate from this perspective by presenting Þórr as chief deity (see Sections 3.4 and 5.2), and Terry Gunnell (2015) has recently argued that pre-Christian religion in Scandinavia may have been more henotheistic (i.e. dedicated to the worship of a single god without denying cultic observance to others) than strictly pantheonic.8 Gunnell makes many worthwhile points, and, even if some of the evidence he piles together to argue that Þórr could be an ‘all-purpose god’ can be nitpicked (e.g. on Þórr as a fire god, see Section 6.3; mooted associations like his creative role in shaping tides and salmon are only attested in one late source [Gylf., ch. 46–47, 50; cf. Lokasenna, prose epilogue]), enough remains to make the proposition worth contemplating further. The idea of a changing chief god already insinuates some level of henotheism, and Hárbarðsljóð and Gautreks saga (ch. 7), at least, imply some level of cultic competition (on the identification of Hárbarðsljóð’s antagonist as Óðinn, see von See et al. 1997, p. 158). The evidence seems well established too that one god could be preferred over others in some regions – Þórr’s appearances in Icelandic sagas and place names, for example, far outstrip in number those of any other pre-Christian deity (see further Section 3.4). The same god is invoked singly in some sagas and in Landnámabók to provide guidance in moments of crisis and during navigation at sea (e.g. Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 4; Landnámabók, H15, S123 [H95], S197 [H164], S218) and I will consider in Section 7.2.2 formulaic runic invocations that, in the existing examples, are addressed exclusively to Þórr. Some worshippers may even have accorded Þórr a role as a psychopomp (see Section 7.2.2.1). Indeed, over the course of this book, a wide range of responsibilities and associations will be discussed in relation to Þórr, calling into the question the idea that the god was perceived as fulfilling only one purpose as part of a wider pantheon of functional divinities. Elsewhere, however, Þórr’s membership of just such a collective is crucial. His affiliation with the æsir seems to have been key for Snorri, who labels Þórr repeatedly as Ásaþórr (Gylf., ch. 9, 21, 45, 46, 53; Skáldsk. ch. 17). The author of Hárbarðsljóð (st. 52:1) does likewise, and I have mentioned ásabragr above.9 These by-names may stem from Þórr’s import as protector

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of that group (see Section 4.5.1), or they may have been coined for the benefit of an audience who identified as worshippers of the æsir, bringing them into closer communion with the god and collective. Many myths envision Þórr acting as part of such a unit (e.g. Grímnismál, stt. 4, 29; Hárbarðsljóð, stt. 9, 56; Hymiskviða, stt. 1–4, 39; Vǫluspá, stt. 25–26, 53–56; Þrymskviða, st. 14. In Skírnismál, st. 33, ásabragr is entreated as one of three gods, alongside Óðinn and Freyr). And such collectives are not merely a literary construction as the aforementioned triads at Gamla Uppsala and in the Old Saxon Baptismal Vow illustrate.10 In even more ancient times still, *Þunraz might have been included in one of the assemblages of Germanic and Gaulish deities recorded by Julius Caesar in the first century BC (1886, VI, ch. 17, 21; on separating Caesar’s Gauls from his Germanic-speakers, see Riggsby 2006, especially pp. 67–70). Discussions of early representations of Þórr and the other Old Norse gods usually also cite the Mercury, Hercules, Isis and Mars worshipped by the Suebi in Tacitus’s Germania, written around a century and a half later (1999, ch. 9; cf. Tacitus 1906, II, 12). Assuming that these are recognisable Germanic deities, this Hercules is traditionally and usually cautiously equated with *Þunraz/Þórr (and Mercury with *Wōđanaz/ Óðinn) on the basis of wider trends in interpretatio Romana and, among other common features, the two gods’ reputations for strength (e.g. Arnold 2011, p. 41; de Vries 1970, § 413–415; Ellis Davidson 1964, p. 82; Simek 1993, s.v. ‘Hercules’; Turville-Petre 1964, pp. 102–103). It is not an original observation that, without documentary evidence for *Þunraz’s existence in this period, we cannot be certain that Hercules was being identified with that god (Simek 1993, s.v. ‘Hercules’; see further Section 4.5.2); the scenario is a possibility, however, and Tacitus’s text is useful in demonstrating the early significance of the pantheon in Germanic religion. Landnámabók (H 268) reports an oath on a temple ring that has intrigued scholars for centuries: hjálpi mér svá Freyr ok Njǫrðr ok hinn almáttki áss ‘Help me Freyr and Njǫrðr and the almighty áss’.11 Hinn almáttki áss may be Þórr – he is the most popular candidate – or a different Old Norse god. It could mark the adoption of the Christian god into an Icelander’s pantheon alongside Old Norse gods (syncretism most famously embraced by Helgi enn magri [Landnámabók, S218 (H184)]; see further Section 7.2.2.2) or the passage may represent a Christian antiquarian’s construction of an old formula – almáttki ‘almighty’ does not otherwise appear in non-Christian use and may be translated from the Latin omnipotens (Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874, s.v. ‘al-máttigr’). The only real certainty is that it does not refer to Freyr or Njǫrðr (for the arguments, see Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson 1999, pp. 35–36; Hermann Pálsson 1956; Simek 1993, s.v. ‘almáttki áss’; Tapp 1956; Turville-Petre 1972). Whichever one it is, the Christian uses of almáttigr demonstrate that the áss could have been conceived with the kind of omnipotence normally rendered to deities in monotheistic religions (for references, see ONP, s.v. ‘almáttigr, almáttugr’; Lexicon Poeticum, s.v. ‘almáttigr’; like máttigr ‘mighty’, which it has intensified, the adjective could

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alternatively denote physical strength or competency). Yet this almáttki áss is invoked alongside two other deities here. Regardless of whatever power was attributed to him when the by-name was coined, the áss was still perceived as being ritually efficacious in tandem with other gods. Þórr, likewise, from the statements in Adam of Bremen, medieval manuscripts and runic inscriptions, could be prayed to singly or as a member of a collective to achieve divine intervention in both eastern parts of Scandinavia and Iceland. Cult practice appears to be fluid, perhaps varying regionally and temporally though other factors such as personal preference and circumstances may have played a role. Certainly, as Gunnell contends, the Old Norse gods, including Þórr, do not seem consistently limited by functional categories. The Nordendorf Fibula I on its own does not attest to this fluidity of worship in sixth-century Bavaria, even if logaþore is taken as another god’s name. In a long-term view, though, it is of momentous value for scholars modelling conceptions of Germanic gods and their worship while taking account of variation. While the pantheon alluded to may not be identical to that of Snorri’s Edda or the Old Saxon Baptismal Vow, together these texts suggest continuity over multiple centuries and a large part of Europe in the import of a Þórr-like deity who had ritual significance alongside other gods, including one resembling Óðinn and possibly another like Loki.

3.2 Vagna verz: the wagon man12 Of the various other compounds of the name Þórr, the most enigmatic – and the most pertinent to discussions of Þórr as a god of thunder – is Ǫkuþórr. This name is never found in eddic or skaldic poetry, whether Icelandic or not, but only appears within Snorri’s Edda (passim in Gylfaginning but only in one chapter of Skáldskaparmál) where it is explained as stemming from Þórr’s ownership of a wagon: Þórr á hafra tvá . . . ok reið þá er hann ekr, en hafrarnir draga reiðna. Því er hann kallaðr Ǫkuþórr ‘Þórr owns two bucks . . . and a wagon which he drives, and the goats pull the wagon. So he is called Ǫkuþórr’ (Gylf., ch. 21. Cf. Gylf., ch. 44, 46, 53; Skáldsk., ch. 1). Snorri presumably therefore envisions the name as ‘driving-Þórr’, from aka ‘to drive (a vehicle)’, and many scholars agree with this derivation, though ǫku- might equally be derived from the name of a Finnish thunder god Ukko (Simek 1993, s.v. ‘Ǫku-Thor’; Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874, s.v. ‘Öku-Þórr’; Finnur Magnússon 1828, p. 671. Cf. Peter Jackson 2005, p. 491, where the former argument is taken further and ǫku- connected to Þórr’s relentless movement across the mythological landscape). Both derivations are etymologically possible, and both are arguably related to thunder. The notion of Þórr creating thunder and lightning through the movement of his wagon is in line with the aetiological ideas retained in many Old Norse myths and more specifically with the vision of the Norwegian poem Haustlǫng (this poem’s meteorological imagery will be analysed below; for examples of Old Norse aetiology, see ch. 3., n. 17; Gylf.,

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ch. 45–47; Grímnismál, stt. 26, 40–41; Vafþrúðnismál, stt. 11–14, 20–27). The link with Ukko has support in similarities between the deities, such as their possession of hammers, that may once have encouraged an identification, though as many features differ as find a counterpart (cf. Bertell 2003, pp. 80–81). Ukko itself does not mean ‘thunder’ but rather ‘old man’, which further distances Ǫkuþórr from connotations of ‘thunder’, though Finnish does take its word for thunder from Ukkonen, a diminutive form of the name (de Vries 1970, § 419; Salo 1990, pp. 106, 159). Simek’s protestation that Finnish mythology is an unlikely source for Old Norse motifs, ‘considering that the opposite direction of cultural transfer is more usual’ (1993, s.v. ‘Ǫku-Thor’), is disputed by recent contributions by scholars like Bertell (2003), Price (2002) and Clive Tolley (2009), which have exposed the myriad ways in which Norse culture is indebted to its northern neighbours. Nevertheless, it is unclear why the name Ǫkuþórr survives in isolation in Iceland, appearing only in Snorri’s Edda, if it has been inspired by a deity from so far east. This provenance may imply that Ǫkuþórr was coined in Iceland, though it could merely be entirely an accident of survival that no trace of it survives in Scandinavian sources, and without additional evidence, why and where it was devised, as well as the character of its hypothetical transmission from the east, must remain a mystery. Ultimately, therefore, we have to look again to the pragmatics of the term and to the meaning the name has in Iceland in the period in which it appears to tease out this line of investigation further. In this regard, even if the origins of Ǫkuþórr do lie in an equivalence between Þórr and Ukko, this etymology has no weight for the compiler who records the name; the single enduring clue to its contemporary significance is Snorri’s understanding that the name comes from a connection with goats and a chariot. Snorri was quite explicit about his motivations for compiling his Edda: it was to be a handbook that distils and explains the Old Norse myths and legends often alluded to in skaldic poetry (Skáldsk., ch. 1). As such, if he had conflicting knowledge of the origins of Ǫkuþórr, it is likely that he would have cited it alongside the explanation he does give, as the case is with the multiple endings to his account of Þórr’s fishing trip, for example (see Section 2.1.2). Indeed, had Snorri known of a wider symbolism connecting the wagon or Þórr to thunder, it seems likely that he would have included it in the same overview of the god’s mythological characteristics that explains Ǫkuþórr or in one of the two others in the Edda (Prologue, ch. 9; Gylf., ch. 21; Skáldsk., ch. 4). In equivalent introductions in Gylfaginning, Freyr is linked with fertility and prosperity (ch. 24) and Óðinn with the responsibilities of a psychopomp (ch. 20). For Þórr, Snorri enumerates an exhaustive list of his associations, such as the names of his family members (to the degree of step- and foster-family), his roles in the mythic landscape, his past deeds and his possessions, never mentioning thunder. Snorri probably did know of Þórr’s thunder journey in Haustlǫng – the germane stanzas of that poem are quoted in many manuscripts of Skáldskaparmál (ch. 17) – yet from this

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evidence does not seem to have accorded much importance to the display of thunder and lightning in that poem (see further Section 4.1).13 Indeed, Þórr drives a wagon and goats in many myths (for example, Alvíssmál, st. 3:4; Húsdrápa, st. 5:3; Hymiskviða, stt. 20:2, 31:2; Sigurðardrápa, st. 5:4; Þórsdrápa, stt. 15:5–6, 20:6), yet Snorri never connects this with thunder, even though the figment of the wagon careering through the sky seems apt for a thunder god. The absence of any alternative viewpoint, therefore, suggests that Ǫkuþórr was intelligible to Snorri’s contemporaries as ‘driving-Þórr’ just as it was to Snorri. Earlier generations of storytellers might have interpreted the name differently. The need for an Edda, for a handbook clarifying allusions to Old Norse mythology, illustrates that the cultural landscape traversed by Snorri had changed drastically from that of the poets quoted in his text. Snorri’s presentation of Þórr’s wagon does not in itself necessarily mean that previous poets did not understand a further layer to the imagery that tied the deity to thunder and lightning. An association between thunder and wagons was evidently strong in various Nordic regions, given the names for thunder used in Iceland and Sweden. On Iceland, reið can signify either ‘thunder’ or ‘chariot’ (on the etymology of this word and its cognates, see de Vries 1962, s.v. ‘reið’), and the modern Swedish åska compounds OSw ækia (ON ekja ‘driving’) and ås (ON áss) to create a word meaning ‘thunder’ that seems to intimate a god driving a chariot as its cause. Åska, moreover, is likely very old, being evidenced in Old Swedish as āsikkia (Hellquist 1922, s.v. ‘åska’). A similar process has occurred in Old English with the term þunorrad ‘peal of thunder’, conflated from the Old English words for ‘thunder’ and ‘riding’ and surviving in the apocalyptic visions of tenth-century sermons, which likewise conflates the notion of thunder with the noise of travel (Bosworth and Toller 1898, s.vv. ‘þunor-rád’, ‘rád’). All of these terms are customarily attached to Þórr on the understanding that he is the thunder god of this pantheon and the deity most identified by his chariot (de Vries 1970, § 441; Hellquist 1922, s.v. ‘åska’; Motz 1996, p. 65; North 1997, pp. 237–238; Turville-Petre 1964, p. 99). The possibility that these terms were specifically related in Scandinavian, Icelandic and Anglo-Saxon minds to the passing of Þórr’s (or Þunor’s) wagon cannot be dismissed, particularly in light of later terminology that more explicitly ascribes thunder to Þórr like torshåla. Þunorrad is particularly interesting as, putatively, one of the few remaining vestiges of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon worship of Þunor, as opposed to the elements of Germanic religion that were imported from Scandinavia (Turville-Petre 1964, pp. 94–95, 98–100; North 1997, pp. 232–241, especially pp. 237–238). Yet here, as with the discussion as a whole, we should be careful not to work back from the conclusions we expect for our understanding. Simply because the sound of thunder was connected with wagons and Þórr has a wagon, it does not necessarily follow that the sound of thunder must be connected with Þórr. Neither þunorrad nor reið make any allusion to

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supernatural origins for thunder at all; in both cases, the similarity between the sound of a wagon passing and thunder could have been enough to engender both as appellatives for thunder. In Old Icelandic, this is corroborated by poetic references to the sky itself as a vagnbryggja ‘wagon-bridge [or -gangway]’ (Níkulás Bergsson 2007, st. 3:6) and as a gangway for the sun and moon (Leiðarvísan, stt. 19:1, 30:3). The situation in Old English is similar: þunor survived as a word for ‘thunder’ even after the conversion to Christianity erased a vast majority of the evidence for pre-Christian religion and could have formed the basis for the compound at any point until it appears in the tenth century. Åska, on the other hand, does ascribe thunder to a divine source but could refer to any áss (or a deity not given this title in Old Icelandic literature, but categorised thus elsewhere). Wagons and chariots seem to have been an integral aspect of cult worship in the north, regardless of the deity invoked. Þórr is closely related to wagons in Germanic literature, but many other deities possess a wagon or chariot in this body of texts too, both mythological and non-mythological. Freyr, for instance, is transported in one in several works, while Yngvi, possibly another name for Freyr, drags a wǣn ‘chariot’ after him in The Old English Rune Poem (Wyatt and Cook 1993, p. 7; Gylf., ch. 49; Halsall 1981, ll. 67–69; though cf. Húsdrápa, st. 7, in which the god apparently rides only a boar).14 Óðinn appears to be called vagna runi ‘friend of wagons’ (Sonatorrek, st. 22:6) and vára vagna ‘defender of wagons’ (Hǫfuðlausn, st. 21:3). Both translations have been disputed in the past, the first largely on the basis that it seems strange (the second is more difficult to construe), but better explanations have not yet been agreed upon (cf. Bjarni Einarsson 2003, pp. 112, 153; Poole 1993, pp. 94–95; Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson 1998–2001, pp. 172–173). While explaining kenning construction, Snorri also raises a reiðartýr ‘wagon-Týr’ after completing a list of Óðinn-kenningar (Skáldsk., ch. 1). This is normally assumed to designate Þórr (e.g. Skáldsk., vol. 1, p. 154; cf. Meissner 1921, § 88, a, β) but could be a roundabout final addition to the list (or a kenning applicable to any áss).15 Other accounts depict Freyja sitting in a reið ‘chariot’ pulled by two cats (Gylf., ch. 24), the sun, Night and Day travelling around the earth in kerrur ‘chariots’ (Gylf., ch. 10, 11) and Baldr in a biga ‘chariot’ (Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, III, 2,12), while the use of wagons is attested in the worship of the obscure god Lýtir (Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Unger 1860–1868, vol. 1, pp. 579–580) and, more famously and much earlier, Nerthus (Tacitus 1999, ch. 40).16 Further examples could be cited, stretching all the way back to the sun chariot from Trundholm (de Vries 1970, § 80). Wagons and chariots apparently had a central role in burial practice, cult worship and mythology regardless of deity on different corners of these lands over a lengthy period (see further Andrén 1993, pp. 45–48; Fuglesang 2007, pp. 207–211; Nordvig 2013, pp. 22–23). Any powerful supernatural agent might have been thought capable of producing the noise of åska in its travels – compare the thunderous hooves of Freyr’s horse or Sleipnir on

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the bridge to Hel, for example (Skírnismál, st. 14; Gylf., ch. 49) – and the connection may have been especially powerful with wagons, due to the consonance between thunder and the sound of wheels to which åska and reið attest. Moreover, overlapping aetiologies are common in Old Norse myth, as the winds’ many divergent origins testify.17 Þórr, it seems, has a wagon not because he is a thunder god, but rather simply because he is a god and Old Norse supernatural beings have wagons. The extant poetic evidence of this association is dominated by Þórr, but may be skewed simply because the movements of deities like Freyr are less often reported and by Snorri’s promotion of Ǫkuþórr. Perhaps even the common view of wagon-kenningar as the domain of Þórr is misleading – if kenningar in a form like ‘lord of the wagon’ referred to deities in general, the Óðinn circumlocutions cited above would make sense and so too might the curious location of reiðartýr in Snorri’s explanation of the machinery of kenningar. While wagon-kenningar can denote Þórr in poetry, these are limited in number and, in each, context already makes clear who the referent is. No surviving wagon-kenningar that could signify Þórr carry the entire load of that identification themselves. Had more poetry survived with other gods at its centre, the wagon-kenning might now be seen as a universal divine kenning, and only goats exclusive to Þórr (BragiFrags, st. 3; Húsdrápa, st. 5:3; Hymiskviða, stt. 20:2, 31:2). Despite the multitude of texts that do touch on Þórr’s travels, only in one poem is a categorical link drawn between the movement of his wagon and the creation of thunder and lightning: the ninth-century Haustlǫng by the Norwegian poet Þjóðólfr ór Hvini. Seven of that poem’s twenty surviving stanzas portray Þórr’s fight with Hrungnir, and some detail the environmental impact of the god’s journey through the heavens to do battle: dunði . . . / mána vegr und hǫ́num ‘the way of the moon [sky] rang beneath him’ (Haustlǫng, st. 14); Knǫ́ttu ǫll, en . . . / endilǫ́g . . . / grund vas grápi hrundin, / ginnunga vé brinna ‘all the hawks’ temples [sky] did burn, and the ground was destroyed with hail’ (Haustlǫng, st. 15); brann upphiminn ‘heaven above burned’ (Haustlǫng, st. 16).18 Motz makes an imaginative case for this as imagery of the aurora borealis on the basis that it is non-lethal (1996, p. 56). Nevertheless, and even if, as Gabriel Turville-Petre (1964, p. 77) has remarked, following the sequence of the poem can be taxing, the co-occurrence of heavenly fire with a great rumbling in these stanzas makes it most logical to understand this as nothing else but thunder and lightning. Yet thunder and lightning is not privileged by Þjóðólfr. In the quotes above, these phenomena appear alongside hail, and the poet identifies other, additional natural calamities resulting from Þórr’s movement: gekk Svǫlnis ekkja / sundr ‘Svǫlnir’s widow [earth] became rent asunder’ (Haustlǫng, st. 15); berg . . . / hristusk bjǫrg ok brustu ‘mountains were shaken and rocks burst’ (Haustlǫng, st. 16). Thunder and lightning are as incidental here as the hail, the bursting rocks and the earthquake-like imagery of the earth splitting apart are; it is the combination of these imageries that is fundamental,

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summoning up a sense of tumult and natural chaos to express the innate power of the deity on his way to a fight. Whilst this poem certainly strengthens the impression that a connection did exist between Þórr and thunder, at least in ninth-century Norway, it simultaneously undermines the centrality of this association to the god’s characterisation in that time and place. Looking beyond Haustlǫng, the other poetic contexts in which Þórr’s chariot appears are more ambiguous. Of these, Þórsdrápa, written by the Icelander Eilífr Goðrúnarson in the tenth century, has most claim to a connection with thunder or lightning. Its fifteenth stanza refers to Þórr as hofstjóri hreggs váfreiðar ‘steerer of the hull of the swinging-carriage of the storm’, explicitly linking the deity’s skyward chariot to storms. Only the lack of a firm attestation to hregg, the ‘storm’ component in this circumlocution, being used in relation to thunder and lightning presents a problem for this discussion.19 The single other use of hregg to describe Þórr’s actions appears in a lausavísa by Steinunn Refsdóttir (in one manuscript Steinunn Dálksdóttir), which pictures Þórr wrecking the ship of the Christian missionary Þangbrandr. Nothing there ties the word to thunder. Instead, the poet’s sketching of a tempest that hristi búss ok beysti / barðs ok laust við jǫrðu ‘shook and beat the tree of the ship and struck it against the earth’ (SteinLv, st. 1:3–4) calls to mind more the strength of the winds and sea – and by proxy Þórr – than any association with thunder. In fact, probably the most intriguing element of this description is Þórr’s agency: Steinunn construes her god intentionally sending the storm, whereas much of the imagery of the goat and wagon (especially in Haustlǫng) suggests environmental disturbance as the accidental by-product of Þórr’s celestial activity. The contradiction here is not irresolvable – the creation of weather by the wagon could have been seen as less incidental than it appears to modern observers, for instance – but this more plausibly points to the wagon and to weather creation as religious conceptualisations that were circumstantial, conforming to the situations in which they were invoked. Perhaps the imagery of the wagon’s impact was malleable according to its textual and cultural circumstances too. Elsewhere hregg is a very inclusive term for storms and could entail strong winds and rain, even incorporating snow and hail. Yet neither hregg nor its compounds seem ever to be associated with thunder or lightning in Old Icelandic poetry or prose (Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874, s.v. ‘hregg’; ONP, s.v. ‘hregg’. Cf. Motz 1996, pp. 56–57). It may simply be that thunder and lightning did not appear often enough in Iceland to survive in this aspect of the historical record or that the word hregg never held this connotation. Indeed, weather is common enough in conceptions of Þórr that hregg could be connected to him without insinuating the close attendance of thunder, and, hence, that a wagon-kenning like this one from Þórsdrápa could be coherent and whole without referring to thunder and lightning. Þórr is pictured in several sagas with control over storms, wind, clouds and snow, especially at sea (Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss, ch. 8; Flóamanna saga, ch. 21; Guðbrandur Vigfússon and Unger 1860–1868,

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vol. 1, pp. 291–292, 296–298; Landnámabók, H15; possibly also Eiríks saga rauða, ch. 8–9). All of these texts sketch Þórr as a shady supernatural presence, raising the possibility that this is more a Christian than pre-Christian conception of Þórr. They do find corroboration, however, in Dudo of St Quentin’s earlier report that sacrifices were performed to Þórr in Normandy with the hope of altering the winds in their favour (Dudo of St Quentin 1865, pp. 129–130; on associated manuscript problems, see Dudo of St Quentin 1998, p. 183; Perkins 2001, pp. 20–21). Dudo did not witness these events himself and nor is he better disposed to Old Norse religion than medieval Icelanders were, yet, like Richard Perkins (2001, pp. 20–21), I cannot invent any good reason for him to fabricate this material. Perkins (2001) also links Viking Age figurines to a belief that Þórr created the wind by blowing through his beard and that these figurines could be used as windamulets, a possibility for which he accumulates a broad range of evidence of varying levels of persuasiveness. Perkins’s first chapter (especially pp. 1–10) is his text’s most useful for the picture it draws of the importance of (control over) the wind to contemporary life, especially on an island like Iceland. Jurisdiction over the wind is naturally a mainstay in images of supernatural creatures like Þórr (see ch. 3., n. 17). Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns (ch. 3), again a later Icelandic tale but partly inspired by popular older narratives, envisions its Þórr-like hero creating hailstorms and sunshine, and the former assertion finds support in Haustlǫng, which, as observed above, visualises a flurry of hail following in Þórr’s tracks (st. 15). Control over the sun’s appearance, or at least fair weather, is only given to Þórr in one other text, Adam of Bremen’s commentary on a temple at Gamla Uppsala, which (once more mentioning the wind) accords Þórr control over tonitrus et fulmina, ventos ymbresque, serena et fruges gubernat ‘thunders and lightnings, the winds and rains, fair weathers and crops’ (Adam of Bremen 1917, IV, 26). Perkins points out that serena is perhaps better related to the absence of clouds than the presence of sunlight; as such, the clouds that prefigure Þórr’s appearance in Chapter 8 of Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss might be a better parallel than Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns. Textual support is almost impossible to find for a connection with rain, unless the saga references to stormy weather are accepted; Perkins is forced towards seventeenth-century information to verify it, though he posits that lateness as a virtue rather than a failing (2001, p. 22). Adam’s remaining claims will be considered in Sections 3.4 and 5.2. A sceptical eye might disregard much of this evidence as too late or too foreign to be a reliable guide to the beliefs of worshippers of Þórr. Yet with Haustlǫng in mind and alongside the sporadic links with hregg, there is enough to cautiously attribute to Þórr a wide-ranging control over the weather. Few specific links have been discovered between Þórr’s wagon and thunder; if one did exist, it may have been within this more diffuse connection with the weather and more a reflection of early Scandinavian notions about wagons than the god driving it.

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A roaring rider

An extended section of Ljungberg’s seminal Tor surveys Þórr’s various heiti and kenningar, some of which, for Ljungberg and other scholars, identify Þórr as a thunder god (1947, pp. 212–214). This section will examine the most likely of these identifiers in light of this identification and to tease out what information these labels carry regarding early conceptualisations of the god. Hlórriði is a good place to start. Popular enough that it survives in at least five poems (Hymiskviða, stt. 4:6, 16:3, 27:1, 29:1, 37:3; Lokasenna, stt. 54:6, 55:3; Vellekla, st. 14:8; Víkarsbálkr, st. 32:5; Þrymskviða, stt. 7:7, 8:1, 14:7, 31:1), the by-name could hint that Þórr was seen as causing thunder and lightning, though its translation, which has been mooted as ‘bright rider’, ‘roaring ruler’ or ‘roaring thunder(er)’, is uncertain, and it is only found in Icelandic texts.20 Of these, the arguments connecting elements of the name with ‘roaring’ and ‘thunder(er)’ are especially relevant to this present discussion. The latter was first hypothesised by Hugo Gering (1894, pp. 25–26), who derived -riði from hríð (insults] with power. An analogy between a smith and Þórr is established by the determinant smiðbelgr ‘forge-bellows’ in the opening kenning of the stanza Þórr stórra smiðbelgja ‘Þórr of the great forge-bellows [i.e. smith]’. The identifi cation of the insults being thrown as a metaphorical sía is reliant on a description toward the end of the lausavísa of the síu smiðju galdra ‘molten substance of the smithy of spells’ [mouth>insults]. The elding in hvapteldingar may actually be a duplication of this image, rather than a meteorological reference: elding can also signify ‘smelting metals’ and even ‘fuel’, which is more in keeping than the sense of ‘lightning’ with the focus on a smith as the stanza’s protagonist. Nonetheless, the term elding is, from literary evidence, much more usual in Old Norse as ‘lightning’ (for references, see Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874, s.v. ‘elding’; ONP, s.v. ‘elding’). The prevailing use of elding as ‘lightning’ in other kenningar also seems to support this reading (see Meissner 1921, § 76 b–c, for examples), though this raises the possibility that hvapteldingar itself has simply been constructed in emulation of circumlocutions for weapons, given that elding appears most frequently in this sort of kenning (see Section 3.3). Understanding an analogy between weapons and the smith’s insults here also tallies with the over-riding conceit in this stanza that Þjóðólfr is comparing a disagreement between a smith and a tanner to a mythological battle between a god and a jǫtunn and with the mock-heroic elevation of these protagonists that is implicit in this comparison. Indeed, nothing argues directly against this interpretation other than the image of weaponised lightning in Saxo Grammaticus’s adaptation of this story – though it is not wielded against the same character – and perhaps

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the inclination to take this reference to lightning in such proximity to Þórr as evidence of an association, when other potential testimony has been largely unreliable so far. Þjóðólfr, a poet travelling in Norwegian cultural circles, would likely have known of a connection between Þórr and lightning, if Haustlǫng is any guide to conceptualisations of Þórr in Norway. Þjóðólfr may himself have known his namesake Þjóðólfr ór Hvini’s stanzas on Hrungnir’s meeting with Þórr, even if little weight was normally given in Iceland to the poem’s fiery skies. Probably elding should be perceived here as a dexterous poetic mind taking advantage of polysemy to conjoin the triple images of smith, weaponry and lightning thrower. A specific precedent for this is supplied later in the stanza by a pun on afl, where the word can be read in both the meanings of ‘strength’ and ‘hearth’ (ÞjóðLv, st. 5:6), and Þjóðólfr’s comfort in working with multiple layers of meaning is plain throughout from the ease with which the model of Þórsdrápa is combined with his subject matter. Þjóðólfr’s kenning musters question marks that are difficult to follow with categorical answers. If a translation of elding as ‘lightning’ is accepted, a disparity that is not readily explained materialises between this stanza and extant work by other Icelanders, at least those not performing interpretatio norrœna. At the same time, this interpretation of hvapteldingar would bolster the idea that Saxo’s fulmen was acquired from a now submerged indigenous tradition in which Þórr killed Geirrøðr with a lightning bolt – even though Geirrøðr himself is not actually killed by lightning in Gesta Danorum. All of this, of course, assumes that Þjóðólfr is not simply using a conventional weapon kenning, to which modern commentators like me have applied an extra layer of meaning thanks to our own preconceptions regarding Þórr. This situation is typical of the texts that have been addressed in this chapter. Adam of Bremen offers the most definitive of all extant testimonies to a connection between Þórr and thunder and lightning, not to mention fertility and rain-making – or he situates a Virgilian Jove in a northern temple and pins on him the name of a god who was popular in that area. Saxo assures his audience that his work is fidelem uetustatis notitiam pollicetur ‘guaranteed to give a faithful understanding of the past’ (Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, praefatio, 1, 3), yet inferences from the Gesta Danorum are no less slippery or unavoidably provisional than those from Adam. The god he describes receiving worship from hammer-wielding Swedes does not even have the name of any god from a northern tradition – though the portrayal could reflect cross-cultural cultic behaviour – and the lightning his Þórr wields could a faithful reflection of a northern tradition that understands the god as capable of throwing thunderbolts or a manifestation of the Latin learning that insinuates itself throughout Gesta Danorum. In this, as in each of these cases, to be sure is impossible with the limited evidence to hand.

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Notes 1 Elsewhere Ælfric utilises Jove-Þórr as a form in which the devil appears to St Martin of Tours (Skeats 1890–1900, vol. 2, p. 264; cf. North 1997, p. 81). 2 The version of the prologue to Snorri’s Edda in Codex Wormianus (AM 242 fol.) does append a myth not found in older manuscripts that likewise identifies Þórr with Jove. As with other, quite long passages of Biblical and classical material found in Codex Wormianus’s Prologue, this is almost certainly a late addition that was not integral to the Prologue as it was originally envisioned (Gylf., p. xxviii). The compiler of the Prologue may not be that of the rest of the Edda (see Beck 2009; Faulkes 1983; Faulkes 1993, pp. 69–70). As their identity matters less here than the background to their learning, the label Snorri will continue to be used. 3 Arguments over the text’s veracity have been rehearsed many times over the past century; for a useful and up-to-date, though sceptical, accounting of the possible arguments, see Arboe Sonne 2013, pp. 139–171. 4 Thanks to the various individuals who have raised the sceptre-like object at Sutton Hoo with me, from Johnni Langer in a review of my PhD thesis to the anonymous reviewers of the Viking Society for Northern Research. The identification of that find is controversial, and it may equally have served as a whetstone or a touchstone (Ježek 2013; Simpson 1979). Regardless, it provides a precedent for a sceptre-like object, at least, in elite symbolism. 5 For discussion of the timetable of the Gesta Danorum’s production, see Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, pp. xxxiii–xxxv. 6 On links between Thorkillus and Þórr, see Simpson 1966, pp. 9–10. 7 Classical authorities distinguished three parts to a thunderstorm – the sound, the brightness (fulgur) and the power (fulmen) – and Saxo may be following this tradition (Thulin 1906, pp. 372–376). 8 Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns and Þjóðólfr Arnórsson’s stanza are discussed on their own merits in Sections 6.3 and 5.4 respectively. 9 This also seems to be the implication in a stanza of eddic poetry about the incident that survives only in one manuscript of Skáldskaparmál (Snorri Sturluson 2012, v63). 10 A list of vocabulary held in common by these poems is included with the lausavísa in SkP2 (p. 170). The term sía is defined in more depth in Section 6.1.

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Magnus, Olaus (1996–1998) Description of the Northern Peoples: Rome 1555. Ed. Peter Foote with John Granlund. Trans. Peter Fisher and Humphrey Higgens. 2 vols. London: Hakluyt Society. Neckel, Gustav and Hans Kuhn, eds (1983) Edda: Die Lieder des Codex Regius nebst verwandten Denkmälern; Vol. 1: Text. 5th edn. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Pope, John, ed. (1968) Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection. 2 vols. London: Early English Text Society. Prologue. In Snorri Sturluson (2005) Edda. Prologue and Gylfaginning. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2nd edn. London: Viking Society for Northern Research. Saxo Grammaticus (2015) Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes. Ed. Karsten Friis-Jensen. Trans. Peter Fisher. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skáldsk. = Snorri Sturluson (1998) Edda. Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. London: Viking Society for Northern Research. Skeats, Walter, ed. (1890–1900) Ælfric’s Lives of Saints: Being a Set of Sermons on Saints’ Days Formerly Observed by the English Church. 2 vols. Oxford: Early English Text Society. SkP2 = Kari Ellen Gade, vol. ed. (2009) Poetry From the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols. Sneglu-Halla þáttr. In Jónas Kristjánsson, ed. (1956) Íslenzk fornrit, 9. Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag. Snorri Sturluson (2012) The Uppsala Edda. Ed. Heimir Pálsson. Trans. Anthony Faulkes. London: Viking Society for Northern Research. Trójumanna saga (1963). Ed. Jonna Louis-Jensen. Editiones Arnamagnæanæ Series A8. Copenhagen: Munksgaard. Virgil (1973) The Aeneid of Virgil: Books 7–12. Ed. Robert Williams. Basingstoke: Macmillan. ——— (1984) The Eclogues. Ed. and Trans. Guy Lee. Rev. edn. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Ynglinga saga. In Snorri Sturluson (1941) Íslenzk fornrit, 26. Ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson. Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag. ÞjóðLv = Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, Lausavísur. In SkP2. Ed. Diana Whaley. Þórsdrápa = Eilífr Goðrúnarson, Þórsdrápa. In Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold, vol. eds (2017) Poetry From Treatises on Poetics: Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Ed. Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold. Turnhout: Brepols. Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns. In Guðni Jónsson, ed. (1954) Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda. Vol. 4 of 4. Reykjavík: Íslandingasagnaútgáfan.

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Christiansen, Eric (1981) ‘The Place of Fiction in Saxo’s Later Books’. In Karsten Friis-Jensen, ed., Saxo Grammaticus: A Medieval Author Between Norse and Latin Culture, pp. 27–38. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum. Cleasby, Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson (1874) An Icelandic-English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ellis Davidson, Hilda (1965) ‘Thor’s Hammer’, Folklore, 76: 1–15. Faulkes, Anthony (1983) ‘Pagan Sympathy: Attitudes to Heathendom in the Prologue to Snorra Edda’. In Robert Glendinning and Haraldur Bessason, eds, Edda: A Collection of Essays, pp. 283–314. Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press. ——— (1993) ‘The Sources of Skáldskaparmál: Snorri’s Intellectual Background’. In Alois Wolf, ed., Snorri Sturluson: Kolloquium anläßlich der 750; Wiederkehr seines Todestages, pp. 59–76. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Frank, Roberta (1986) ‘Hand Tools and Power Tools in Eilífr’s Þórsdrápa’. In John Lindow, Lars Lönnroth and Gerd Wolfgang Weber, eds, Structure and Meaning in Old Norse Literature: New Approaches to Textual Analysis and Literary Criticism, pp. 94–109. Odense: Odense University Press. Fuglesang, Signe Horn (2004) ‘Christian Reliquaries and Pagan Idols’. In Soren Kaspersen and Ulla Haastrup, eds, Images of Cult and Devotion: Function and Reception of Christian Images in Medieval and Post-Medieval Europe, pp. 7–32. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum. Gelting, Michael H. (2010) ‘Poppo’s Ordeal: Courtier Bishops and the Success of Christianization at the Turn of the First Millennium’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 6: 101–133. Gräslund, Anne-Sofie (2000) ‘New Perspectives on an Old Problem: Uppsala and the Christianization of Sweden’. In Ian Wood and Guyda Armstrong, eds, Christianizing People and Converting Individuals, pp. 61–71. Turnhout: Brepols. Gunnell, Terry (2015) ‘Pantheon? What Pantheon? Concepts of a Family of Gods in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Religions’, Scripta Islandica, 66: 55–76. Hultgård, Anders (1997) ‘Från ögonvittnesskildring till retorik. Adam av Bremens notiser om Uppsalakulten i religionshistorisk belysning’. In Anders Hultgård, ed., Uppsalakulten och Adam of Bremen, pp. 9–50. Nora: Nya Doxa. Janson, Henrik (2000) ‘Adam of Bremen and the Conversion of Scandinavia’. In Ian Wood and Guyda Armstrong, eds, Christianizing People and Converting Individuals, pp. 83–88. Turnhout: Brepols. Ježek, Martin (2013) ‘Touchstones of Archaeology’, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 32: 713–731. Johannesson, Kurt (1978) Saxo Grammaticus: Komposition och varldsbild i Gesta Danorum. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell. Láng, Orsolya (2008) ‘A Newly Discovered Statue of Jupiter From Aquincum’. In Christiane Franek, Susanne Lamm, Tina Neuhauser, Barbara Porod and Katja Zöhrer, eds, Thiasos: Festschrift für Erwin Pochmarski zum 65. Geburtstag, pp. 567–577. Wien: Phoibos. Lassen, Annette (2005) ‘Óðinn in Old Norse Texts Other Than The Elder Edda, Snorra Edda, and Ynglinga Saga’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia: 91–108. ——— (2011) Odin på kristent pergament: En teksthistorisk studie. København: Museum Tusculanum. Lewis, Charlton T. and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, founded on E. A. Andrews’s translation of Freund’s Latin-German Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Line, Philip (2007) Kingship and State Formation in Sweden: 1130–1290. Leiden: Brill. Ljungberg, Helge (1947) Tor: Undersökningar i indoeuropeisk och nordisk religionshistoria, vol. 1: Den nordiska åskguden och besläktade indoeuropeiska gudar; Den nordiska åskguden i bild och myt. Uppsala: Lundequistska Bokh. McKinnell, John (2005) Meeting the Other in Norse Myth and Legend. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Meissner, Rudolf (1921) Der Kenningar der Skalden: Ein Beitrag zur skaldischen Poetik. Bonn; Leipzig: Schroeder. North, Richard (1997) Heathen Gods in Old English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ONP = James E. Knirk, Helle Degnbol, Aldís Sigurðardóttir, Alex Speed Kjeldsen, Christopher Sanders, Eva Rode, Ellert Þór Jóhansson, Maria Arvidsson, Simonetta Battista and Þorbjörg Helgadóttir (1989–) Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog/A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose. Copenhagen: Den arnemagnæanske kommission. Simek, Rudolf (1993) Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Trans. Angela Hall. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Simpson, Jacqueline (1966) ‘Otherworld Adventures in an Icelandic Saga’, Folklore, 77: 1–20. ——— (1979) ‘The King’s Whetstone’, Antiquity, 53: 96–101. Sjöberg, Rolf (1983) ‘Via regia incedens: Ett bidrag tillfrågan om Erikslegendens ålder’, Fornvännen, 78: 252–260. Sundqvist, Olof (2011) ‘An Arena for Higher Powers: Cultic Buildings and Rulers in the Late Iron Age and the Early Medieval Period in the Mälar Region’. In Gro Steinsland, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Jan Erik Rekdal and Ian Beuermann, eds, Ideology and Power in the Viking and Middle Ages: Scandinavia, Iceland, Ireland, Orkney and the Faeroes, pp. 163–211. Leiden: Brill. ——— (2015) An Arena for Higher Powers: Ceremonial Buildings and Religious Strategies for Rulership in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Leiden: Brill. Thulin, Carl (1906) ‘Fulgur, fulmen und Wortfamilie’, Archiv für lateinische Lexikographie und Grammatik mit Einschluss des älteren Mittellateins, 14: 369–391, 509–514. Turville-Petre, E.O.G. (1964) Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Wanner, Kevin J. (2008) Snorri Sturluson and the Edda: The Conversion of Cultural Capital in Medieval Scandinavia. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Zachrisson, Inger (1991) ‘The Saami Shaman Drums: Some Reflexions From an Archaeological Perspective’, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, 14: 80–95.

6

Mythological objects

The motif of throwing a hot substance is central to the depictions of Þórr’s fight with Geirrøðr by Saxo, Eilífr and Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, and many other portrayals of the god show him hurling (or threatening to hurl) mythological items, including Mjǫllnir, the god’s most recognisable weapon. Like Jove’s thunderbolts, these thrown objects could be a reflex of the rush of lightning through the air; while Saxo is not making this connection, Þjóðólfr may be, and past scholars certainly have. Ellis Davidson proclaims in her study of Þórr’s most recognisable weapon that ‘we cannot doubt the hammer signified the thunder-bolt, the lightning flash that shatters trees and rocks and kills men’, and she is not isolated in her conclusions (1965, p. 5; see also, e.g. Arnold 2011, p. 15; Grimm 1880, vol. 1, p. 180; Simek 1993, s.v. ‘Mjǫllnir’; Turville-Petre 1964, p. 81). The hypothesis that the movement of Þórr’s weaponry, especially in forms which blaze with fire like the sía, could once have been equated with a surge of lightning will therefore be examined in the coming chapter. In the course of this discussion, various related topics will also be addressed, in particular the issue of why an image like throwing might become a commonplace in portrayals of Þórr and the potential for variety in the literary function of the motif.

6.1 Closer attention to Þórsdrápa In the midst of the above debate, the plausibility of Þórsdrápa’s glowing sía as a symbol of lightning was dismissed, but this deserves greater attention considering statements like Ellis Davidson’s. Looking at the sequence of events portrayed in Þórsdrápa, Geirrøðr laust ‘struck’ with the sía, which flaug ‘flew’ into Þórr’s hand (stt. 16–18). In reply, though the stanza is puzzling even by the arcane standards of this poem, it seems Þórr laust the object back at his enemy, probably through a pillar, and niðr í miðjan / . . . bígyrðil ‘down into the middle of the belt’ of Geirrøðr (st. 19; cf. Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson 1998–2001, pp. 166–167; Þórsdrápa, 19:8n). In view of the premise that sía could be a hypostasis of lightning, a number of factors in this sequence are worth considering: first, that the weapon in Þórsdrápa is glowing; second, that the situation was contrived so that the weapon was

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fired downwards; and, third, that the weapon was laust. Together these things arguably call to mind a visual tableau not unlike a streak of lightning pushing toward the ground. Unlike elding, sía has no definition, overt or otherwise, that obviously connects it with lightning or thunder. Rather, its use is largely in the depiction of glowing objects, especially molten metals or ashes, which is the logical surmise here as the item has been pulled from an afl ‘the hearth of a forge’ by Geirrøðr (st. 16) and is otherwise portrayed as a meina nestu ‘brooch of pain’ (st. 19), i.e. a crafted metal item causing an injury.1 Elsewhere the same word is used to describe the raw materials of the stars and sparks flying from an oven – bright particles of light, in other words, unlike the streak of lightning (e.g. FsSK, vol. 1, p. 375; Gylf., ch. 5, 8. Cf. de Vries 1962, s.v. ‘sía’). Eilífr also terms the object an eisa ‘ember’ (st. 18), and Snorri seems to have interpreted the object in the same way, labelling it as sía and more plainly as jarnsía ‘iron-sía’ (Skáldsk., ch. 18), though the account in Skáldskaparmál could have been influenced by other forms of this story.2 Eilífr’s other language focuses on the object as something to be placed into the mouth – as a lyptisylgr ‘raised drink’ to be svalg ‘swallowed’, for example (Þórsdrápa, st. 18). From this, Þjóðólfr Arnórsson’s jaw imagery presumably takes its lead; it is harder to see from where in Þórsdrápa’s language an analogical connection between the object and lightning could come. Support for the importance of the downward motion of Þórr’s throw – Þórr laust niðr ‘struck down’ – is unsteady. Discussing Snorri’s habitual use of ljósta to refer to the impact of Þórr’s weapons, Lindow notes that it can herald (as well as a blow struck) the onset of natural phenomena like storms and darkness and goes on to say that the verb has ‘meteorological associations’ (1994, pp. 487–488). Indeed, modern Icelandic retains the phrase eldingu laust niður ‘lightning struck down’ (e.g. Samúel Karl Ólason 2013; Vísir 2014), which employs two of the words used by Eilífr to assemble his image of Þórr throwing (three if the sía is figuratively standing in for elding). Perhaps Eilífr designed his stanza with this phrase and ljósta’s meteorological connections in mind, in line with the artifice with which Þórsdrápa is constructed more generally. As impressively nimble as this would be, it is unlikely to be true. Ljósta is now archaic and mostly only found in connection with similarly idiomatic phrases, but I could find no medieval instances of eldingu laust niður, even though the verb’s use was far less restricted – even quite popular – in the period of Þórsdrápa’s composition. While ljósta was used for the action of items like spears or arrows in flight, its true significance even there seems not to be in this motion but in its impact, in the moment of striking, and Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson provide ample examples of the word referring to both objects that are not airborne and others that are (1874, s.v. ‘ljósta’). Ljósta is used repeatedly in connection with Þórr himself in situations in which his weapon cannot have been thrown (Gylf., ch. 45, 47; Skáldsk., ch. 35). To this end, it is normally translated as ‘smite’ or ‘strike’.

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Ljósta could also be used to characterise the action of a fire. In Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar, for instance, a number of birds carrying a flaming piece of wood were perched under roofs made from straw and reed and laust eldinum af fuglunum í þekjuna ‘the fire leaped from the birds into the thatch’ (ch. 6; for other examples, see Cleasby and Vigfusson 1874, s.v. ‘ljósta’; Fritzner 1886–1896, s.v. ‘ljósta’). The stress here is on the suddenness of the action, and it may be this connotation of ljósta that motivates its use in Þórsdrápa and popularity in Old Norse literature overall. Even regarding eldingu laust niður, the import of ljósta is not in the implication of movement through the air – niður fulfils that function – but in the force of the strike. Thus, in Þórsdrápa, the poet is more likely keen to convey with ljósta the power and swiftness of the strike than the downward motion of lightning. The sía’s molten properties may also have suggested the verb, if ljósta had a history of describing fire. Even were the expression eldingu laust niður already established in the tenth century but not widely attested in literature, the syntax of the phrase is unrecognisable within the esoteric word order of this helmingr of skaldic poetry. Laust and niðr are separated by an entire line of poetry. Moreover, the identity of the sía is obscured here by the circumlocution meina nestu (as is that of Þórr, ítr gulli Ullar ‘Ullr’s splendid stepfather’ [st. 19]), forcing an audience to make a further leap before any correlation could be comprehended. If Eilífr’s image was composed with the phrase in mind, it has been heavily masked. Still, the scene, in which Þórr stands imperiously over a cowering Geirrøðr, could have been constructed purely to conjure visually the image of a heavenly god striking down with the force of lightning. At the same time, this kind of physical elevation is a natural and often-used literary technique, facilitating the presentation of one creature’s superiority over another, as it is surely intended to in this instance. The image subjugates Geirrøðr to Þórr, emphasising the latter’s fearsomeness and strength with the same clarity that has marked Eilífr’s depiction of these qualities throughout the poem.3 In the context of the sía’s presentation in Þórsdrápa, the use of laust niðr is entirely reasonable without any implication of the action of lightning. Little advocates the alternative interpretation. In Þórsdrápa, a glowing item moves down rapidly from a position of relative height, yet the text itself does not advance an interpretation of this as a likeness of lightning hurled by Þórr. Neither the verb ljósta nor descriptions of the object being thrown offer any serious connection with lightning, and Eilífr distances his poetry further from that interpretation through the various conceits with which he refers to the object, transfiguring the sía instead into something that has been cooked or swallowed. An Old Norse audience had a far greater knowledge of the context of this text and motif than any modern commentator; perhaps Eilífr simply relied on the connection being obvious, while focusing on developing other aesthetic elements of his presentation of Þórr’s weapon. Yet, as unlikely as this seems,

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his obliqueness would mean just the same that the image falls outside the parameters of this study.

6.2

Assorted other poets

Throwing is not presented in other poems as a surrogate for lightning any more openly than in Eilífr’s master work. At least one version of the fishing trip story, the Icelander Úlfr Uggason’s Húsdrápa, may imply that Þórr threw his hammer, for instance, though the verb used is the ambiguous ljósta (st. 6).4 Moreover, Húsdrápa and Bragi Boddason’s piece on the trip draw specific attention to the relative positioning of Þórr above Miðgarðsormr. In Húsdrápa, in stanzas that respond to one another, when the god’s innmáni ennis ‘inner-moon of the forehead [i.e. eye]’ (st. 3) shone at the serpent, his enemy starði ‘stared’ back from fyr borði ‘in front of the shipboard’ (st. 4). Yet, whilst the serpent’s position beneath is clearly signalled, the deity’s relative height receives no emphasis at all, except, in the most figurative of senses, through the analogy between his eye and the moon. Even then, the metaphor has been phrased so as to distance it from these locative implications, the eye’s bodily, rather than celestial, place being accentuated by the prefix inn- ‘in’ (cf. Húsdrápa, 3:1n). A stanza focusing expressly on Þórr’s relative elevation in this tableau could have been lost, although it seems unlikely given the correspondence between the two stanzas that chronicle the battle of gazes. In the most likely scenario, the directional component of the fight is an inescapable repercussion of the situation being drawn – anglers must take up positions above their prey – that also, as in Þórsdrápa, expresses the god’s supremacy over his enemy. The notion of Þórr throwing down lightning in the form of his hammer was probably irrelevant to Úlfr. The same argument can be made more securely for Bragi’s contribution. The surviving stanzas omit the actual moment of the hammer blow, and thereby any statement of whether the hammer is flung, which makes it impossible to fully gauge the meaning of the drama. Nevertheless, the skald does say that Þórr fórsk hamri í hœgri hǫnd ‘lifted the hammer in his right hand’ when he saw Miðgarðsormr (Þórr’s fishing, st. 3), who starði neðan ‘stared from below’ in return (Þórr’s fishing, st. 4). As in Húsdrápa, a binary is created over two stanzas, though in this case the relative heights of the antagonists are purposely foregrounded and the hammer is given more prominence, creating a spectacle in which a kind eye could view the weapon as a representation of lightning. At the same time, the poetry does not mention or in any other way allude to thunder or lightning, so the link depends almost entirely on the flexibility of audience interpretation. If some cultural memory of Þórr striking from above with lightning is present here or in Húsdrápa, only an echo survives, possibly an echo that was clear to some of the texts’ earliest audiences but not one that can be reproduced with certitude by a modern commentator.

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In other poems, Þórr’s attacks are frequently indicated by language that, like ljósta, focuses on the violence of a blow and lacks any explicit throwing element, which fits with the customary mythological concentration on the character’s strength. Verbs like, most popularly, drepa ‘to strike, to kill’ (see Section 4.5), lemja ‘to beat [so as to lame]’ (VetrlLv, st. 1:2; Þrymskviða, st. 31:8) and brjóta ‘to break’ appear repeatedly (Hymiskviða, stt. 17:7, 19:1, 28:8; VetrlLv, st. 1:1; ÞdísÞórr, st. 2:2; Þórsdrápa, st. 15:5). This leaning is epitomised by stanzas of poetry listing Þórr’s deeds by Vetrliði Sumarliðason (VetrlLv, st. 1) and Þorbjǫrn dísarskáld (ÞdísÞórr, st. 2), which amount to little more than prayer-like intonations of the beings who have been killed by the deity. The two poets follow the same pattern. Both address Þórr directly and list his acts using the rough formula ‘[synonym for ‘attacked’ in the second person] [enemy’s name]’. Þorbjǫrn’s effort, for instance, proceeds like this: Kjallandi brauzt alla, áðr drapt Lút ok Leiða, léztu dreyra Búseyru, heptir Hengjankjǫptu. (st. 2:2–5) You destroyed all Kjallandi, before that you beat Lútr and Leiði, you made Búseyra bleed, you restrained Hengjankjǫpta. It may seem ridiculous to expect a poet to stipulate that Þórr killed a particular being in a particular manner each time, yet none of these examples detail a thrown weapon, despite their number, the colourful range of vocabulary and action, and the functional tenor of words like hepta ‘restrain’ and, in the helmingr by Vetrliði, stétt of Gjalp dauða ‘you stepped over dead Gjalp’ (st. 1:4). Regardless, it is surprising that throwing is not mentioned, given the motif’s popularity elsewhere – in the Geirrøðr story tradition and Snorri’s Edda, in particular – and this may illustrate the selective pressures on literary composition. Pushed into the compressed form of poetry (in contrast to, say, Snorri’s freer prose), throwing is revealed as less of a priority than conveying Þórr’s power and exuberance in battle. The verb kasta ‘to throw’, which is consistently employed by Snorri, is not used in any other source to describe Þórr throwing his weapon. Verpa ‘to throw’ is present, though rarely in the context of Þórr’s use of a weapon – only, in fact, in the case of Þjóðólfr Arnórsson’s jaw-lightnings. Instead, it appears in a violent threat in Lokasenna, in which Þórr declares to his occasional companion Loki that upp ec þér verp / oc á austrvega ‘I will also throw you up on the eastern way’ (st. 59:4–5), and more benignly in Hárbarðsljóð to portray the feat of throwing eyes up to heaven (st. 19:3).5 Even when a

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weapon has been thrown, often a more equivocal verb is used. Especially popular is ljósta, but slá ‘to strike’ and berja ‘to strike’ are also used, presumably for the force they, like ljósta, convey.6 As a result, the vast majority of cases in Old Icelandic literature in which Þórr uses Mjǫllnir or another weapon do not call to mind any impression of lightning moving through the air, except tenuously through the force with which they strike. Strength was consistently more important to Þórr’s characterisation, even when the motif of throwing was employed. Regarding non-Icelandic sources, Haustlǫng is worthy of attention, though only because of the omission of the motif. Whilst in Snorri’s presentation of Þórr’s fight with Hrungnir (Skáldsk., ch. 17), the god flinging his hammer is the apogee of the narrative, in Haustlǫng’s account of the same battle, no reference to throwing is made though the hammer does appear to be the weapon utilised (stt. 17–19). It may be that a stanza is missing from Þjóðólfr ór Hvini’s poem that once told of a mighty throw; though the depiction of the duel is full enough that it could be intact, the amount of repetition in the three stanzas that cover it means that further descriptions of the crucial act of violence would not have been out of place. Alternatively, Snorri could have known another version of the story (see Section 4.1) or adapted it to better suit his understanding of Þórr’s mode of fighting. Allowing for this uncertainty over Haustlǫng, it is notable that a poem revelling so much in imagery of thunder and lightning neither connects his hammer with these elements nor, if there was a widespread link between his throwing and lightning, makes the image of the weapon in flight more prominent. It suggests that, for Þjóðólfr ór Hvini, the production of thunder or lightning is not connected with the act of throwing or even with the divine hammer, but only with Þórr’s travels. Of the sources examined in this section, two (Haustlǫng and Bragi’s portrayal of Þórr’s fishing trip) have been as securely established as is possible as coming from outside Iceland, yet they are a shaky basis on which to construct an argument for a Scandinavian connection between throwing and lightning. If throwing even occurs in these poems, it is not evident that the violence was correlated with lightning. Otherwise, outside Iceland, only Saxo unambiguously presents imagery of thunderbolts, and his work should be considered in light of the caveats discussed above concerning influence from a classical wielder of thunderbolts. Icelandic poetic evidence is no stronger and tends to focus on the brutality of Þórr’s blows rather than imagery that could stand in for lightning.

6.3

The intriguing case of Þorsteinn bæjarmagn

Most curious of all the episodes about Þórr throwing a weapon at an enemy is the fourteenth-century Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns.7 Several aspects of this tale will be considered in this section, commencing with the ways in which the Geirrøðr tradition has been transformed for later tastes before

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considering proposed links between the weapons in Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, smithing and lightning. Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns’s peculiarities begin with its main character. Þórr does not actually figure in this tale, not even as a minor character as in Saxo’s tales of Thorkillus; instead, this þáttr centres on the adventures of Þorsteinn bæjarmagn, whose similarities to the god run deeply. Besides the first element of his name, the protagonist’s nickname bæjarmagns ‘farmstrength’ and a character sketch that pronounces him mikill ok sterkr ‘big and strong’ and too large for most houses in Norway (ch. 1) signal that, even though Þórr has become Þorsteinn, the god’s semantic centre has withstood the transition. This semantic centre ultimately becomes crucial to Þorsteinn’s successes throughout the story, in particular to the assistance he gives others in trials of strength and to the murder of a king with the now-familiar name of Geirrøðr (ch. 7, 10). Geirrøðr’s presence is the other major indication of this þáttr’s heritage in narratives about Þórr. Þorsteinn’s conflict with that being makes up the largest part of the story and holds many features in common with the tales about Geirrøðr already discussed (enumerated in Simpson 1966, pp. 6–9). Yet Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns is not solely a reiteration of the story of Þórr’s battle with Geirrøðr. The mythos of Þórr has been elaborated on and blended with the concepts and structures that run through other fornaldarsǫgur, folk tales and possibly even imported romances (see further Simpson 1966 and especially the more rigorous Power 1985). Þorsteinn marries cunning with his strength to beat his supernatural enemies; while not necessarily a contradiction to previous characterisations of Þórr (cf. Section 4.5.3), this is a new element for the Geirrøðr narrative, as is Þorsteinn’s invisibility and, for example, the route to the otherworld running through a cleft in a rock (both are common motifs in folk literature [Power 1985, p. 169; Simpson 1966, 13n, pp. 3, 15]). Þorsteinn even helps a dvergr, a strange volte-face for a character who, as seen in Sections 4.5.1 and 4.5.3, was not above kicking one dvergr into a fire in a fit of pique and has seemingly turned another into stone. Þorsteinn’s act, and the reward he receives for it, may stem from the common trope in contemporary and earlier texts that heroes gain important items (most frequently through coercion) from dvergar (Motz 1977, pp. 47–49; Simpson 1966, p. 5. Cf. Skáldsk., ch. 35). Around a century earlier, Saxo was already showcasing the same kind of synthesis of materials in his account of the adventures of Thorkillus whilst declaring that he was working from Icelandic sources (Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, praefatio, 1, 4). Crossover between Saxo’s work and Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns of elements absent from the other Geirrøðr narratives suggests that the latter text’s apparent innovations may actually be routine in later representations of Þórr. Otherworldly geography and characters are shared between these works, for instance, as is a ball-throwing game and an emphasis on their heroes’ disadvantage in height (Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, VIII, 14, 6–14, 14; Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, ch. 2, 5, 7, 10. See

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Power 1985, pp. 164–166; Simpson 1966, pp. 9–11; and cf. Gylf., ch. 45, 46; Hárbarðsljóð, st. 26; Lokasenna, st. 60). A most conspicuous feature shared by these tales is their protagonist’s religious orientation: though based on a pre-Christian god, both Thorkillus and Þorsteinn are or become committed Christians (Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, VIII, I5, 10; Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, ch. 11–12). Þórr’s movement from Old Norse god to Christian hero is more explicit in Saxo’s text, which separates god and hero into two different creatures: the former is a being of the mythical past, partly forgotten in the legendary present (Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, VIII, 14, 15), while his hero’s conversion to Christianity epitomises the transition of the literary Þórr from a pre-Christian domain to one less problematic for Christian audiences. Rosemary Power (1985, p. 166) relates the conversion to Saxo’s tendency toward moral instruction – and this may be one of the impulses behind it – but Thorkillus’s actions are in step with a broader trend to make characters from a pre-conversion or legendary strata of history palatable to medieval audiences through baptism or more usually pseudo-Christian behaviour (see further Lönnroth 1969; Schach 1982, pp. 201–203). In Chapter 3 of Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, Þorsteinn is rewarded for helping the dvergr – saving the dvergr’s son from being carried away by an eagle – with several magical items.8 Jacqueline Simpson shows that the shirt of invulnerability, wealth-insuring ring and stone of invisibility that Þorsteinn receives are familiar knickknacks in medieval literature (1966, p. 5); the last two gifts, however, are unusual. Þorsteinn receives a three-cornered hallr ‘pebble’ and a stálbroddr ‘steel spike’ that, when a person pjakka ‘pricks’ one against the other, can summon a fierce hailstorm, radiant sunshine or eldr ok eimyrja með gneistaflaug ‘fire and embers with a shower of sparks’ (on translating hallr, see Simpson 1966, 14n). This hallr is later used as a missile in Þorsteinn’s encounter with Geirrøðr (ch. 10). Simpson contends that the hallr’s power to generate fire is obtained from Þórr’s attributes: Þórr ‘is lord of the lightning, and hammers strike sparks from a smith’s anvil; it has indeed been suggested that a ceremonial striking of fire formed part of his cult’ (1966, p. 7). Therefore it is in the complex of imagery surrounding the hallr and stálbroddr that a connection with lightning will be sought from Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, after discussing the related claims regarding smithing and fire-striking. Simpson proposes a variety of derivations for the pebble’s abilities. In itself, this is not necessarily a problem – a motif can obtain its inspiration from more than one place – but her theories all seem of a very different order, from very different backgrounds, and their basis in evidence goes largely unexamined. The notion that Þórr was ever conceived as a divine smith, for example, is an enduring one in scholarship. Yet, in this body of texts, the god is nowhere associated with metal-working, with the exception of the figurative relationship drawn in Þjóðólfr Arnórsson’s lausavísa about the battle between a smith and tanner, and there the juxtaposition between

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Þórr and the smith is presented as a novel one by the stanza’s prose context in Sneglu-Halla þáttr (ch. 3). Arnold conjectures that the shadow of an older smith figure might exist in recollections of ritual practices, but labels it ‘highly speculative’ (2011, pp. 74–75). Ellis Davidson hypothesises a link between the noise of thunder and the beating of an anvil, citing parallels in comparative mythology, though finds no substantiation for this or for any connection to smithing in the myths as they stand in the eddur (1965, p. 8; similarly, Jessen 2013, pp. 330ff.). Lindow envisages a cosmological crafter in Þórr’s shape veiled in the verses of the Poetic Edda, though admits that his hammer is never portrayed as a creative force (1994, pp. 496ff; cf. Motz 1994–1997, pp. 332–333, 336).9 The equivalent missile to the hallr and stálbroddr in other Old Norse versions of the story of Þórr and Geirrøðr, the sía, does come from a forge or a fire, but even then the smithy belongs to Þórr’s enemy (excepting Þjóðólfr’s case, in which the reverse situation is created by the analogy being made). At one stage, Þórr could have been a divine smith figure, sparks from his anvil lighting up the cold Scandinavian night, even forging Miðgarðr from the meat of Miðgarðsormr. If so, this appears to have been thoroughly expunged from the mythos of Þórr by the time of Þjóðólfr and Þorsteinn. Although Simpson’s idea of a ceremonial fire-striking aspect to the cult of Þórr does not necessarily impinge on my wider arguments – if it is a reference to lightning, it is indirect – it is nonetheless worth considering here as an inspiration for the hallr. Ellis Davidson, Simpson’s source, builds her argument by applying a seventeenth-century act of fire-striking using nails among Sámi to a passage dealing with an Icelandic temple to Þórr in Eyrbyggja saga (ch. 4), in which, according to the text, reginnaglar ‘god-nails’ were hammered into wooden pillars at the time of Iceland’s settlement (1964, p. 78).10 Consulting Ellis Davidson’s witness to Sámi ritual, Johannes Schefferus’s The History of Lapland, the deity in question is called Þórr by the author, but not by his subjects, who name him variously but chiefly as Tiermes when it thunders (Schefferus 1704, pp. 90–91, 93, 98, 103–104; cf. Schefferus 1673, pp. 92–93, 95, 105); the identification may therefore be more in Schefferus’s mind (or that of his anonymous correspondent) than in those of his subjects (on his editorial methodology, see Joy 2011, pp. 118–122). Aside from this problem and the considerable length of time between the behaviours observed in The History of Lapland and the composition of Eyrbyggja saga, no Old Norse literary sources actually feature striking of the type reported by Schefferus, including Eyrbyggja saga. Most importantly, the name reginnaglar points to a religious use for the nails among worshippers of all the regin ‘gods’, rather than just Þórr, just as the pillars they are attached to are not specific to Þórr though he is the god most associated with them in the corpus of sagas (see further de Vries 1970, § 588; Wellendorf 2010). The Viking Age fire-steel-rings found in cult sites across Scandinavia make for another good comparison here (Jonsson 2006). Some of these are likely connected with the cult of Þórr from the rings of

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miniature hammer-shaped amulets found near or alongside them (Jonsson 2006; Sundqvist 2015, pp. 392–398. Miniature hammers are examined in Section 7.2.2.2). However, other amuletic objects, from spears to axes to sickles, have been found in many of these cultic contexts as well (Jonsson 2006; Sundqvist 2015, pp. 393, 395), ambiguating the situation somewhat; fire and fire-lighting may have been a central element in cultic worship across the North, regardless of the deity involved (on the general import of fire at cultic places, see Sundqvist 2015, pp. 242–249). Fitting more easily with the hallr’s magical capabilities in Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns are the precedents that Simpson finds in Chrétien de Troyes’s Ivain, which was translated in Norway in the fourteenth century and features a stone that brings both hailstorm and sunshine (1966, p. 6), as well as a record of a stone in Lincolnshire that brings rain when struck (1966, 15n). Nevertheless, the þáttr itself arguably signals that the fire corresponds to lightning by grouping Þorsteinn’s control over it with control over hailstorms and sunshine, i.e. two forms of weather governed by Þórr in other sources (though his association with sunshine is weak – see Section 3.2). In this spirit, it is worth considering the eldr ok eimyrja með gneistaflaug ‘fire and embers with a shower of sparks’ as the result of a lightning strike. While the corpus of Old Norse prose that refer to lightning is exceptionally limited, eldr is found only once in connection with elding in the sense of ‘lightning’. In that instance, in the course of a fight, eldr rycr or vapnom þeirra sem eldingar se ‘fire fumes from their weapons as if it is lightning’ (Bertelsen 1905–1911, vol. 1, p. 184); an equivalence is made, which concedes that one looks enough like the other that eldr can represent elding (even if the drawing of this equivalence declares that the author would not normally automatically relate the two). Of course this is implied by the origins of the word elding in elda – both words can be glossed as ‘to light a fire’ (de Vries 1962, s.vv. ‘elding’, ‘elda’) – and the correspondence is further borne out by Haustlǫng’s panorama of a sky aflame with lightning, though there it lacks the same linguistic continuity (in Haustlǫng, the skies brann ‘burned’ [st. 16:4]). However, elding is never found in connection with eimyrja ‘embers’ nor gneistaflaug ‘flight of sparks’, though the latter might seem a felicitous match to a modern mind. Eimyrja appears most often in the context of ordinary fires, although it is so rarely encountered that it only appears in the (nonexhaustive but comprehensive) entries of ONP, at least, five times (counting Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns). Of these five, eimyrja appears with eldr on four occasions, including twice in the sequence eldr ok eimyrja, perhaps suggesting a formulaic pairing of the words (s.v. ‘eimyra’). Eimyrja also appears in connection with a volcanic eruption in Hallmundarkviða (st. 2:5), which seems a more natural fabricator of embers than lightning (though if volcanicity has influenced the hallr’s fire imagery then it is very deeply submerged in Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns). Gneistaflaug is also very uncommon – recorded only three times by ONP – but gneisti ‘spark’ often denotes particles flying from man-made fires or forges and can be related to

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extra-human capabilities, such as the sparks placed by the gods in the heavens as stars (ONP, s.vv. ‘gneisti’, ‘gneistaflaug’; Gylf., ch. 8). A better correspondence for the hallr and stálbroddr than lightning is thereby presented. Returning to the other versions of the story, something smithed is thrown in all three of Eilífr’s Þórsdrápa, Þjóðólfr’s lausavísa and Saxo’s Gesta Danorum. In Þórsdrápa, the weapon tossed by Geirrøðr is afli soðnum ‘in the forge boiled’ (st. 16:7), an ós eisu ‘sparking ember’ (st. 18:5– 6; the adjective óss ‘sparking’ correlates especially well with Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns’s gneistaflaug);11 for Þjóðólfr, the insults are shaped in a metaphorical smiðja ‘smithy’ (ÞjóðLv, st. 5:7); and in Gesta Danorum, the object is torridam ‘burning’ (Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, VIII, 14, 15). Snorri’s text recounts that Geirrøðr took the glowing sía from one of the eldar stórir ‘big fires’ that lined his hall (Skáldsk., ch. 18). The þáttr’s image of sparking fire and embers conforms well to the fiery object presented in these parallels, reinforcing the sense that the spluttering fire thrown out by the hallr takes a red-hot iron thrown between Geirrøðr and Þórr as its exemplar, as many things in Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns take their lead from other versions of the story. The hallr is further linked to the sía through its part in Geirrøðr’s death. After creating fires in the hall and throwing sparks into Geirrøðr’s eyes, Þorsteinn snaraði hallinum ok broddinum, ok kom í sitt augu hvárt á Geirröðr konungi, ok steyptist hann dauðr á gólfit ‘flung the pebble and the spike, and each went into King Geirrøðr’s eyes, and he tumbled dead onto the floor’ (Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, ch. 10), much as Geirrøðr is pierced through the middle (rather than the eyes) by a missile from Þórr and killed in Þórsdrápa (st. 19:5–8). Little here suggests that the author(s) of the text were, even subconsciously, creating a tableau symbolic of a lightning bolt striking a Þórr analogue’s enemy. Notwithstanding the combination of the fire and thrown weapon, the eldr, eimyrja and gneistaflaug precede rather than result from the strike while the missile that would necessarily stand for lightning in this formulation is really two missiles, the hallr and stálbroddr, rather than one. If it is an image of lightning, it is a confused one. I noted in Section 5.3 that the flying sía is repurposed not once but twice in Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns. On the second occasion, the sía is repurposed in such a way that it demonstrates further the hallr’s origins. On the day after his arrival at Geirrøðr’s court, Þorsteinn becomes involved in a game of ball throwing using eitt selshöfuð, er stóð tíu fjórðunga. Þat var glóanda, svá at sindraði af svá sem ór afli ‘a seal’s head, which stood at 100 pounds. It was glowing, so that it sparked out as if from the forge’ (ch. 6). In the end, the head is thrown at Geirrøðr, who dodges it so that it hits and kills two of his retainers and crashes out of the room through a window (ch. 7). The elements in common with the hallr and previous iterations of the story are obvious: the lethality of the weapon; the eventual escape through the room’s perimeter; the sparks and the simile that specifically likens the head with a recently forged item. The seal’s head even has the same glóandi ‘glowing’ quality as the sía in Snorri’s adaptation of the myth (Skáldsk., ch. 18), and

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echoes other versions of the combat by framing it as a game: in Skáldskaparmál, Geirrøðr calls Þórr into the hall til leika ‘for games’ (ch. 18); Þorsteinn’s manipulations of the hallr are labelled in the same way in ch. 10 of his þáttr; the hallr is actually given to Þorsteinn (unlike the other gifts from the dvergr) til skemmtunar ‘for entertainment’ (ch. 3); and Saxo briefly sketches Geirrøðr’s monstrous custodians throwing a goatskin between themselves (Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, VIII, 14, 14).12 The seal’s head has lost the metallic quality of the sía (even the hallr is accompanied by a steel spike), but retained many of the trappings. Likely a similar mutation has happened in the case of the hallr. For medieval Nordic Christians, Þórr, Óðinn and their peers were a wrinkle in the stories of their ancestors that had, somehow, to be ironed out. As we have seen before in Sections 3.1 and 5.1, one way of dealing with this was to euhemerise those gods or to turn them into false idols. Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns attests to another mode of updating. Long after Eilífr Goðrúnarson composed Þórsdrápa, Þórr is still adventuring into the lands of jǫtnar – into the lands of literal giants – and suppressing the negative forces found there, but his name has changed and he has become a Christian. In spite of these transformations, several complexes of imagery have persisted from earlier texts, most prominent among them the red-hot weapon that perpetually decides the fight between Geirrøðr and Þórr. It may be that an image of lightning (or fire-striking and/or smithing) has become fire with the repackaging of this weapon, whether with the composition of this þáttr or at an earlier stage in the chain of transmission; eldr, eimyrja, gneistaflaug and elding can all be mapped out on a single, broad semantic field, and the text itself arguably associates the fire with lightning by paralleling it with sunshine and hail – implying that it too is meteorological. If so, however, it is not clear why the other phenomena are transparently named and lightning is not (especially when the text is so elaborate and precise in its description of the eldr ok eimyrja með gneistaflaug). Rather, this discrepancy points to fire as something unrelated, and the hallr’s inheritance in imagery of a stillspitting piece of iron drawn from a fire seems transparent. The main, direct inspiration for the throwing motif in this text is probably not knowledge of Þórr as a lord of lightning, but rather a previous depiction (or possibly several) of Þórr battling Geirrøðr with a weapon taken from a forge. The fire, embers and sparks are likely no more than as they are described.

6.4

Snorri: its fullest expression

An object in flight is a characteristic outcome of Þórr’s work in Snorri’s Edda. Mjǫllnir, in particular, is often thrown, and Snorri’s own comments suggest that the compiler saw this as the hammer’s main modus operandi: hrímþursar ok bergrisar kenna þá er hann kemr á lopt ‘rime-þursar and hill-giants know when it comes in the air’ (Gylf., ch. 21; similarly, Skáldsk., ch. 35; on the term þursar, see ch. 7, n. 7). Elsewhere in Snorri’s treatise, Þórr throws

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Mjǫllnir at Hrungnir and a toe into the sky as a star (Skáldsk., ch. 17), a stone at Geirrøðr’s daughter and the jarnsía at Geirrøðr himself (Skáldsk., ch. 18), a fishing line overboard and his hammer at Miðgarðsormr (Gylf., ch. 48). In each of these passages, Snorri uses the less vehement term kasta ‘to throw’ (Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874, s.v. ‘kasta’). The verb is a favourite of Snorri’s and appears again in a ceremony aimed at resurrecting Þórr’s goats – though it is the family of Þórr’s helper Þjálfi who perform the throwing at the god’s instruction rather than the god himself (Gylf., ch. 44) – as well as in episodes not related to Þórr (e.g. Gylf., ch. 8, 34, 50). Yet, in spite of the prevalence of the motif of Þórr throwing, the Edda never hints at a link with lightning nor shows that Snorri had any comprehension of such a connection. Snorri only once mentions thunder and lightning caused by Þórr and that is not in relation to Mjǫllnir (see Section 4.1). The heed Eilífr pays to the sía being fired downwards is replicated in Snorri’s prose only in the retelling of that same narrative (Skáldsk., ch. 18) and, implicitly, with Mjǫllnir in Gylfaginning’s version of the fishing trip (ch. 48) – yet this is as unavoidable here as it is in Bragi’s and Úlfr’s accounts of the same expedition, given the circumstances, the serpent’s home being the sea and Þórr’s place in a boat above that. The closest thing in Snorri’s characterisation of Þórr to foregrounding a downward direction to the hammer’s blows is his references to the god holding his hammer high before he strikes. Repeatedly in Snorri’s interpretations of Old Norse mythology, before it was cast by Þórr, fór á lopt hamarrinn Mjǫllnir ‘the hammer Mjǫllnir went into the air’ (Gylf., ch. 42; similarly, Gylf., ch. 48 and Skáldsk., ch. 18).13 However, the plausibility of this image having any connection with lightning is diminished by juxtaposing it with a similar phrase used by Snorri, which describes the hammer not necessarily raised but certainly brandished before it is released: during Skáldskaparmál’s account of the deity’s fight against Hrungnir, Þórr reiddi hamarinn ok kastaði um langa leið at Hrungni ‘swung the hammer and flung [it] over a long way at Hrungnir’ (ch. 17). Reiða, properly meaning ‘to ride, to carry’, can be used in the sense of ‘to swing’, which must be the intended meaning here (de Vries 1962, s.v. ‘reiða’). Snorri could have been hoping to denote that the hammer was swinging upwards, specifically, before being released from Þórr’s hand, but, if so, that is not overtly stated here. The two-part process, however, of readying and then flinging the hammer does mirror the formula above. Elsewhere reiða is used in instances without throwing; indeed, when Þórr reiddi ‘swung’ something before hitting Hymir, it was his fist; he had nothing to throw at all (Gylf., ch. 48). In Skáldskaparmál, when Þórr charged into the æsir’s hall to confront Hrungnir, he already hafði uppi á lopti hamarinn ‘had the hammer up in the air’ (ch. 17), effectively communicating his anger and preparedness for the fight to the text’s audience. Three times Þórr attempts to hit the jǫtunn Skrýmir with his hammer in Gylfaginning (ch. 45). During two of these attacks, the point is made that the hammer is reiðir ‘swung’ but this verb is missing from the

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description of the first effort, even though the outcome is the same. The absence of the preparation for a blow in the first case and its inclusion further on without increased success suggests that the brandishing or lifting of a weapon is purely an aesthetic touch, superficial to the operation as a whole. The brandished fist and swinging or raised hammer are of a piece: a fist must be readied to deliver a punch; a hammer must be brought up. The meaning in each example comes from the motif’s common place before the movement of the hammer or fist, where they offer a promise of the power of the blow, a visual indication of potential energy building up, and ultimately offer Snorri the opportunity to create a moment of tension before his protagonist strikes. In this, they fulfil the same literary function as images elsewhere in Snorri’s work of Þórr gripping his hammer so hard at hvítnuðu knúarnir ‘that the knuckles whitened’ (Gylf., ch. 44) or the god summoning up his strength before he strikes (see ch. 3, n. 9). While a symbol can be polysemous, there are no hints of extra meaning here, and nor does the motif’s use suggest that any of its authority derives from an extra-textual source, like the reality of lightning’s power. Another storyteller might incorporate this action into a figurative sketching of lightning. Snorri has not.

6.5

Mythological fingerprints

Even though Snorri’s goal is the creation of a storehouse of traditional concepts and images, like any artist his work adapts its source material according to his own tastes and those of his day (cf. McKinnell 1994, especially pp. 24–25). Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, too, attests to the renovations that can arise in a narrative tradition from pressures of genre, audience and cultural fashion. Yet that text also evidences the stability that a complex of concepts can nonetheless have: major elements like characters and the throwing image survive alongside apparent minutiae, such as the heat of the weapon used, its route out of the room, and framing of the conflict as a game. In this section, I will ponder why these complexes of imagery endure, beginning with the two-part brandishing image delineated repeatedly in the Edda, before looking at Snorri’s work in the context of its sources. Including one instance in which a fist is swung, Snorri employs the motif of weapon lifting ten times in eight passages involving Þórr (Gylf., ch. 21, 42, 44, 45, 47, 48; Skáldsk., ch. 17, 18), and a cluster of other concepts appears frequently in its orbit, as can be observed in Table 6.1. Included in that table are episodes in which Þórr moves his weapon in preparation for striking (sometimes denoted by the verbs reiða or bregða, though others are used too); these have been gathered under the phrase brandished weapon. Many of these scenes incorporate at least one killing blow delivered by the god, which are specified by deathblow(s). In three of the episodes (in Gylf., ch. 44, 45 and 47), this motif is gestured at but unfulfilled. Similarly, many episodes specifically detail the destruction (or attempted destruction) of a skull or head, and this too has been highlighted under skull damage. The verb

ásmegin

skull damage

fierce eyes grips hammer

hammer anger skull damage – attempted ásmegin

grips hammer

grips hammer

ásmegin fierce eyes

fierce eyes (Hrungnir’s)

thrown weapon thrown weapon hammer anger skull damage

brandished weapon deathblow(s)

hammer hammer anger (a jǫtunn’s) anger skull damage

brandished weapon deathblow(s)

hammer

brandished brandished weapon weapon deathblow(s) – deathblow(s) attempted thrown weapon hammer hammer anger anger skull damage

brandished weapon deathblow(s) – averted

brandished weapon deathblow(s)

brandished weapon deathblow(s)

brandished weapon deathblow(s) – attempted

Blessing his Meeting Skrýmir Meeting The Fishing Trip Encountering Games with goats (Gylf., ch. 45) Útgarða-Loki (Gylf., ch. 48) Hrungnir Geirrøðr (Gylf., ch. 44) (Gylf., ch. 47) (Skáldsk., ch. 17) (Skáldsk., ch. 18)

Profile of Þórr Giantbuilder (Gylf., ch. 21) (Gylf., ch. 42)

Table 6.1 The brandished weapon coalition

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grípa ‘grip’ appears on several occasions as a prelude to the hammer being raised in Gylfaginning. The hammer gripping action has also been included, therefore, as part of the chain of actions associated with his hammer being brandished. (Grípa only appears in connection with Þórr in Gylfaginning, including once outside this chain in ch. 50). Other concepts linked with Þórr – anger, throwing, fierce eyes and ásmegin ‘divine-strength’ – are also marked. Two possible associations have not been considered, as they seem too universal in mythology, yet arguably could be. The jǫtnar are ever-present in association with Þórr (and other gods) in Snorri’s Edda and appear in all but two of these episodes (though, regarding those exceptions, ÚtgarðaLoki could arguably be categorised as a jǫtunn, as could Þjálfi and Rǫskva’s father).14 Deception is also a feature in many of the episodes, though Þórr as often plays the victim as the perpetrator (Gylf., ch. 42, 45, 47, 48; Skáldsk., ch. 18 [where it is a little disconnected from the other motifs]). Despite the very different narrative situations, significant crossovers exist in terms of the concepts used in these episodes. Across these eight episodes, Þórr’s hammer appears seven times, he strikes a killing blow in five (and the motif is evoked in another three), his ásmegin is summoned in three, Þórr aims at or strikes a head in five, and attention is drawn to his or an opponent’s eyes in three. He also grips and throws his hammer in three episodes. Þórr’s dominant characteristic is his strength, which is most readily exploited by narratives of fury, killing and the violent use of a weapon. Hence, the concepts’ utility in telling these kinds of stories likely promotes their inclusion for Snorri: the focus on anger or Þórr’s weapon crunching into vital, vulnerable parts of the body like the skull adds substance and emphasis to the violence, for instance. Their repeated use together, moreover, strengthens the connections between them for an audience, introducing the expectation that when one concept appears in an episode about Þórr, so will others, particularly those that are frequently causally related to it (Kokinov et al. 2007; Taggart 2015, pp. 45–49; Upal 2010, pp. 197–198). Snorri himself acknowledges the connection between brandishing and a blow in his introduction to Mjǫllnir, which jǫtnar recognise þá er hann kemr á lopt . . . hann hefir lamit margan haus á feðrum eða frændum þeira ‘when it comes into the air . . . it has broken many a skull of their fathers or kin’ (ch. 21). This causal link between these concepts engenders a tension when the motif of brandishing is invoked, which is released when the hammer strikes down on whatever dvergr or jǫtunn has raised the storyteller’s hackles. Breaking the connection between these two concepts, which occurs in Þórr’s confrontations with Skrýmir, Útgarða-Loki, Hrungnir (in which the pay-off is very delayed) and Þjálfi and Rǫskva’s family, breaches an audience’s expectations (Gylf., ch. 44, 45, 47; Skáldsk., ch. 17). As Snorri demonstrates, this can be an effective dramatic tool. In the passage involving Skrýmir, for instance, the repeated failure of the raised hammer to connect with a deathblow forces an audience familiar with the cluster of concepts outlined above and the lethal outcome of more conventional Þórr narratives

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to question Þórr’s efficacy as a warrior, destabilising their understanding of the character and predictions for the narrative, and generating a sense of precariousness. Snorri makes the effect especially powerful in this case by foreshadowing Þórr’s failure at the beginning of the story with Gylfaginning’s narrators reluctance to answer the query Hvárt hefir Þórr hvergi svá farit at hann hafi hitt fyrir sér svá ríkt eða ramt at honum hafi ofrefli í verit fyrir afls sakar eða fjǫlkyngi? ‘Has Þórr never been in such a situation that he has met such power or might that he has been overwhelmed by strength or magic?’ (Gylf., ch. 44). The success of Snorri’s storytelling therefore does not rely on an audience believing that the narrative has cosmological consequences nor worshipping Þórr; rather, the tale engages on the same basis as any well-drawn hero narrative, by building tension and conflict. In this passage, Snorri ultimately provides an outlet for the tension with an explanation of the trickery at work (Gylf., ch. 47), though it is accompanied by another floundering strike, and, in the end, the slightly more successful bloodshed of the fishing trip (Gylf., ch. 48). The disconnection is also pronounced in the chapter about the family of Þjálfi and Rǫskva, in which Þórr brings about his goats’ resurrection by raising his hammer over the animals. Naturally, in this instance, the act is not immediately followed by an attempted deathblow. Instead, the brandishing motif, elsewhere (as far as a modern audience can tell) a portent of murder, takes on the antithetical purpose of blessing and vivification.15 Towards the end of the scene, however, the mood darkens when Þórr discovers one of his goats has been lamed. His eyes grow fierce, his knuckles whiten around Mjǫllnir, and the text hints that the brandishing motif may be about to develop into slaughter after all, almost as if the association was so strong that it has perverted the subject of the scene. Yet, again, the promise of violence is thwarted, as Þórr’s anger dissipates in the face of the family’s terror (and promises of compensation for his goat). Expectations are breached in at least two ways, again bringing a note of perilousness to the scene, especially over the safety over the family, that ultimately fades to a satisfying resolution. (The possible resemblance of the blessing action with the Eucharist may be a further disconcerting jolt for Snorri’s Christian audience: see ch. 6, n. 13). Strong conceptual bonds also have a mnemonic benefit that may have assisted the communication of these concepts into Snorri’s text.16 The type of cluster in Table 6.1 – and its success in transmission – is predicted by the work of Boicho Kokinov et al. (2007), who found that coalitions of concepts that are closely connected are more likely to be remembered than coalitions that are not. The repeated co-occurrence of concepts, in literature or reality, strengthens this kind of connection, fostering future recall of concepts like brandishing and hammer together (Upal 2010, p. 197), and causal connections, such as the links between Þórr’s hammer being raised, it hitting a jǫtunn and the jǫtunn dying, are particularly durable according to this strand of research (Kokinov et al. 2007; Myers et al. 1984; Reder and Anderson 1980; Trabasso and Sperry 1985). Such coalitions are not,

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therefore, discrete textual units but loose, unconsciously constructed conglomerates, which nonetheless should affect how consistent a narrative is across multiple tellings or when it is recomposed in a new form; its motifs should remain consistent if they are strongly related to each other. In this case, causally, these concepts proceed from Þórr’s semantic centre, the ásmegin he sometimes invokes before a battle, as echoes of the devastating force the god has in combat (the motif of fierce eyes is examined in this context below), and the god is anyway strongly linked himself with member motifs from the cluster like anger. As such, this cluster potentially acts as a reliable vehicle for the transmission of the god. Over time, these associations can negatively impact on a concept’s (or group of concepts’) memorability, as old associations become normative and even banal (Upal 2010, pp. 200–201). Counterintuitive manipulations of the associations between concepts, however, may not only alleviate this effect, but also increase the mnemonic advantage of the concepts involved. M. Afzal Upal (2010, pp. 197–198) proposes by way of illustration the strong connection between a bird and feathers – a bird without feathers breaks this association, creating a counterintuitive concept when it is first observed that is much more likely to be remembered than a normal bird. For an audience repeatedly confronted with the notion that Þórr’s hammer being raised results in the destruction of the antagonists of a narrative, the breaking of this connection in the chapters examined above should consequently be memorable as well as dramatically effective. Naturally, this sort of imagery is not limited to Snorri’s work: from elsewhere in the body of myths concerning Þórr, counterintuitive images abound, most transparently in Þrymskviða, though it might be debated whether Þórr’s transvestitism in this story is memorable because an unexpected element has been added (the wedding dress), a strong connection has been broken (with masculinity, his hammer or strength) or both. Certainly, counterintuitive imagery is created. For Snorri, the brandished weapon coalition was clearly essential to characterising Þórr: in his Edda, brandishing is largely limited to this god, and the cluster entirely so; few scenes involving Þórr omit a depiction of him swinging his weapon up before he kills, and Þórr is not paid much attention in the majority of those scenes that do (Prologue, ch. 9; Gylf., ch. 15, 49, 50, 51; Skáldsk., ch. 4, 35). For audiences, this kind of clustering and the violation of conceptual bonds might play some part in the Edda’s artistic accomplishments. For instance, the tension and catharsis bred by Þórr’s failure to hit Skrýmir and the danger to Þjálfi and Rǫskva’s family are attractive literary qualities. However, as a written text, the Edda does not need the cognitive assistance that comes with the formation and breaking of conceptual coalitions to facilitate its survival in the course of transmission. The brandished weapon coalition may, nevertheless, echo the sources from which Snorri compiled his text, explaining why these stories, built with this cluster of concepts at their core, have survived to be recorded by the compiler of the Edda.

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This is a difficult point to pursue further. Regarding Snorri’s relationship with his sources for these chapters, evidence is lacking, making it tough to ascertain if the brandished weapon coalition reproduces the semantics of Þórr in the wider conceptual ecosystem of Old Norse mythology and not just the compiler’s individual perspective. Examples of the motif of brandishing on its own can be procured from eddic and skaldic poetry but are rare (e.g. GíslMagnkv, st. 20; HHI, stt. 46:7–8, 51:9–10; Pétrsdrápa, st. 39; Vǫluspá, st. 46:5–6) – they are more abundant in Old Norse prose (see ONP, s.vv. ‘bregða’, ‘reiða’) – but the cluster catalogued here is not obvious elsewhere in Old Norse literature. It is impossible to say if the lack of this cluster elsewhere is more than a coincidence, as Snorri’s own sources on these incidents are, in large part, unavailable for comparison. Four of the seven passages dissected above that are narratives do not survive in developed forms elsewhere. In early medieval and Viking Age texts, the Skrýmir tale is only otherwise found in allusions (Hárbarðsljóð, st. 26; Lokasenna, stt. 60, 62), ÚtgarðaLoki has a cameo in Saxo’s history (Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, VIII, 15, 8) and the giantbuilder is an even more minor figure in Vǫluspá (stt. 24–26), while the actual blessing of the goats is only found in Snorri’s work. The tales of Hrungnir and Geirrøðr can be found in Haustlǫng and Þórsdrápa, but neither mentions any kind of brandishing (Snorri’s own rendition of Þórr’s battle with Geirrøðr itself only contains three of the motifs) – the motif in those cases may have been incorporated from other sources. Without better knowledge of the literary traditions behind these stories, it is impossible to say for sure if the clusters or these violations were Snorri’s innovations or his sources’. A body of texts reworking the fishing trip has persisted, however, and may be indicative. Among the above company, this narrative tradition is unique in two ways. The first is that only these texts attest to Þórr brandishing a weapon outside of Snorri’s Edda. The second is that, of all the chapters of the Edda considered above, only the fishing trip features all of the motifs identified in this cluster. This could indicate that the narrative was paradigmatic for Snorri – the portrayal of Þórr inherited from that story echoing through Gylfaginning and Skáldskaparmál – or simply result from multiple versions of this story being consolidated. Therefore, a survey of the brandished weapon coalition in renditions of Þórr’s fishing trip has been undertaken to better appraise Snorri’s relationship with his sources (Table 6.2). I have also taken this as an opportunity to assess the cohesion of this group of motifs and their capacity to resist change in the face of successive authors’ reworking of the narrative. Reliable witnesses to change in Old Norse mythology are few, due in large part to a lack of comparative data. Of the long-standing narrative traditions that must have existed, of the uncountable iterations of a single tale that might have been passed on for centuries, often only a single rendition survives, if one does at all. The weight of attestation to the fishing trip, then, makes it extremely useful.

Hymiskviða

fierce eyes

thrown weapon feet ásmegin skull damage

fierce eyes

thrown weapon feet ásmegin skull damage fists bang anger grips hammer

anger

hammer

hammer

skull damage

thrown weapon?

hammer (presumed) fierce eyes

deathblow(s)

fists bang

fierce eyes

feet

fierce eyes

hammer

feet

Gosforth Hørdum fragment stone (CASSS Gosforth 6)

brandished brandished weapon weapon

deathblow(s) (presumed) hammer hammer hammer (presumed) fierce eyes fierce eyes (Miðgarðsormr)

brandished weapon

Poem about Þórr Húsdrápa by Poem about Poem about Þórr’s Fishing by Altuna stone by Ǫlvir hnúfa Úlfr Uggason Þórr by Eysteinn Þórr by Gamli Bragi Boddason (U 1161) (ǪlvÞórr) Valdason gnævaðarskáld (EValdÞórr) (GgnævÞórr)

brandished brandished none weapon weapon deathblow(s) deathblow(s)

Snorri’s Fishing Trip (Gylf., 48)

Table 6.2 A comparison of motifs from the fishing trip

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Two motifs that were not evaluated earlier have been included in Table 6.2 as they are helpful for gauging continuity between these visual and literary sources: Þórr’s fists banging down on the side of the boat, labelled as fists bang, and the god’s foot or feet pushing through a surface beneath him, which has been dubbed feet. Regarding Gamli gnævaðarskáld’s Poem About Þórr, a hammer and deathblow are implied by the idea that Þórr nam rjúfa ‘took to smashing’ Miðgarðsormr (GgnævÞórr, st. 1), and are on that basis acknowledged above; though a different weapon could originally have been present in that poem, the verb suits the kind of violence that might be expected of Mjǫllnir (and his weapon in this narrative is consistently a hammer when it is described or carved). A hammer is presumed for the same reason in Húsdrápa (st. 6). Bragi exploits the image of a deathblow/ skull being split but removed from the action of the narrative in a kenning for Þórr (Þórr’s fishing, st. 4), so this appearance of these motifs has not been reported in Table 6.2 although it may have been inspired by the motif cluster. The fishing trip is chronicled in stanzas 20–24 of Hymiskviða, but material has been drawn from elsewhere in the poem for reasons that will be explained below. The majority of the motifs (thrown weapon, ásmegin, skull damage and feet) can be found in stanzas 29–34, though the hammer is brandished and deathblows delivered in stanza 36, and anger refers to the portrayal of Þórr as orðbæginn ‘peevish’ in stanza 3 (see also Hymir’s anger in, for example, st. 9). Hymir’s deadly, pillar destroying gaze (st. 12) is presumably inspired by Þórr’s fierce eyes (cf. the œgigeislar ‘terror-beams’ shot from them in Húsdrápa, st. 3), though relentless glaring is not limited to the god as a mythic and heroic motif and may be associated with the jǫtunn separately. The battle of gazes found in other versions of the story may be best mirrored by a staring competition earlier in the poem between Þórr and Ægir (Hymiskviða, st. 2). The motif of deception has been excluded from this table, as it was from Table 6.1, though it may previously have been more prominent in this narrative tradition (see Section 4.5.3). Acknowledged in the table are several picture stones: the Altuna stone from Uppland in Sweden (U 1161; Figure 6.1), the Hørdum stone from North Jutland in Denmark (Figure 6.2) and a slab of stone from the village of Gosforth in Cumbria, England (CASSS Gosforth 6), which may once have been part of a cross (on the association of these stones with the story, see Wills 2013, § 50–57; cf. Meulengracht Sørensen 1986, pp. 262–265). The Ardre VIII stone (SHM 11118:VIII) is sometimes also connected with the story, but this is dismissed in Section 2.1.3 (cf. Meulengracht Sørensen 1986, p. 262). Even on the Altuna, Hørdum and Gosforth stones, the presence of motifs can be disputed. For example, like many iconographic serpents, the snake on the Altuna stone sports fierce eyes; whether the stone’s Þórr does the same (and is not represented with, for example, a crude nose) is debatable. Arguably, carving eyes into stone without making them prominent is challenging, which makes identifying this motif (and decoding identity in figural iconography based on this detail) problematic (cf. Ljungberg 1947,

Figure 6.1 The Altuna stone (U 1161) Photograph: Riksantikvarieämbetet and Bengt A. Lundberg

Figure 6.2 The Hørdum stone Photograph: Nationalmuseet

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pp. 125–126; Perkins 2001, pp. 67, 72, 101–102, 123). On the Gosforth fragment, only one of the figures has been fashioned with eyes, perhaps recognising the artistic predicament of delineating pronounced eyes and thereby distinguishing a fierce-eyed god from his weaker jǫtunn companion. Yet the carver could as easily have intended to represent one of the figures with their head turned away. As this is ambiguous, the motif has been left off the table in this instance. Even focusing on the fishing trip, one of the fuller narrative traditions remaining from Old Norse mythology, discerning Snorri’s debt to his sources is not easy. Juxtaposing his adaptation with that of Hymiskviða finds that nine motifs are held in common out of the eleven in the brandished weapon coalition. The other sources retain fewer of these motifs but are fragmented to an extent that cannot be over-emphasised, which forbids a modern audience from accessing the totality of their conceptual inventory for comparison. Only four lines are known of Gamli gnævaðarskáld’s thoughts on the fishing expedition and only two by Ǫlvir hnúfa. This is reflected in the contribution from these poems to Table 6.2. Ill-preservation has afflicted the picture stones in a similar way. The fragment from Gosforth, for example, shows no sign of a giant snake, though one was likely present originally, judging from the elaborate snakelike figures on a cross found nearby (cf. Meulengracht Sørensen 1986, p. 262). Þórr’s eyes may simply have worn off the Altuna stone. Similarly, not all the motifs – anger, gripping a hammer, summoning strength – can be easily portrayed in iconography, which means that these can occur in a maximum of seven sources (and this may have a further repercussion as Úlfr claims to be composing from a visual source [on Húsdrápa and its material reality, see Shortt Butler 2014]). Nonetheless, within these ten versions of the fishing trip, the same motifs are encountered repeatedly, in spite of the hundreds of years that passed between the concoction of the earliest and of the latest (Bragi’s life has been dated to the early ninth century, while Snorri’s text was probably set down in the thirteenth [Meulengracht Sørensen 1986, pp. 259–260]). A weapon is brandished and wielded in half of the sources; the hammer is present (twice tacitly) in seven; eyes are a major focus in seven and the head or skull in three; and Þórr’s foot or feet go through a floor or the bottom of a boat in four. Few motifs appear in less than three sources, and the table may have been more fully completed were these texts and images themselves more completely preserved. Gylfaginning and Hymiskviða have the most motifs in common; indeed, certain motifs, like the story of Þórr fetching an ox’s head and Hymir’s disgruntlement at rowing so far, surface only in these texts. Yet Snorri was not reliant on the poem. Hymiskviða and Gylfaginning use the motifs in radically different ways – to the point where they no longer concern the fishing expedition at all in the former – and Snorri clearly had more than one source, from the multiple endings he cites to the story and the numerous quotations from poems about it that are dotted throughout Skáldskaparmál (on the

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slight linguistic evidence of crossover, see von See et al. 1997, pp. 275–276). When the at least partial independence of Hymiskviða and Gylfaginning is set against the comprehensive accounting of the brandished weapon coalition in both texts (even discounting the lesser but still considerable representation of the coalition in the other sources), it proposes that Snorri did not unify various stockpiles of motifs to compose Gylfaginning, ch. 48. More likely, he received the majority of the motifs already grouped, and the cluster was more intrinsic to other literary renditions of the fishing expedition than can be gleaned from the copies that we have. Certainly, it is not uniquely Snorri’s conceptualisation of Þórr. It is harder to say if the Edda’s prevailing conceptualisation of Þórr is inherited from and moulded on the fishing trip. The motifs are used so contrarily in Hymiskviða that they may actually disclose another narrative tradition, concerning Þórr and the breaking of a goblet and/or lifting of a kettle, that also utilises the cluster, though the simplest explanation given the dispersion of the motifs throughout Hymiskviða is that the cluster has simply been recontextualised in the construction of the poem. The re-use of the cluster in this way in Hymiskviða and in other stories from the Edda does, though, demonstrate that it did not rely on an association with Miðgarðsormr and angling. Given Snorri’s attempts at faithfulness to his sources (which extends, as mentioned before, to documenting multiple endings to the fishing story), this flexibility allows that the brandished weapon coalition was woven into accounts of Þórr’s encounters with, for instance, Hrungnir and Skrýmir that are no longer extant. That the cluster has undergone a sweeping transformation in Hymiskviða whilst retaining its cohesiveness advertises, in its own way, the efficacy of the mnemonic imperatives at work. This poem is constructed from a series of tests of Þórr’s strength, including a short re-tread of the fishing trip story, an attempt to break a goblet belonging to Hymir, the lifting of a cauldron and a battle with Hymir himself. The coalition of motifs that usually accompanies Þórr’s pursuit of Miðgarðsormr appears to have been used here as the conceptual architecture of, chiefly, these latter three scenes. This transposing has necessitated some manipulation of the images so that they fit into their new contexts. In addition to the re-engineering of anger and fierce eyes in the fashion discussed above, the thrown weapon is Hymir’s kálcr ‘goblet’ (st. 29:5–6) – though the hammer does appear elsewhere in the text – and Þórr’s feet are now pushed through the floor of Hymir’s home, instead of the planking of the boat, from the effort of lifting the hverr ‘cauldron’ (st. 34:3–4; on interpreting this stanza, see McKinnell 1994, p. 80; von See et al. 1997, pp. 345–346). The motifs remain recognisable and continue to perform, in one way or another, the function of demonstrating Þórr’s strength. In fact, despite the re-appropriation, the concepts’ closeness persists: seven, from a total of nine, are recorded in stanzas 29–36 (around one-fifth of the poem, though covering three different tests of strength). The cluster’s cohesiveness is therefore again emphasised.

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Some fragmentation has occurred in Hymiskviða. The cluster has come apart under the pressure of the poet’s reduction of the fishing trip episode to just a few stanzas. Fierce eyes, whether taking Ægir and Þórr as its subject or Hymir, is found at a much earlier stage in the poem. There are no references to anger near the motif cluster either. Rather, the distance is great enough, and images of furious supernatural beings are ubiquitous enough in myth, that these particular displays of annoyance could be unrelated to the coalition. Þórr is often angry, as are jǫtnar (e.g. Grottasǫngr, st. 23:4; Gylf., ch. 42, 44, 45, 49; Skáldsk., ch. 17; Vǫluspá, stt. 26:2, 50:4, 56:5; Þrymskviða, st. 1:1). Some of the thematic harmony of the motifs has been lost with the splitting of the cluster into groups dealing with differing tests of strength, even if the binding theme of Þórr and his strength endures. So too some of the causal links between motifs in the group have been torn apart. Once strong associations have been diluted. Even allowing for the cohesion that remains, it might be wondered if this form of the fishing trip would be less easily and accurately memorised than the others. Kokinov et al. (2007, pp. 325–326, 327) claim that a strongly associated coalition of concepts should not be easily influenced by its context, preventing external elements from entering the group, though causal or thematic relations between the new motif and the old mitigate this effect somewhat (Myers et al. 1984; Reder and Anderson 1980). Accordingly, the contortion of the fishing trip cluster and the addition of new conceptual bonds should be instructive regarding the nature of this material’s composition and transmission. The only motif in Snorri’s paraphrasing of the brandishing cluster that does not appear in the other texts is grips hammer (Hymiskviða does note that Þórr greip á stafni ‘grasped onto the stem’ of his boat [st. 27:2], but, not fulfilling the same function as the gripped hammer in Snorri’s Edda, this is unlikely to be related). The uniqueness of this motif and its close association with Þórr only in Gylfaginning implies that, even if Snorri did obtain the cluster already completed, he has added to it.17 Furthermore, he has added a motif that is thematically harmonious with the others that were already there, which apes and supplements brandished weapon, ásmegin and anger as a sign of Þórr’s strength and intention to strike. Grips hammer’s appearance elsewhere in Gylfaginning, in an episode that does not mention brandished weapon (ch. 49) gestures toward it having attained a general relevance in Snorri’s mind to Þórr, which may assist its intrusion into preexisting conceptual conglomerations involving the god. Conclusions regarding other apparent innovations in the cluster like feet or fierce eyes are harder to form. Feet appears in four sources, the Altuna and Hørdum stones, Gylfaginning and Hymiskviða, and its addition to the cluster is given a terminus ante quem of the eleventh century at the latest by the iconography (McKinnell 1994, p. 17; Meulengracht Sørensen 1986, p. 260). Beyond that, no one can say when the motif was introduced nor provide specifics about the cultural context into which it was spawned – nor, consequently, particularise its impact on a contemporary audience.

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The motif could have been a familiar artistic means of displaying strength: as McKinnell points out (1994, p. 80), it is also incorporated into Þorsteinn bæjarmagn’s wrestling match, though in a form more similar to Hymiskviða than the other fishing trip sources (Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, ch. 7), and I know of no additional examples that would bolster this argument. Either way, the notion of Þórr’s foot forcing its way through the bottom of the boat is certainly a theatrical way of accentuating the strain on Þórr and, by emphasising the strength of the opponent pulling down on him, the hazard the god faces. In its iconographical depiction, the foot does not descend very deeply, so, originally, the image may not have violated its audience’s expectations enough to be considered counterintuitive according to the schema proposed by researchers like Upal.18 Snorri does record a more fantastical idea, that Þórr pushes so hard that his feet stretched from the water’s top to its bottom where they braced against the sea-bed, which would presumably have satisfied Upal’s criteria for its original audiences (legs not conventionally possessing such length). If this was Snorri’s own twist, any resulting mnemonic benefit is irrelevant to his variant’s survival, though it would provide a fresh and quirky ingredient to a familiar tale; otherwise, the counterintuitive quality of the image would have boosted the memorability of the concept and the narrative in oral transmission until it reached the step of being recorded in manuscripts of Gylfaginning. The history of fierce eyes is more complex. It too probably involves an accumulation of counterintuitive properties, though in reply to (and perhaps augmentation of) wider literary conventions. In the eldest text, Bragi’s Þórr’s fishing, only the serpent glares (st. 4). While a stanza detailing Þórr’s gaze could be missing from here, these stanzas are coherent enough that one is not needed. By the time of Eysteinn and Úlfr, Þórr is staring back and even, in Úlfr’s conception, shooting œgigeislar ‘œgir-beams’ at his opponent from his eyes (EValdÞórr, st. 2; Húsdrápa, st. 3). It is tempting, given the stanzas that survive from Bragi and the language used by Úlfr, to state that the counterintuitive image of Þórr shooting horrific beams from his eyes actually first enters this narrative tradition through a comparison with the serpent, which, potentially, brings a strange, dangerous nuance to Þórr’s presentation. The language used to describe the beams and the god’s enemy reinforces this impression. In keeping with other descriptions of snakes in Old Norse literature, for Úlfr, Miðgarðsormr is fránleitr ‘fránn-looking’ (Húsdrápa, st. 4:4; similarly, st. 6:6). Though semantically complex, fránn is normally translated as ‘gleaming’ or ‘flashing’ and is most intimately connected with the glinting appearance of serpents, though it is also encountered in association with the sheen of great weapons and the eyes of kings or heroes (e.g. with snakes, Grípisspá, st. 11:2; Guðrúnarhvǫt, st. 17:7; Skírnismál, st. 27:7; Vǫlundarkviða, stt. 17:6, 18:7; Vǫluspá, st. 66:3. With weapons, Fáfnismál, st. 1:5; Geisli, st. 29:6. With kings and warriors, Erfidrápa Óláfs helga, st. 13:8; Jómsvíkingadrápa, st. 25:2; Sexstefja, st. 12:1; SigvKnútdr, st. 7:4). Its basic connotation seems to be negative in the way it conjures the danger

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and unpredictability of a snake, but it also insinuates power and especially authority (see further Missuno 2012, pp. 169–175). In this context, the equivalence drawn in Fáfnismál between Sigurðr, inn fráneygi sveinn ‘the fránn-eyed boy’ (st. 5:4), and his rival Fáfnir, inn fráni ormr ‘the fránn snake’ (st. 26:5), is edifying: the fearsome descriptions of Þórr’s stare likewise signify the god as his enemy’s equal.19 Œgir, present in œgigeislar, further ties Þórr into the web of imagery drawn around his enemy. The term, conventionally translated as ‘terror’, was evidently intended to betoken aggression, fearsomeness and even provoke awe (Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874, s.v. ‘œgir’; de Vries 1962, s.v. ‘œgir’). It co-exists readily with fránn, as again Fáfnismál shows: Fáfnir wears an ægishiálmr ‘helmet of œgir’, which may once have been a metaphorical attribute of the snake, though it is understood as a physical object by the compiler of the Poetic Edda (Fáfnismál, prose epilogue; Reginsmál, prose after st. 14. See Missuno 2012, p. 174).20 Nonetheless, œgir does not seem as inherently depreciatory as fránn: even as Bragi applies the noun to Miðgarðsormr (Þórr’s Fishing, st. 6), other skalds call upon it in the characterisation of kings (GíslMagnkv, st. 9:3; Hákonarmál, st. 3:7; Háttatal, st. 55:1; Óláfsdrápa, st. 12:7), and three poems even depict rulers marching into battle under replicas of Fáfnir’s ægishjálmr (Hákonarkviða, st. 14:2; Hrynhenda, st. 8:8; Hrynhenda, Magnússdrápa, st. 6:4). Bragi, in fact, styles Þórr himself œgir (Þórr’s Fishing, st. 3). The application of the term to the god and especially to the god’s eyes has an ambiguous effect then. Certainly, œgir elevates Þórr, highlighting that his savagery and might are the equal of his enemy in a way that fits with the violence of the moment in Húsdrápa, the connotations of œgir being apt for beams skaut ‘shot’ like missiles (st. 3). As presumably Sigurðr’s fránn eyes were inspired by his defining rivalry with Fáfnir, Bragi’s and Úlfr’s handling of œgir adds to the impression that Þórr’s fierce eyes were forged in response to Miðgarðsormr’s terrible gaze, especially in the work of the former poet, who ascribes the quality to both protagonist and antagonist. The gesture towards parity between Þórr and Miðgarðsormr does not extend for any of these poets to actually labelling the deity’s gaze as fránn. Instead, according to Eysteinn Valdason, Þórr’s eyes are hvassligr ‘sharp’, hvass being a term also commonly used to describe weapons but with less of a pejorative undertone (EValdÞórr, st. 2:2. Cf. Atlakviða, stt. 7:6, 19:2; Fáfnismál, stt. 6:3, 28:3, 29:6; st. Grípisspá, 15:6; Grottasǫngr, st. 6:6; Sigrdrífumál, st. 20:3). While fránn and hvass are almost synonymous in some contexts, and hvass is used elsewhere of eyes and heroes, it never describes serpents (Guðrúnarhvǫt, st. 12:1; HHII, stt. 2:1, 11:5; Þrymskviða, st. 25:4). Hvass’s employment in Helgakviða Hundingsbana II conveys succinctly its nuances: Helgi, at that point in the poem disguised as a handmaid, is revealed as more than a karls ætt ‘servant’s offspring’ by his hvǫss eyes and strength (st. 2:1–4).21 The adjective announces authority and ferocity, encompassing much of what is positive about fránn while avoiding the negative. Whilst fránn is used to

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describe the most heroic of heroes and in a flattering eleventh-century tribute to Óláfr inn Helgi (Erfidrápa Óláfs helga, st. 13:8) – and perhaps its worst colourings gradually subsided with such use – Eysteinn is still circumspect in his choice of vocabulary in the tenth century. He insulates Þórr from the worst overtones of the correlation with Miðgarðsormr, but still draws from the tensions and cultural heritage of that class of comparison. Innovation may have been placed on top of innovation in the fishing trip tradition’s treatment of Þórr’s fierce eyes. Where once Þórr’s gaze was horrible, ferocious and somewhat snakelike, at some point it developed into beams of terror, a quality that was later probably taken on by the jǫtunn Hymir in Hymiskviða (st. 12). This accumulation of remarkable qualities may have emerged as imagery became hackneyed for audiences through exposure, challenging authors to enliven the motif complex and thereby reinvigorating its memorability (cf. Upal 2010, pp. 200–201). Initially, for example, fierce eyes’s negative characteristics and association with Þórr’s enemy could have had a mnemonic, as well as aesthetic, benefit by breaching the expectations of an audience who had not encountered the motif before – though we cannot know if the concept’s wider cultural capital, and possible forerunners like Sigurðr’s fránn eyes, would have normalised the image and reduced its counterintuitive impact. The counterintuitiveness of the œgigeislar can be more confidently assumed (particularly when shot by Hymir). In later iterations of the narrative, the strong bond between fierce eyes and Þórr seems assured, not least because it was attributed to Þórr in texts not about the fishing trip, a strength of association that would have reduced the cognitive resources needed to remember the cluster as a whole. The concept’s wider literary salience as a sign of ferocity and might, like others in the cluster, may also have facilitated its memorisation, while characterising Þórr relative to his enemy and generating tension in the narrative. It is probably impossible to know if these depictions of Þórr’s eyes responded to the cultural prominence of fierce eyes or if they engendered and encouraged the motif’s broader use; possibly the answer is, to some degree, both. I began this chapter by wondering why a motif like throwing – later focusing on brandishing – can appear so regularly in literature about Þórr and at the impact that recontextualisation would have on its meaning. Continuity seems natural when a text is manifestly indebted to a literary tradition or concerns multiple presentations of the same character, and the adaptations of the fishing trip are in step with this, appearing to have remained very faithful to their antecedents. Yet information can be changed radically or forgotten in the course of communication and especially oral communication (see Boyer 2002, pp. 37–38; Schacter 1999). The stability of the fishing trip tradition should, therefore, be traced to specific mnemonic properties in its makeup. Through the strong (often causal) conceptual bonds between its motifs, the coalition resists vicissitude, even in spite of as complete a restructuring and reinterpretation as it receives in Hymiskviða. Paradoxically, stability also depended on change: the memorability of the cluster

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would have been enhanced as artists transfigured its imagery with striking innovations, though the original impact of ideas like Þórr’s fierce eyes cannot be fully assessed without knowing more about their cultural environment when they first became associated with the god. Either way, Þórr’s strength is once more revealed as fundamental, whether in enabling the creation of memorably counterintuitive conceits, such as feet plunging to the sea-bed and œgigeislar, or in the thematic unity of the cluster. The capacity of Þórr as a concept to adapt to popular, exciting artistic contexts appears to have been pivotal to the god’s survival and cultural stability, and strength was an attribute that facilitated this process. With this combination of adaptability and salience, groups of motifs like the brandished weapon coalition provided effective, durable vessels for the god-concept Þórr.

6.6

The motif of throwing

Vetrliði Sumarliðason, Þorbjǫrn dísarskáld and the other skaldic and eddic poets considered in this chapter were working in a mode of expression that was constrained by strict formal and spatial structures. Their prevailing concern for the force of Þórr’s blows – the way they crash and smash and pulverise his enemies – rather than the specific manner in which each killing was accomplished is a symptom of the poet’s fight to compose provocative imagery in these tight confines from the closely associated concepts that can congregate around a figure in an oral tradition. A faint line can be drawn between poetry like Vetrliði Sumarliðason’s stanza on Þórr’s killings, which essentially summarises deeds, and those like Úlfr Uggason’s Húsdrápa that use a longer form to unfurl stories. Húsdrápa offers Úlfr the looseness to develop an image over a stanza or even over several, making it easier to offer information about Þórr’s methods as well as the god’s power. This split is even clearer from Snorri’s work. The image of Þórr hurling his hammer is more dominant in the Edda than in the surviving poetic corpus, which may reflect the greater centrality of the action of throwing to Snorri’s personal conception of Þórr or simply the freedom that prose offered the Edda’s compiler (and the author of Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns) to incorporate imagery of throwing and to elaborate upon that. However, even allowing for such biases in poetry against baroque portrayals of throwing, the few slivers of such imagery that do survive cannot be understood as proof of a major connection between Þórr and lightning and nor, given the rarity of direct connections between lightning and throwing, does it seem like throwing’s popularity derives from a connection with thunder and lightning. The alternative would mean stressing the weakest beats of the evidence and ignoring the strongest. No definite evidence of a connection between this motif and lightning exists in medieval northern literature outside that of Saxo’s Gesta Danorum and Þjóðólfr Arnórsson’s lausavísa on the smith and tanner, two sources that have to be approached carefully.

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Strength, on the other hand, is an ever-present. More usually in these sources, Mjǫllnir functions as any other blunt weapon would, beating Þórr’s enemies without ever leaving his hand, but even thrown objects are often associated with strength. Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns actually constructs a competition of muscle out of the act of throwing a seal’s head, and the same purpose motivates the throwing in Þórsdrápa. The two combatants take turns to throw the sía at one another and Þórr’s throw is paraded as the mightier (Þórsdrápa, stt. 16–19). Thus, the poem establishes the deity’s physical superiority over Geirrøðr, just as it does through the áss’s elevation over his enemy. Acts like heaving Þjazi’s eyes and Aurvandill’s toe into the sky (Hárbarðsljóð, st. 19:3; Skáldsk., ch. 17) or even Þórr’s threat to throw Loki á austrvega ‘on the easternway’ (Lokasenna, st. 59:4–5) cannot be connected with lightning even by analogy and can only be demonstrations of prodigious might. The examples from Snorri’s Edda and the different iterations of the fishing trip exhibit further the importance of strength to Þórr’s survival, being the theme through which robust conglomerations of motifs gather. The image of Þórr throwing his hammer could have originated in an ancient tradition of a lightning flinging deity, but if this convention ever did exist, it has left only a hazy impression on Old Norse mythology. This study is not searching for origins, as interesting as they are. It is concerned instead with the imageries and modes of composition that were familiar to Viking Age and early medieval audiences. If there was a wider appreciation of Þórr as a thunder god, then this connection might have been perceived by those audiences when Þórr was described throwing his hammer at a jǫtunn. Today, however, little linked with the imagery of throwing supports this hypothesis.

Notes 1 This translation of nesta as ‘needle in a brooch’ is itself controversial, as the noun it is based on is otherwise unattested (cf. nist, nisti ‘needle in a brooch, fibula’ [Reichardt 1948, p. 385; Kiil 1956, p. 157]). However, ‘brooch’ is the best translation that can be reached without emendation, and this fits with the depiction of the sía in other texts, like Saxo’s and Snorri’s, as a metallic object (cf. Þórsdrápa, 19:8n). 2 The Uppsala manuscript quotes two stanzas of poetry based on this story, one of which is not extant in the other manuscripts of the Edda (Snorri Sturluson 2012, v62, v63), demonstrating that Snorri could have known other versions of the story besides that of Þórsdrápa. Cf. Turville-Petre 1964, p. 79. 3 Þórr’s strength and intimidating traits are accentuated throughout Þórsdrápa, with kenningar referring to him as a killer of jǫtnar (e.g. stt. 1, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13) and explicit statements of the stoutness of his body and mind (stt. 2, 8, 9, 10, 11). These qualities are conveyed, too, by the poem’s action – by Þórr’s clashes against his foes, from the flow of a river (actually labelled an aflraun ‘trial of strength’ in stanza 10) and by jǫtnar fleeing from him (st. 13). 4 It is not clear in the other surviving skaldic poetry about this incident whether the hammer is thrown or not – the relevant stanzas have been lost (or were never composed) in all but Húsdrápa and Gamli gnævaðarskáld’s Poem about Þórr. In

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5 6

7 8

9

10 11

12

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Gamli’s single surviving helmingr, Þórr nam rjúfa ‘took to smashing’ Miðgarðsormr (GgnævÞórr, st. 1:4) – the hammer may leave Þórr’s hand, but the poet leaves room for interpretation. The eddic poem Hymiskviða and Gylfaginning do not. In Snorri’s rendition, Þórr kastaði hamrinum ‘Þórr threw the hammer’ after the serpent (Gylf., ch. 48; cf. Snorri Sturluson 2012, ch. 29), whereas Hymiskviða declares that Þórr kníði ‘struck’ the serpent, which the god had dró . . . upp at borði ‘dragged . . . up to the shipboard’, drawing a picture of Þórr leaning over the side of the ship when he hits his enemy on its head (st. 22:1–2). The verb knýja, a word that can also be used to refer to vigorously striking a harp or rowing, for example, offers no sense of flight, only of the destructive quality of the blow (Lexicon Poeticum, s.v. ‘knýja’). Verpa is also used to describe these eyes being flung in Bragi’s poetry, though Snorri interprets this as a reference to Óðinn (BragiFrags, st. 2:1; Skáldsk., ch. G56). Slá seems to describe a throw in Hymiskviða, st. 29:5, though it is more commonly used to signify a pounding action (e.g. Gylf., ch. 45, in which it refers to the playing of a musical instrument, and Vǫlundarkviða, stt. 5:3, 20:2, 25:7, 36:3, in which it expresses the sound of a smith’s hammer). Similarly, Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson define berja as ‘to strike, beat, smite’, though they also provide evidence that it was used to mean ‘to stone’ (1874, s.v. ‘berja’), and this seems the sense in Hárbarðsljóð, st. 29, in which Þórr’s enemies throw stones at him. The majority of the appearances of berja in connection with Þórr are, nevertheless, in a more general sense, such as when Snorri comments that Þórr travelled in the east at berja troll ‘to smite trolls’ (Gylf., ch. 42). On dating the þáttr, see Pulsiano et al. 1993, s.v. ‘Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns’. A þáttr is a form of short story. Simpson (1966, 11n, p. 5) wonders at the odd detail of the eagle antagonist of this episode, such an antagonist being rare, but (besides the comparison Simpson herself offers) the notion of a jǫtunn taking the form of an eagle to kidnap one of the ásynjur may lurk in this tale’s genealogy (Haustlǫng, stt. 1–13; Skáldsk., ch. G56). Cf. also Hræsvelgr, a iotunn, í arnar ham ‘jǫtunn, in eagle’s shape’ (Vafþrúðnismál, st. 37:3), the tale of the theft of the mead of poetry, in which Óðinn and a jǫtunn named Suttungr take on the shapes of eagles (Skáldsk., ch. G58), and the duos eximie granditatis aquilos ‘two enormous, eagle-headed demons’ in Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum (2015, vol. 1, VIII, 15,4). Lindow also points out that the technical forging term hnjóða ‘strike’ is never used to describe Þórr’s use of Mjǫllnir in Snorri’s work (1994, p. 487), and this could be extended to literature more widely, though the term is used repeatedly to describe the work of Vǫlundr (the only confirmed smith in the mythological section of the Poetic Edda) is slá (e.g. Vǫlundarkviða, stt. 5:3, 20:2, 25:7, 36:3). Slá is used to describe a blow from Þórr (Hymiskviða, st. 29:5), but not in connection with Mjǫllnir; Þórr’s hammer-wielding is consistently articulated through verbs of violence rather than of smithing (see Section 4.5). The details of the temple are not corroborated in any other Icelandic source. Nonetheless, its layout in Eyrbyggja saga has intrigued scholars for years. On the possible source value of the saga’s account, see Sundqvist 2009, pp. 70–72. The meaning of óss, a hapax legomenon, is implied by the Norwegian Nynorsk os, which is defined by Ivar Aasen as brusende, sprudlende; især om jern, som sprutter eller gnistrer meget under hammeren ‘fizzing, sparkling; especially of iron, which crackles or sparks a lot under the hammer’ (1918, s.v. ‘os’; see Þórsdrápa, 18:5–6n). The seal’s head game also marries the motif of Þórr throwing a forged object with a trope in which supernatural creatures compete violently by flinging an object at each other (e.g. Bárðar saga Snæfellsáss, ch. 13; Fóstbræðra saga,

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15 16

17

18

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ch. 22). This may be an inversion of normal modes of hospitality and entertainment, much like, in Skáldskaparmál, Geirrøðr calling Þórr into the hall for games nods toward a conventional relationship between a host and guest, which is immediately upturned with Geirrøðr’s attack. On contemporary cultural attitudes to games and sports, see Gardeła 2012. For further discussion of the competition’s possible sources, see Power 1985, p. 163, and Simpson 1966, pp. 13–14. Elsewhere, to bring about the resurrection of his goats, Þórr tók hamarinn Mjǫllni ok brá upp ok vígði hafrstǫkurnar ‘took the hammer Mjǫllnir and lifted it up and blessed the goat-skins’ (Gylf., ch. 44), in a manner akin to a Catholic priest blessing the Eucharist in mass. On this, cf. Snorri’s account of Hákon Aðalsteinsfóstri making the sign of the cross over a sacrificial cup, which is glossed by a companion as a symbol of Þórr’s hammer (Hákonar saga góða, ch. 17), suggesting the rites were similar enough that one could be mistaken for the other, at least in the view of the story’s Christian, Icelandic audience. Alternatively, Snorri might have been influenced by the Christian rituals he knew in his portrayal of a preChristian rite or simply designed the scene as a counterpoint to the destruction of life that usually follows Þórr raising his weapon (see further Section 6.5). The raised hammer here could therefore have separate origins to the other episodes using this motif, or reflect a confluence of Christian and pre-Christian influences. In either case, it is a stretch to link this reverent scene to lightning. The blessing given by Þórr here is discussed further in Section 7.2.2. Útgarða-Loki is only taxonomised as konungr (Gylf., ch. 46; cf. Clunies Ross 1994, pp. 265–268, and Lindow 2001, s.v. ‘Útgarda-Loki [Loki-of-the-Útgards]’, for opposing views of the subject), whilst, although Þjálfi and Rǫskva’s father is described as a búandi ‘farmer’ in Gylfaginning (ch. 44), Hymiskviða, st. 38:5, marks him out as a hraunbúa ‘lava-dweller’, which is an appropriate circumlocution for a jǫtunn (Fritzner 1886–1896, s.v. ‘hraunbúi’). The hammer is not raised by Þórr at Baldr’s funeral, though the pyre is blessed with the same verb vígja (Gylf., ch. 49). I studied the experimental and anthropological bases of these theories in my doctoral thesis (Taggart 2015, pp. 32–59). The discussion here utilises the theories that were evaluated as being the strongest, ignoring several factors that are also significant in the transmission of (religious) concepts in my assessment. The motif of Þórr’s hand tightening around his hammer does not appear in Skáldskaparmál, which, if the conventional theory is correct that this book was composed before Gylfaginning, may pinpoint its addition as a later development in Snorri’s personal conceptualisation of Þórr (see Gylf., pp. xviii–xix; Snorri Sturluson 2012, pp. lxvii–lxxiii). Þórr’s failure could itself have been counterintuitive at one point. Though McKinnell (1994, pp. 24–25) posits the opposite – that Úlfr Uggason depicts Þórr successfully killing Miðgarðsormr in Húsdrápa because ‘perhaps he felt that the dignity of the Protector of the World requires that he be victorious in every encounter’ – Þórr’s lack of success could have been a later development to reconcile this narrative, as Snorri actually does (Gylf., ch. 48), with the Ragnarǫk mythos (see further Marold 2000, pp. 291–294). Among the other adaptations, the god’s triumph is implied by Gamli gnævaðarskáld (GgnævÞórr, st. 1), ambiguous in Hymiskviða (stt. 23–24), and not disclosed by what remains of EValdÞórr, Þórr’s fishing and ǪlvÞórr. Regardless, McKinnell’s point regarding the (both conscious and unconscious) influence that Þórr’s characterisation may have had on narratives and audience expectations is worth heeding. A tradition seems to have developed of Sigurðr having fránn eyes: Finch 1965, ch. 18; Guðrúnarkviða I, st. 14:5. The serpent is labelled fránn in Fáfnismál, st. 32:8, too (cf. Fáfnismál, st. 19:1, where fránn is submitted as an emendation from rammi ‘mighty’).

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20 Compare the ormfránn ‘snake-fránn’, œgigeislar ‘œgir-beams’ and œgishjálmr ‘œgir-helmet’ of Eiríkr blóðøx in Arinbjarnarkviða, stt. 4–5. The intentional echoes of Miðgarðsormr and Þórr in this portrayal of as threatening and tyrannical a character as Eiríkr (further signposted by a reference to Eiríkr’s eye as an ennimáni ‘moon of the forehead’ in st. 5, which evokes the máni ennis ‘moon of the forehead’ Þórr has in Húsdrápa, st. 3) confirms the sinister edge to this vocabulary. Many other rulers also wear helmets more specifically linked to snakes (e.g. Glymdrápa, st. 6:5–6; Háttatal, st. 15:1–2; Vellekla, st. 25:5). On the entanglement of fránn and œgir with representations of royal power in skaldic poetry, see further Marold 1998, pp. 11–17. 21 Þórr’s fierce eyes have the same impact beyond the fishing trip. Cf. Þrymskviða, st. 27:5–8, in which they declare his inherent masculinity, barely suppressed by his feminine clothing and absent hammer, though hvass does not appear there (see further Lassen 2000, pp. 226–227). Moreover, fierce or bright eyes seem to have a long history of magical and/or religious implications in Germanic-speaking Europe; compare, for example, Báleygr ‘fire-eyed’, one of Óðinn’s heiti (Óðins nǫfn, st. 6:3), and GlīaugiR ‘bright-eyed’, the name of someone dedicating runes in fifth- or sixth-century Germany (McKinnell and Simek 2004, p. 78; on this inscription, see Section 7.2.2.1).

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Sexstefja = Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, Sexstefja. In SkP2. Ed. Diana Whaley. Sigrdrífumál. In Neckel and Kuhn 1983. SigvKnútdr = Sigvatr Þórðarson, Knútsdrápa. In SkP1. Ed. Matthew Townend. Skáldsk. = Snorri Sturluson (1998) Edda. Skáldskaparmál. Ed. Anthony Faulkes. 2 vols. London: Viking Society for Northern Research. Skírnismál. In Neckel and Kuhn 1983. SkP1 = Diana Whaley, vol. ed. (2012) Poetry From the Kings’ Sagas 1: From Mythical Times to c. 1035. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 1. Turnhout: Brepols. SkP2 = Kari Ellen Gade, vol. ed. (2009) Poetry From the Kings’ Sagas 2: From c. 1035 to c. 1300. Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 2. Turnhout: Brepols. SkP3 = Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold, vol. eds (2017) Poetry From Treatises on Poetics: Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols. SkP7 = Margaret Clunies Ross, vol. ed. (2007) Poetry on Christian Subjects: Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages 7. Turnhout: Brepols. Sneglu-Halla þáttr. In Jónas Kristjánsson, ed. (1956) Íslenzk fornrit, 9. Reykjavík: Hið Íslenzka Fornritafélag. Snorri Sturluson (2012) The Uppsala Edda. Ed. Heimir Pálsson. Trans. Anthony Faulkes. London: Viking Society for Northern Research. Vafþrúðnismál. In Neckel and Kuhn 1983. Vellekla = Einarr skálaglamm Helgason, Vellekla. In SkP1. Ed. Edith Marold. VetrlLv = Vetrliði Sumarliðason, Lausavísa. In SkP3. Ed. R. D. Fulk. Vísir = ‘Níu tíma seinkun vegna eldingar laust niður í flugvél’, Vísir, 21 December 2014 [accessed 5 January 2015]. Vǫlundarkviða. In Neckel and Kuhn 1983. Vǫluspá. In Neckel and Kuhn 1983. ÞdísÞórr = Þorbjǫrn dísarskáld, Poem about Þórr. In SkP3. Ed. Margaret Clunies Ross. ÞjóðLv = Þjóðólfr Arnórsson, Lausavísur. In SkP2. Ed. Diana Whaley. Þórr’s fishing = Bragi inn gamli Boddason, Þórr’s fishing. In SkP3. Ed. Margaret Clunies Ross. Þórsdrápa = Eilífr Goðrúnarson, Þórsdrápa. In SkP3. Ed. Kari Ellen Gade and Edith Marold. Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns. In Guðni Jónsson, ed. (1954) Fornaldar sögur Norðurlanda. Vol. 4 of 4. Reykjavík: Íslandingasagnaútgáfan. Þrymskviða. In Neckel and Kuhn 1983. ǪlvÞórr = Ǫlvir hnúfa, Poem about Þórr. In SkP3. Ed. Margaret Clunies Ross.

Secondary sources Aasen, Ivar (1918) Norsk ordbog med dansk forklaring. Kristiania: A. Cammermeyer. Arnold, Martin (2011) Thor: Myth to Marvel. London: Continuum. Boyer, Pascal (2002) Religion Explained: The Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors. London: Vintage. Cleasby, Richard and Gudbrand Vigfusson (1874) An Icelandic-English Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Clunies Ross, Margaret (1994) Prolonged Echoes: Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Society; Volume One: The Myths. Odense: Odense University Press.

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de Vries, Jan (1962) Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. 2nd edn. Leiden: Brill. ——— (1970) Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte. 3rd edn. 2 vols. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Ellis Davidson, Hilda (1964) Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ——— (1965) ‘Thor’s Hammer’, Folklore, 76: 1–15. Fritzner, Johann (1886–1896) Ordbog over det gamle norske sprog. 2nd edn. 3 vols. Kristiania: Den Norske Forlagsforening. Gardeła, Leszek (2012) ‘What the Vikings Did for Fun? Sports and Pastimes in Medieval Northern Europe’, World Archaeology, 44: 234–247. Grimm, Jacob (1880) Teutonic Mythology. Trans. James Steven Stallybrass. 4 vols. London: W. Swan Sonnenschein and Allen. Jessen, Mads D. (2013) ‘Religion and the Extra-Somatics of Conceptual Thought’. In Armin W. Geertz, ed., Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture, pp. 319– 340. Durham: Acumen. Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson (1998–2001) ‘Religious Ideas in Sonatorrek’, Saga-Book, 25: 159–178. Jonsson, Erika (2006) Eldstålsformade ringar: En studie av när de tillverkades, och var och hur de hittas inom gränserna för dagens Sverige. Unpublished bachelor thesis, Stockholm University. Joy, Francis (2011) ‘The History of Lapland and the Case of the Sami Noaidi Drum Figures Reversed’, Electronic Journal of Folklore, 47: 113–144 Kiil, Vilhelm (1956) ‘Eilífr Goðrúnarson’s Þórsdrápa’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 71: 89–167. Kokinov, Boicho, Georgi Petkov and Nadezhda Petrova (2007) ‘Context-Sensitivity of Human Memory: Episode Connectivity and Its Influence on Memory’. In Boicho Kokinov, Daniel Richardson, Thomas Roth-Berghofer and Laure Vieu, eds, Modeling and Using Context , pp. 317–329. New York: Springer-Verlag. Lassen, Annette (2000) ‘Hǫðr’s Blindness and the Pledging of Óðinn’s Eye: The Symbolic Value of the Eyes and Blindness of Hǫðr, Óðinn and Þórr’. In Geraldine Barnes and Margaret Clunies Ross, eds, The 11th International Saga Conference: Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society, pp. 220–228. Sydney: University of Sydney. Lexicon Poeticum = Finnur Jónsson and Sveinbjörn Egilsson (1933) Lexicon poeticum antiquae linguae septentrionalis: Ordbog over det norsk-islandske skjaldesprog. 2nd edn. Copenhagen: Møller. Lindow, John (1994) ‘Thor’s hamarr’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 93.4: 485–503. ——— (2001) Handbook of Norse Mythology. Oxford: ABC-CLIO. Ljungberg, Helge (1947) Tor: Undersökningar i indoeuropeisk och nordisk religionshistoria, vol. 1: Den nordiska åskguden och besläktade indoeuropeiska gudar; Den nordiska åskguden i bild och myt. Uppsala: Lundequistska Bokh. Lönnroth, Lars (1969) ‘The Noble Heathen: A Theme in the Sagas’, Scandinavian Studies, 41: 1–29. Marold, Edith (1998) ‘Die Augen des Herrschers’. In Dietrich Meier, ed., Beretning fra syttende tværfaglige vikingesymposium, pp. 7–29. Højberg: Hikuin.

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——— (2000) ‘Die Húsdrápa als kosmologisches Gedicht’. In Geraldine Barnes and Margaret Clunies Ross, eds, The 11th International Saga Conference: Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society, pp. 290–302. Sydney: University of Sydney. McKinnell, John (1994) Both One and Many: Essays on Change and Variety in Late Norse Heathenism, with an appendix by Maria Elena Ruggerini. Roma: Il Calamo. McKinnell, John and Rudolf Simek with Klaus Düwel (2004) Runes, Magic and Religion: A Sourcebook. Vienna: Fassbaender. Meulengracht Sørensen, Preben (1986) ‘Thor’s Fishing Expedition’. In Gro Steinsland, ed., Words and Objects: Towards a Dialogue Between Archaeology and History of Religion, pp. 257–278. Oslo: Norwegian University Press. Missuno, Filip (2012) “Shadow” and Paradoxes of Darkness in Old English and Old Norse Poetic Language. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of York. Motz, Lotte (1977) ‘The Craftsman in the Mound’, Folklore, 88: 46–60. ——— (1994–1997) ‘The Germanic Thunderweapon’, Saga-Book, 24: 329–350. Myers, Jerome, Edward O’Brien, David Balota and Maria Toyofuku (1984) ‘Memory Search Without Interference: The Role of Integration’, Cognitive Psychology, 16: 217–242. ONP = James E. Knirk, Helle Degnbol, Aldís Sigurðardóttir, Alex Speed Kjeldsen, Christopher Sanders, Eva Rode, Ellert Þór Jóhansson, Maria Arvidsson, Simonetta Battista and Þorbjörg Helgadóttir (1989–) Ordbog over det norrøne prosasprog/A Dictionary of Old Norse Prose . Copenhagen: Den arnemagnæanske kommission. Perkins, Richard (2001) Thor the Wind-Raiser and the Eyrarland Image. London: Viking Society for Northern Research. Power, Rosemary (1985) ‘Journeys to the Otherworld in the Icelandic Fornaldarsögur’, Folklore, 96: 156–175. Pulsiano, Phillip, Kirsten Wolf et al. (1993) Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland. Reder, Lynne and John Anderson (1980) ‘A Partial Resolution of the Paradox of Interference: The Role of Integrating Knowledge’, Cognitive Psychology, 12.4: 447–472. Reichardt, Konstantin (1948) ‘Die Thórsdrápa des Eilífr Goðrúnarson: Textinterpretation’, PMLA, 63: 329–391. Schach, Paul (1982) ‘The Theme of the Reluctant Christian in the Icelandic Sagas’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 81: 186–203. Schacter, Daniel (1999) ‘The Seven Sins of Memory: Insights From Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience’, American Psychologist, 54.3: 182–203. Shortt Butler, Joanne (2014) ‘Húsdrápa: A Skaldic Poem in Context’. In Marianne Hem Eriksen, Unn Pedersen, Bernt Rundberget and Irmelin Axelsen, eds, Viking Worlds: Things, Spaces and Movement, pp. 28–42. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Simek, Rudolf (1993) Dictionary of Northern Mythology. Trans. Angela Hall. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Simpson, Jacqueline (1966) ‘Otherworld Adventures in an Icelandic Saga’, Folklore, 77: 1–20. Sundqvist, Olof (2009) ‘The Question of Ancient Scandinavian Cultic Buildings: With Particular Reference to Old Norse hof’, Temenos, 45: 65–84. ——— (2015) An Arena for Higher Powers: Ceremonial Buildings and Religious Strategies for Rulership in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. Leiden: Brill.

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Taggart, Declan (2015) Understanding Diversity in Old Norse Religion Taking Þórr as a Case Study. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Aberdeen. Trabasso, Tom and Linda Sperry (1985) ‘Causal Relatedness and Importance of Story Events’, Journal of Memory and Language, 24: 595–611. Turville-Petre, E.O.G. (1964) Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Upal, M. Afzal (2010) ‘An Alternative Account of the Minimal Counterintuitiveness Effect’, Cognitive Systems Research, 11.2: 194–203. von See, Klaus, Beatrice La Farge, Eve Picard, Ilona Priebe and Katja Schulz, eds (1997) Kommentar zu den Liedern der Edda: Bd. 2; Götterlieder (Skírnismál, Hárbarðslióð, Hymiskviða, Lokasenna, Þrymskviða). Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. Wellendorf, Jonas (2010) ‘The Interplay of Pagan and Christian Traditions in Icelandic Settlement Myths’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 109: 1–21. Wills, Tarrin (2013) ‘Semantic Linking of the Pre-Christian Religions of the North’, Digital Medievalist, 9 [accessed 16 February 2015].

7

7.1

Mundane objects

Thunderstones

Despite the lack of textual support for the existence of a thunderweapon, Þórr’s weapons, particularly Mjǫllnir, but up to and including Þorsteinn’s hallr, have been linked in past scholarship to the lore surrounding thunderstones (e.g. de Vries 1970, § 425; Ellis Davidson 1965, pp. 5–7; Grimm 1880, vol. 1, pp. 179–180; Simpson 1966, p. 8). According to the evidence collected in Christian Blinkenberg’s The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore – still the most comprehensive scholarly overview of Scandinavian customs related to thunderstones over one hundred years after its first publication – these objects are usually stones and vary in name and type across Scandinavia from round, smooth stones in northern Norway to belemnites in Zealand and Sweden and the flint remains of Stone Age weaponry in many parts of Denmark (Blinkenberg 1911, pp. 2–4). They are believed to have fallen from the sky in thunderstorms, usually with the striking of lightning, and are associated with a variety of beliefs, often of an apotropaic character, including the power to ward off lightning strikes, malicious spells, harmful supernatural beings and even problems in the processing of milk (Blinkenberg 1911, pp. 3–5, 68ff). A number of issues regarding the stones are worth pondering here: • • • •

The possibility of a direct conceptual link between Þórr’s most famous weapon, Mjǫllnir, and thunderstones. The geographical extent of belief in the stones. The effects such a belief may have had on literature, primarily Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns but also other texts in which Þórr throws his weapon. The chronology of known thunderstone lore in relation to the composition of Old Norse literature.

7.1.1 A geographical split Belief in thunderstones was far-reaching, extending not only through much of Scandinavia, but also the rest of the Germanic-speaking region and other

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European countries, as well as (presumably independently) areas as far flung as the Guinea coast, Burma, Cambodia and North America (Blinkenberg 1911, pp. 1–6; Johanson 2009, pp. 129–130). However, besides a scattering of young evidence that may have made its way to the island through literary channels, Blinkenberg finds only trivial and acknowledgedly insecure medieval evidence for thunderstones in Iceland, which he connects to the country’s lack of thunderstorms (1911, pp. 3–4, 93–94). An Old Icelandic Medical Miscellany, edited from a fifteenth-century collection of medical and pseudo-medical information, does record a stone named Ceravinus that fellr nidr med elldingum ‘falls down with lightnings’ (Larsen 1931, p. 221). While this witness is Icelandic, the term Ceravinus (usually spelled Ceraunia) is not. It is instead derived from a Latin tradition that is foundational in learned medieval dissertations on thunderstones (Goodrum 2008; Johanson 2009), demonstrating the problems that scholars like Blinkenberg face when attempting to find thunderstone beliefs that arrived with Iceland’s Viking Age settlers or arose there independently. Rounded flint eggs have been discovered in Viking Age graves in Iceland and been mooted as possible thunderstones, although, according to the information available at the time of writing, nothing in their context definitively indicates their function or connects them with Þórr (Ravilious 2010). Nevertheless, if these are thunderstones then they illustrate that Icelandic culture is inhospitable to this particular belief: these stones must have been imported into Iceland, as flint is not part of the island’s geological profile (Þorleifur Einarsson 1968, pp. 25, 220), yet there is no record of them in later writings on the settlement era. It is remarkable that something important enough to have been specifically imported to Iceland (or brought with settlers) has left no later record, despite Iceland’s medieval fascination with the settlement period and earlier rituals and customs (cf. Blinkenberg 1911, p. 4). Complementing the picture offered by Iceland, Blinkenberg finds no customs related to thunderstones in northern Norway, an area in which thunderstorms are similarly rare, in the period for which he has records (1911, pp. 91–93; cf. Motz 1994–1997, p. 342). Without concrete attestations to belief in thunderstones in Iceland, an attempt to connect these objects to the conceptualisation of Þórr in that region either directly or through the imagery of Icelandic narratives like Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns would be precarious. The þríhyrndr hallr ‘triangular stone’ thrown by Þorsteinn may be evocative of the shape of the Stone Age flint tool heads appropriated as thunderstones in other parts of Scandinavia (Blinkenberg records them in southern Norway, for example, and in various places in Sweden and Denmark [1911, pp. 3–4]). But in other respects it is unlike those flint objects: the hallr is small enough to be held within a pungr, which normally indicates a purse small enough that it can hang on a belt, and it is vari-coloured (Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, ch. 3). Its triangularity, moreover, makes it quite unlike the egg-shaped stones found in Icelandic graves, the only putative thunderstones discovered so

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far in the country.1 Beyond the basic fact of it being thrown, there is little, in fact, to connect the hallr categorically with any breed of Scandinavian thunderstone. Thunderstone beliefs could have inspired the missile that flies between Geirrøðr and Þórr at an earlier point in the evolution of this narrative, but – again – there is no evidence for this in any of the texts that survive. The prevalence of the belief in thunderstones outside Iceland does allow the possibility that the hallr/sía may have conceptualised as one there, but in Saxo’s and Þjóðólfr’s testimony the missile is specifically lightning (fulmen and eldingar respectively), not a thunderstone. In Icelandic texts, not all of Þórr’s throws are even in the correct direction – in the cases of Þjazi, Loki and Aurvandill, the throw is up or to the side. If the mythos of the throw did grow out of a relationship with thunderstones, then it has lost this meaning by the time these stories were created, as customs related to thunderstones themselves seem to have dwindled away in Iceland. In either case, mythological throwing cannot automatically be linked with thunderstones, unless, additionally, the throws of other deities like Óðinn or, say, Hǫðr should equally be connected with these artefacts (e.g. respectively, Vǫluspá, st. 24; Gylf., ch. 49). 7.1.2 Thunderstones and Mjǫllnir For scholars who have previously looked at Þórr in the context of thunderstones, a major point of inquiry has been Mjǫllnir and the extent to which that weapon may have originated in the concept of a stone falling or being heaved from the heavens (e.g. de Vries 1970, § 425; Grimm 1880, vol. 1, p. 180; Motz 1994–1997, pp. 343–346; Simpson 1966, pp. 7–8; Turville-Petre 1964, p. 81). While there is scant mythological record of Þórr actually throwing the stones even in the late period for which belief in thunderstones in Scandinavia is recorded, this is not out of the question. Blinkenberg, for instance, hazards that certain characteristics of Mjǫllnir could be derived from beliefs originally bracketed with thunderstones, beginning with its being thrown, which is ‘doubtless because the thunderstones, according to popular belief, were hurled from the sky with the lightning’ (Blinkenberg 1911, p. 60). In this, Blinkenberg seems to underestimate the creativity of Old Norse culture. The scholar himself notes (1911, p. 60) that Scandinavians owned missile weapons – not only spears but also possibly single-headed, hatchet-type axes too (Griffith 1995, p. 176) – so it is not unthinkable that the notion of Þórr throwing his weapon could have been generated by Scandinavians and Icelanders independently of the mythos of the thunderstone. The concept that Þórr’s hammer returns to him after being thrown, recorded in Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál, arguably finds an equivalent in a widespread belief that, after being sunk deep beneath the earth, thunderstones gradually rise to the surface (Skáldsk., ch. 35; Blinkenberg 1911, [e.g.] pp. 88, 96,

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100, 104); the idea that thunderstones descend beneath the ground after a storm may even be reflected in the hiding of Mjǫllnir átta rǫstum / fyr iorð neðan ‘eight miles under the earth’ by Þórr’s adversary in Þrymskviða (stt. 3–4; see Blinkenberg 1911, pp. 60, 104). In both cases, the arguments are undermined by the lack of contemporary or even near-contemporary evidence (Blinkenberg’s evidence dates from the nineteenth century, a reality that will be discussed in greater depth below), and the problem of equating statements made in Icelandic texts with non-literary evidence from far afield. The Icelandic evidence, moreover, lacks parallels within Old Norse culture more generally: the conceits of the hammer returning or being buried are only found in Skáldskaparmál and Þrymskviða and may originate with these singular texts’ authors (Lindow has likewise made this point regarding Skáldskaparmál [1994, p. 486]). The hallr and stálbroddr of Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns do return to their owner’s hand when called for, and the þáttr and Skáldskaparmál both state that their heroes’ weapons will always hit their targets (ch. 3), so Snorri’s text may represent wider beliefs about Þórr’s weaponry, though Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns is even younger than Skáldskaparmál and these would be the only sources that attest to it; if there was a tradition of the hammer returning to its owner’s hand, then it could be young. Regarding the hammer’s burial, Alaric Hall has called my attention to other entities hidden underground in the Poetic Edda (pers. comm.; see especially Helgakviða Hjǫrvarðssonar, st. 16), so the image in Þrymskviða may evidence a poetic trope of being buried and inaccessible rather than thunderstone folklore. In any case, the link being made between a hammer returning to someone’s hand and a stone slipping up gradually through the ground is tenuous. These concepts are hardly identical. If related, the belief has been transformed thoroughly on its route into Skáldskaparmál. More likely, the hammer returning is just the kind of desirable property that any divine, thrown object should have, in the same way that Mjǫllnir and the hallr will never miss, Óðinn’s spear is nam aldri staðar í lagi ‘never halted in a thrust’ and Freyr could fold together his ship Skíðblaðnir sem dúk ok hafa í pung sér ef þat vildi ‘like a cloth and keep it in a purse if wanted’ (Skáldsk., ch. 35; Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, ch. 3). Two separate myths are recorded justifying the famously strange truncation of the hammer’s shaft that is sometimes (but not always) discernible in iconography: in Skáldskaparmál, the hammer’s shape is explained as the result of a flaw in the manufacturing process, which does not lessen its efficacy, and Saxo has it that the handle of Þórr’s weapon (this time a club) is cut off in a fight, making it ineffective (Saxo Grammaticus 2015, vol. 1, III, 2,10; Skáldsk., ch. 35). Neither explanation throws any light on the reasons why this representation of the hammer was first created or became popular. Without an obvious alternative, it is tempting to link the shape with the often similarly unusual shapes of thunderstones, which can have a peculiar aspect and are often the remnants of Stone Age axes or other weapons or

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tools (Blinkenberg 1911, pp. 2–4; Johanson 2009, pp. 130–131). In German, they can actually be called donneräxte ‘thunder-axes’ or donnerhämmer ‘thunder-hammers’ (Grimm 1880, vol. 1, p. 179). However, this remnant is only the head of the weapon: shafts are not shortened but absent entirely, rotted away by the passage of time. If Þórr were supposed to throw these to the ground, it would presumably be as a boulder, rather than as a crafted weapon held by a handle, even a handle that has been truncated. Mjǫllnir and thunderstones could at one time have been connected, but the former has a use life in an Iceland, at least, in which thunderstones seem to have none (cf. Motz 1994–1997, pp. 345–346; Ellis Davidson 1965, pp. 5–7). It is not, therefore, beyond thinking that the concepts might be independent and that thunderstones have not influenced Mjǫllnir’s shape or other aspects of its literary presentation. As far as the reason for Mjǫllnir’s shape goes, it should first be noted that, in iconography, the shaft of the hammer can vary in length. While some depictions on stone and as pendants have shorter handles, the hammer runs almost the full 2.5 m height of a stone near Grästrorp in Västergötland, for example. The idea that Mjǫllnir was stunted evidently has some substance, however, from its appearances in the works of both Snorri and Saxo, even if this was not a widespread conception or rigidly enforced. Ellis Davidson’s proposal that this typology would have been easier to throw lacks evidence (1965, p. 7). Perkins argues that hammers with shorter handles would have made for better pendants (2001, 24n, p. 124), which seems logical enough, though counterexamples with lengthy shafts attest that longer handles might not have been as inconvenient as he suggests (see, e.g. Ellis Davidson 1965, Plate 1; Perkins 2001, p. 116). Swastikas and hammer symbols (which could represent a development of the swastikas) have been found across the Germanic-speaking region (as well as more widely in Indo-European culture) in material remains that date from the third to ninth centuries (McKinnell and Simek 2004, [e.g.] pp. 42, 52, 74). Long related to Þórr or Mjǫllnir by scholars (e.g. Ellis Davidson 1964, p. 83; McKinnell and Simek 2004, pp. 118–121; cf. also the Þórshamarr, found in many locations up until modern times, but especially in Icelandic magic [Motz 1994–1997, p. 340; Simpson 1966, 17n]), these could have been identified as symbols of Þórr by Scandinavians and inspired the shortened shaft in iconographic and textual representations of Mjǫllnir, whether originally related to a Þórr-like god or not. Although this is little more than guesswork, the broader meaning of the ┬-shaped carvings that appear on Swedish and Danish rune-stones will be discussed in Section 7.2.2.2. Alternatively, the origins of this venerable cultural symbol could be in a joke mocking Þórr’s virility, of the sort that underpins Þrymskviða, predicated on the importance of masculinity to his characterisation (Clunies Ross 1994b, especially p. 62). Or it could be a creative aping of the frailties afflicting the other best-known æsir – such as Óðinn’s missing eye and Týr’s severed hand – wherever this trend emerged from (Lindow

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1994, pp. 486–487). Ultimately, regarding Mjǫllnir’s beginnings, it is difficult to move beyond informed speculation. The significance of its stunted shaft may depend on the source being consulted and, even then, have varied with the audience perceiving it. 7.1.3

Beyond literature

Non-textual sources provide their own hints to the import of thunderstones in connection with Þórr. Various thunderstone beliefs can be connected with Þórr by proxy – the enmity he holds for troll ‘trolls’, for example, could be correlated with the belief in certain areas that a thunderstone will keep those creatures away (Blinkenberg 1911, [e.g.] pp. 2, 4, 76, 83, 89, 90). Functionally, the majority of thunderstone beliefs are passive and related to proximity rather than proactive action; these stones are typically, as mentioned above, apotropaic charms that perform tasks like curing illness or preventing a disease from afflicting a home’s inhabitants, chasing off nightmares or insuring against fire (e.g. Blinkenberg 1911, pp. 70, 74, 75, 76, 89, 90). Þórr’s role in mythology is sometimes similarly reactive, the god responding to a threat to his home and family as often as adventuring in the lands of the jǫtnar (see Section 4.5.1), and sources do remain in which Þórr is apparently beseeched to (literally) fight an illness (discussed below in Section 7.2.2.1). On the other hand, he is typically a character of skirmishes and of brutality, even in these latter non-mythological sources, which largely speaking does not fit with the mechanisms ascribed to these stones. This may, however, be a false dichotomy. Þórr’s mythological characterisation may sometimes have echoed the mechanisms that were supposed to underpin his interventions in human affairs, like the apotropaic beliefs surrounding thunderstones, and sometimes not (see ch. 3, n. 29; Section 7.2.2.2). Blinkenberg does record two recollections from Norway of thunderstones that were actually thrown as weapons at troll (1911, pp. 91, 92), and one from Sweden that names Þórr as the pitcher (1911, p. 87). However, this latter authority, Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius’s nineteenthcentury Wärend och wirdarne: ett försök i svensk ethnologi neither names nor dates its sources here, and is limited to the small area of Värend in the Swedish province of Småland, rather than to the entirety of Scandinavia, making it difficult to accept as a source with any relation to the whole of Viking Age Scandinavia (1863–1868, vol. 2, p. 222). Hyltén-Cavallius’s evidence does reflect the widespread modern notion that the amulets secreted on rafters and under beds across Scandinavia are Þórr’s to throw. Foundational for this belief are the names by which thunderstones are known, such as torsvigg and torskil, both of which mean ‘Þórr’s wedge’, or gofarskilen ‘Good father’s wedge’ and godviggen ‘god-wedge’ (Hyltén-Cavallius 1863–1868, vol. 2, p. 222. For a fuller list, see Motz 1994–1997, pp. 343–344) – the names Godgubben ‘good old man’ and Gofar ‘good father’ were appended to Þórr in later times in

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Scandinavia (Grimm 1880, vol. 1, p. 167). Scholars like Hyltén-Cavallius cite these as evidence that Þórr himself was reputed to throw thunderstones (e.g. Hyltén-Cavallius 1863–1868, vol. 2, p. 222; Grimm 1880, vol. 1, p. 179; Motz 1994–1997, pp. 337–338, 343–344; Simpson 1966, p. 8). Yet this reasoning is rejected by Blinkenberg (1911, p. 60), on the basis that the tor- elements in these terms also meant ‘thunder’, as in the English equivalent ‘thunderstone’.2 I am inclined to agree with him. The earliest attestations observed by Svenska Akademiens ordbok to tor(s)kil and tor(s) vigg, for example, from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, lack the genitive -s- (seemingly a much later addition in both cases), which implies that these terms would initially have been translated as ‘thunderwedge’ rather than ‘Þórr’s wedge’ (SAOB, s.vv. ‘tors-kil’, ‘tors-vigg’). The notion of the first element of these titles being the name Þórr may be a folk etymology: if tor- did mean originally ‘thunder’ in these circumstances, it has been reinterpreted by later observers as a reference to the deity. Thereafter, the different forms of the words co-exist, so thunderstone lore that involved Þórr could have co-existed alongside traditions that did not (cf. Motz 1994–1997, p. 344). Simpson, in her study of the roots of Þorsteins þáttr bæjarmagns, confidently states that thunderstones must ‘in earlier days have been specifically associated with Thór’, but offers only the notion of Þórr’s wedges and three secondary sources in support of her argument (Simpson 1966, p. 8). The first of these, Blinkenberg’s The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore, explicitly states the impossibility of connecting the thunderstones directly to Þórr, the second is reliant on Blinkenberg and deals with the British Isles (Oakley 1965), and the last concentrates on Finland and attends only superficially to Old Norse mythology and custom (Haavio 1964). Yet her study has a bigger problem still, and it is one that all of these studies of thunderstones must tackle. Readers of Simpson, as with other scholars who rely on Blinkenberg, are confronted with the vagueness of the idea of ‘earlier days’ and the long interval between that time and the periods from which Blinkenberg gathered his evidence. The very earliest material assembled in Blinkenberg’s monograph dates from the late seventeenth century and comes in the main from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It also shows a heavy bias toward Danish sources. Scholars using Blinkenberg’s research to argue for a medieval and pre-medieval connection between thunderstones and Þórr are obliged to somehow illustrate the validity of this evidence for any time before, conservatively, the Enlightenment, given the potential for large-scale cultural change between the medieval period and modern times. Even disregarding the issue of the genitive -s-, the Svenska Akademiens ordbok is only able to show that torvigg was in use by the end of the sixteenth century (SAOB, s.v. ‘tors-vigg’), while several synonyms have some precedent in seventeenth century (SAOB, s.vv. ‘dunder-vigg’, ‘dunder-kil’, ‘tors-kil’). This group of names must have sprung up from somewhere – likely some were in use for a considerable period before being used by the Svenska Akademiens

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ordbok’s informants – and the consonance between the names of the phenomenon of thunder and of the supernatural deity Þórr in Scandinavia may have promoted the identification long before any period for which reliable records are available. But it is still asking a lot to permit these late names as evidence of pre-medieval and early medieval belief, especially when thunderstone conventions swirl and shift in different areas of Scandinavia just in the twentieth century. The earliest mention of thunderstones I could find in a northern text comes in Olaus Magnus’s sixteenth-century Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus ‘Account of the Northern Peoples’, in which, inter alia, the thunderstones are caused by the iram Tonantis ‘anger of the one who thunders’ (Magnus 1555, I, ch. 12). At this point in his text, Magnus is delving into common superstitions regarding thunderstones, so Tonans could be a simulacrum of Þórr that has persisted in folk belief. The context, however, underscores the Catholic faith of the holders of beliefs, whom Magnus finds in precibus intensis ‘earnest prayer’ to their deity, suggesting that the figure may be a rendering of the Christian god who brings thunder and lightning in the Bible (e.g. 1 Samuel 2:10; Psalm 18:13). Or, as may be the case with Saxo, who presents a similar deity with the same epithet (see Section 5.3), Magnus may be viewing the beliefs of the North through the prism of the classical wisdom that forms the bulk of his information about thunderstones (he names, among others, Pliny, Seneca and Virgil as his authorities here and defers to their learning throughout this passage). His Tonans may be Jove, the god normally entreated by that name in Roman culture. Moreover, as early as the text is in comparison to Blinkenberg’s informants, it still postdates the Viking Age by around five centuries. This kind of material, even in cases where it does accurately reproduce contemporary opinio vulgi ‘beliefs of the common people’ (Magnus 1555, I, ch. 12), simply might be unrelated to the customs of earlier periods. A useful counterpoint with which to conclude this discussion is the group of thunderstone names that do not encompass one of Þórr’s titles, which also appears in the periods scrutinised by Hyltén-Cavallius and Blinkenberg. For instance, gomorsten ‘good mother’s stone’ is supplied but not remarked upon by Hyltén-Cavallius and surely does not refer to Þórr (1863–1868, vol. 2, p. 222). Similarly, dundervigg and åskvigg, both signifying ‘thunder-wedge’, demonstrate that, in the Swedish area from which these terms come, the stones can be associated with thunder without directly implicating Þórr as well (for related Germanic terms and beliefs not attached to Þórr, see Blinkenberg 1911, 68ff.; Grimm 1880, vol. 1, p. 179; Johanson 2009). Even in recent centuries the god- in godviggen, at least, need not have been Þórr. His name may be the one most frequently identified with these stones because, of all the æsir, Þórr’s cultural presence is now the most substantial and affectionately felt. If, in early Scandinavia, Þórr was seen as responsible for the remains of ancient sea animals and prehistoric tools falling from the sky, he may not have been alone in this.

Mundane objects

7.2 7.2.1

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The hammer The roots of Mjǫllnir

In the iconography of the Roman cult of Jove, the deity is periodically depicted carrying a sheaf of thunderbolts (for examples, see Nodelman 1987, pp. 80–81). Despite the equivalence sometimes drawn between the two in early medieval culture, Þórr is never seen wielding a similar object in Scandinavian or Icelandic art. He is chiefly rendered with his hammer (admittedly there is an element of circularity in this as the weapon is Þórr’s chief diagnostic feature for modern scholars, so images without a hammer are less likely to be identified as Þórr in the first place). If Mjǫllnir was as analogous to lightning as Jove’s sheaf, this cannot be detected through its presentation in the extant myths, as the above textual analysis shows, and neither are the hammer’s booming blows ever likened explicitly to the sounds of thunder (with the possible exception of Saxo’s Swedish temple; cf. Arnold 2011, pp. 74–75; Ellis Davidson 1965, pp. 8–9). Another potential route to uncovering such links is etymology, through the derivation of Mjǫllnir, a name that is only found in Icelandic contexts in this period and even then never in skaldic poetry, is unclear. Commonly, Mjǫllnir is thought to be derived from mala/mola ‘to grind’, which would make the name of the hammer ‘grinder’ or ‘crusher’ in modern English (e.g. Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson 1874, s.v. ‘Mjölnir’; Ellis Davidson 1965, p. 4), though Simek proposes a connection with Old Norse mjǫll ‘fresh powdery snow’ and Icelandic mjalli ‘whiteness’ (themselves both derived from mala) and recommends that Mjǫllnir should therefore be translated as ‘shining lightning weapon’ (1993, s.v. ‘Mjǫllnir’; cf. Kock 1899, pp. 110–111).3 Simek’s offering is creative and perhaps displays a desire to reach a certain explanation as much as to reason from the evidence as it presents itself; more likely, the powdery quality associated with mjǫll is at the heart of any connection with Mjǫllnir, mala’s sense of being pounded, milled, crushed befitting the hammer’s lethal primary function (cf. de Vries 1962, s.v. ‘mala’). Even should that suggestion prove untenable, Simek’s argument remains doubtful: the link infrequently made between Þórr and hailstorms provides a less laboured explanation for a genesis from mjǫll/mjalli than a connection with lightning. Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson hazard that Mjǫllnir may be akin to Gothic milhma, Swedish moln and Danish mulm, all of which can be approximated to ‘cloud’ (1874, s.v. ‘Mjölnir’). While this is possible, especially given Þórr’s links with cloudy weather, clouds do not necessarily connote the presence of thunder or lightning, especially in Iceland; a poorly understood connection with one type of weather does not entail an equivalence between the hammer and another type. More provocatively in the present context, Mjǫllnir may be a corruption of an Old Slavic word mlǔnǔji (