Chris Hemsworth's version of God of Thunder, Thor,
is now seared on the imaginations of a generation.
His enormous muscles, dim-witted mishaps and strong-man fragility
have made Marvel's comic book hero even more relatable.
But is the Hollywood creation anything like the original Viking god?
As with many ancient gods and goddesses, Thor is difficult to pin down.
He even has different names depending on when and where he is being worshipped.
In England he is 'Thunor', while his earlier German name is 'Donar'.
Marvel's Thor is blonde haired and clean-shaven,
but the Old Norse god is described as having red hair and a long red beard.
Thor is unbelievably strong. He is three-quarters giant - his mother,
is a 'jotun' - these are the non-human folk
and include elves and dwarfs, as well as giants.
His father, Odin, is also half jotun and chief among the gods.
Known as the 'All-Father', Odin is God of wisdom,
healing, death, poetry and magic.
He's a mysterious deity who gave up one eye in pursuit of knowledge
and he can shape-shift.
Odin is the favoured god of rulers and poets,
while Thor is honoured by warriors and farmers.
Odin is for the few; Thor is for the many.
While the All-Father is a complex god, Thor is fallible, human and simple.
The best source for stories about Thor is the Prose Edda, compiled by
the Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson in the Thirteenth Century.
One tale pits father against son in the Viking age equivalent of a rap battle.
Odin disguises himself as a ferryman
and refuses to let Thor across a river.
The two end up 'flyting': hurling insults at one another in verse.
Thor is slow with his responses, while Odin calls him a 'poor peasant
without pants' and a 'cuckhold' whose wife is cheating on him.
The god of thunder is left embarrassed,
having to walk the long way round the river.
It's not just his father that makes a mockery of him.
Thor's half-brother Loki is even more deceptive and cunning.
Loki boasts in front of all the gods that he has slept with Thor's wife, Sif.
She represents the fertile corn on the field with her long golden hair.
One night, in an act of brazen disrespect,
Loki cuts Sif's hair while she was sleeping so she's left entirely bald!
Seeing his wife without her magical hair,
Thor flies into a fury and grabs Loki with a vice-like grip.
Loki has to make amends and promises he will have the dwarfs make
Sif a gorgeous new head of hair from pure gold.
But this is not enough to pay for his crime.
Loki also has the dwarves make gifts for each of the gods.
Odin receives his famous spear Gungnir, while Thor gets his hammer, Mjolnir.
The hammer is the most recognisable symbol of the god of Thunder.
It never breaks, never misses its mark and always flies back to its owner.
It's Thor's attachment to his hammer that gets him
into his most memorable fix.
Realising that someone had stolen Mjolnir,
Thor calls on the help of his mischievous brother.
Loki borrows the goddess Freya's flying cloak
and travels to the land of the giants in search of Thor's hammer.
Here he finds the jotun Thrymr, who admits he has Mjolnir
but won't return it unless Freya agrees to marry him.
Thor and Loki beg the goddess of love to go to the wedding,
but she gets so angry she shakes the whole kingdom with her fury.
Thor calls a counsel of the gods and together they decide
the only solution is for Thor to pretend to be Freya and marry Thrymr instead.
They dress him in the goddesses clothes and
clasp her magical necklace below his red beard.
Throughout the marriage feast Thor raises some eyebrows,
devouring animals whole and guzzling three casks of mead.
Eventually the giant gives his bride Mjolnir as a wedding gift.
Thor casts off his disguise and kills everyone around him.
Strong but simple, funny and foolish, Thor is hardly an all-conquering god.
But he appealed to the everyman in the Viking age:
a warrior god for a warrior people.
Thor is still so popular because he's not perfect.
As we laugh at Chris Hemsworth's foolish antics on the big screen
we're doing exactly the same as the Vikings did a thousand years ago.