Thor

Thor is the son of Odin, the All-Father, and of Jörð, the personification of the Earth, and he is the strongest of all gods and men according to the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson. His ancestry unites the sovereign lineage of the Aesir with the primordial strength of the earth, and from it derives his cosmic function: to defend Asgard and Midgard, the world of humans, against the giants (jötnar) who embody chaos. He is the husband of the goddess Sif, of golden hair, and the sources call him father of Þrúðr, of Móði and of Magni; of the last they name the mother, the giantess Járnsaxa, while of the other two they say nothing. Thor is the god most venerated by the peasants and seafarers of Viking Scandinavia, who saw in him the close and vigorous protector rather than the distant and cunning Odin. Amulets in the shape of his hammer multiplied in the Viking age, in part as a pagan response to the Christian cross.

Thor's essential attribute is Mjölnir, the hammer that never misses its blow and always returns to his hand. Two dwarf brothers forged it: the Prose Edda calls them Brokkr and Eitri, and only later tradition replaced Eitri with Sindri, which is the name usually given today. To wield it he needs the belt of strength Megingjörð, which doubles his divine power, and iron gloves. With Mjölnir he consecrates and destroys alike: he sanctifies weddings and births and, at the same time, crushes the skulls of the giants. Thor rules thunder and lightning, which the myths explain as the roar of his chariot drawn by two he-goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr, which he can slaughter at night and revive at dawn with his hammer. His strength is enormous, but the sources do not paint him invulnerable or infallible: he is credulous before deceptions, choleric and at times mocked by the magic of the giants, as in his humiliating visit to the court of Útgarða-Loki.

The stories of Thor revolve around his incessant struggle against the giants. He kills the jötunn Hrungnir in a duel, recovers his hammer stolen by Þrymr by disguising himself as a bride (the goddess Freyja) in the Þrymskviða, and on a famous fishing trip with the giant Hymir manages to hook Jörmungandr, the serpent that girdles the world, although it escapes. That confrontation is settled at Ragnarök, the twilight of the gods: Thor at last kills Jörmungandr, but the serpent's venom fells him and the god falls after walking barely nine steps. He does not survive the end of the world; it is his sons Magni and Móði who endure and inherit Mjölnir in the renewed world that emerges after the catastrophe. Venerated as guarantor of order and fertility, Thor left his name in the weekday of the Germanic languages (English Thursday, German Donnerstag, Swedish torsdag), but not in that of the Romance languages, which name that day after Jupiter. Since the nineteenth century he has been one of the Norse gods with the greatest presence in popular culture.