Thor
Thor was the Norse god of thunder and the gods’ defender against the giants, and his symbol is his hammer, Mjölnir. Snorri’s Edda gives him two more treasures, a belt of strength and a pair of iron gloves, and a chariot drawn by two goats.
Meaning
Thor was the god of thunder, of strength and of fertility in Norse religion, Store norske leksikon says, and the one who keeps rescuing the other gods and protecting them from the giants; the National Museum of Denmark calls him the most popular of all the gods, “the god of the people”. In Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda he is the foremost of the Æsir, “strongest of all the gods and men”, with three treasures: the hammer Mjölnir, a girdle of might that increases his strength by half, and iron gloves he “cannot do without” when he uses the hammer. His chariot is drawn by two goats, Tooth-Gnasher and Tooth-Gritter, and the myths say that thunder and lightning come when Thor drives it. The Danish encyclopedia Lex describes him as big and heavy-limbed, with a great red beard and a hot temper. These stories come from the two Eddas, which the National Museum of Denmark says were both written by Christian writers at the start of the Middle Ages, so they show how Christians saw the gods as well as how the Vikings did. Thor is worshipped today in modern Heathenry: in Denmark, the museum says, a believer facing a challenge may praise Thor to gain strength. In English the name is said thawr (Dictionary.com).
Origin and history
Store norske leksikon lists small figures, Thor’s hammers and moulds for casting amulets among the archaeological finds, his name on rune stones and scenes from his myths on picture stones. Lex counts about 1,000 hammer pendants found, mostly in women’s graves, across Scandinavia, the British Isles, the Baltic and Russia. They were made of silver, gold, bronze, iron and other materials from the end of the 700s to the middle of the 1000s, and were most popular in the last pagan period, as a counterpart to the Christian cross. A soapstone mould from Trendgården in north Jutland, from the second half of the 900s, has hollows for a hammer and a cross side by side. One pendant found at Købelev on Lolland in 2014 is cut with the runes hmar is, “this is a hammer”, the only one of them with runes. Lex’s article on Odin goes further: judged by personal names and contemporary sources, Thor was the most important god of the Viking Age.
Lex lists a great number of personal names and place names after Thor, Thormod, Thorsten, Torup (one of Denmark’s commonest place names), Thorsager and Tórshavn among them. Not every Thor name points to the god, because Thor was also a common man’s name, but a name ending in -lund points to a sacred grove: Torslunde, recorded in 1308, joins the god’s name to lund, “small wood”. Thursday is Thor’s day, the Roman dies Jovis, Jupiter’s day, in Norse form. In Iceland, Lex adds, the sagas and Landnámabók tell of settlers who brought from their sanctuary in Norway the high-seat pillars carved with figures of Thor, and made them the centre of a new sanctuary to him.
The fishing trip for the Midgard serpent
The scene carvers chose most often is Thor fishing for the world serpent. In the Eddic poem Hymiskvitha, in Henry Adams Bellows’s translation, the “warder of men” fixed “on his hook the head of the ox”, and “the venomous serpent swiftly up to the boat did Thor, the bold one, pull”. Store norske leksikon tells the story as the poems and Snorri give it. Thor tore the head off the giant Hymir’s biggest ox for bait, and braced himself against the serpent so hard that his feet went through the bottom of the boat and he stood on the sea floor; then Hymir took fright and cut the line, and the serpent slid back into the sea. The National Museum of Denmark points to a stone from Hørdum Church in Jutland that shows the fishing trip, and says there are numerous depictions of the myth. In England a carved panel at Gosforth in Cumbria shows two men in a boat: one grips the boat and holds an axe, the other holds a hammer and a line that ends in a beast’s head in the water below. The Danish history site Danmarkshistorien reads it as Thor’s fishing trip with Hymir, carved for a Christian setting. Thor and the serpent meet again at Ragnarök and kill each other, Store norske leksikon says, and his sons Magni and Modi carry Mjölnir into the new world.
Thor in a bridal veil
The Eddic poem Thrymskvitha opens with the hammer gone: “Wild was Vingthor when he awoke, And when his mighty hammer he missed”. The giant Thrym has it, and his price is Freyja as his bride. In the poem it is Heimdall who thinks of the answer, and Store norske leksikon retells it: Thor goes in Freyja’s place, veiled and wearing her famous necklace Brísingamen, nearly gives himself away by eating almost the whole wedding feast, and when the hammer is brought out and laid in the bride’s lap, as Lex puts it, he kills Thrym and every giant in the hall.
The god of the people
In the Eddic poem Hárbarðsljóð Odin says that he is the god of earls and Thor the god of thralls. Lex reads it as Odin the aristocrat against Thor the god of ordinary people, “and no doubt also the more popular”. The National Museum of Denmark says much the same: most Vikings worshipped Thor, who could be understood and trusted, unlike his unpredictable father Odin, and so his role was also to uphold law and order. Lex adds that he was called on in the ritual wish for a good year and harvest, “year and peace”, because famine was understood as an attack by the forces of chaos. It also sets him beside other gods who carry a thunderbolt: the Indian Indra, and Zeus and Jupiter.
Thor in Heathenry today
The Nordic Asa-community in Sweden calls Thor’s hammer the best-known and most popular symbol of Ásatrú, and notes that not everyone who wears one is a Norse heathen. Hammers, it says, were used in ceremonies at weddings and funerals, and at weddings there is still talk of “standing under the hammer”. The Troth, an American Heathen organisation, writes that people frequently pray to Thor “for overcoming the obstacles in their path”, and that the stories which show him fighting giants also show him using his hammer to restore creatures to life, “as a healer or a hallower”. In Iceland, Ásatrúarfélagið’s calendar uses the old weekday names that many Icelanders prefer, among them þórsdagur, Thor’s day, for Thursday.
Marvel’s Thor
The Thor of Marvel comics dates from 1962: Store norske leksikon lists him among the characters Stan Lee created, with his younger brother Larry Lieber writing the script.
Read next
- Next in Norse gods and their symbolsBaldrBaldr is the shining son of Odin and Frigg in Norse myth, killed by a dart of mistletoe that Loki put into the hand of his blind brother Hodr. His signs are the mistletoe, the gold ring Draupnir laid on his pyre and his ship Hringhorni.
- Mjölnir is Thor’s hammer, his chief attribute in the Eddas and the pendant that bears his nameMjölnir (Thor’s hammer)The hammer of Thor, the Norse thunder god, and his weapon against the giants. In the Viking Age small hammer pendants were worn as amulets; followers of modern Ásatrú wear them today as a sign of their faith.
See also
Zeus, Loki, Heimdall, Thunder gods, Odin, Frigg.
Sources
- Tor (Store norske leksikon), Ellen Næss, Store norske leksikon, Tor, i norrøn mytologi
- Thor (Lex), Finn Stefánsson; Jens Peter Schjødt, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon, Thor
- Odin (Lex), Morten Warmind, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon, Odin i eftertiden
- Thorshammer (Lex), Else Roesdahl, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon, thorshammer
- Torslunde (Lex), Jørgen Lorentzen, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon, Torslunde, etymology
- The Viking gods, National Museum of Denmark
- The old religion, National Museum of Denmark
- Anglo-skandinavisk stenskulptur: Gosforth-billedfrise (Danmarkshistorien), Danmarkshistorien (Lex)
- The Poetic Edda (Bellows translation), Henry Adams Bellows (trans.), 1923, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Project Gutenberg), Thrymskvitha, stanzas 1 and 14; Hymiskvitha, stanzas 23–24
- The Prose Edda (Brodeur translation), Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (trans.), 1916, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Internet Archive), Gylfaginning, chapter XXI
- Gods, The Troth, Who is the Norse God of Biscuits?; Why do Heathens worship the Gods?
- Symbol lexicon: Mjolnir / Thor’s hammer, Nordiska Asa-samfundet (Nordic Asa-community)
- The old Nordic religion today, National Museum of Denmark
- Vor siður, Ásatrúarfélagið
- Thor (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com
- Stan Lee (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
Added .