Given his ever-vigilant protection of the ordered cosmos of pre-Christian northern Europe against the forces of chaos, destruction, and entropy represented by the giants, it’s somewhat ironic that Thor is himself three-quarters giant. Thor and Jormungand finally face each other during Ragnarok, however, when the two put an end to each other. In one myth, he tries to pull Jormungand out of the ocean while on a fishing trip, and is stopped only when his giant companion cuts the fishing line out of fear. Thor’s particular enemy is Jormungand, the enormous sea serpent who encircles Midgard, the world of human civilization. (Of course, they didn’t believe he physically rode in a chariot drawn by goats – like everything else in Germanic mythology, this is a symbol used to express an invisible reality upon which the material world is perceived to be patterned.) For the heathen Scandinavians, just as thunder was the embodiment of Thor, lightning was the embodiment of his hammer slaying giants as he rode across the sky in his goat-drawn chariot. Only rarely does he go anywhere without it. His most famous possession, however, is his hammer, Mjöllnir (“Lightning” ). He even owns an unnamed belt of strength (Old Norse megingjarðar) that makes his power doubly formidable when he wears the belt. His courage and sense of duty are unshakeable, and his physical strength is virtually unmatched. No one is better suited for this task than Thor. He’s the indefatigable defender of the Aesir gods and their fortress, Asgard, from the encroachments of the giants, who are usually (although far from invariably) the enemies of the gods. Thor, the brawny thunder god, is the archetype of a loyal and honorable warrior, the ideal toward which the average human warrior aspired. He was a major god of all branches of the Germanic peoples before their conversion to Christianity, although he reached the height of his popularity among the Scandinavians of the late Viking Age. Thor ( Old Norse Þórr, Old English Đunor, Old High German Donar, Proto-Germanic *Þunraz, “Thunder” ) is one of the most prominent figures in Norse mythology. “Thor’s Battle with the Giants” by Mårten Eskil Winge (1872) Book Review: Neil Price’s The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia.
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The Old Norse Language and How to Learn It.The 10 Best Advanced Norse Mythology Books.The Vikings’ Conversion to Christianity.
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