Thor’s Hammer, often called by its old Norse name of Mjolnir, is probably the most popular
and widely recognised symbol of the Norse religion, and that is in part because Thor
was the most popular of the Norse gods.
But where did his hammer come from, and what is the symbolism behind it?
So welcome to the myth and the story of the history behind Thor’s hammer, and welcome
to Crecganford.
So I will tell the story in two sections, first the story of Thor’s hammer, an Old
Norse myth found in the second part of the Prose Edda, called the skol-ska-parmol, and
the second section will history behind the hammer, and this video will have chapters
on the video timeline if you want to skip to a particular part.
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So let me start by telling you the myth of the origin of Mjolnir.
Loki has always been known as a trickster, and on the day this story starts nothing is
different.
Looking to cause mischief he decided that night to sneak into the bedroom of Sif, who
was the wife of Thor.
She was renowned for having long golden hair, and Loki thought it would be funny to cut
it off, and so whilst she slept, Loki cut off all her hair.
When the morning came and the result of Loki’s trickery became apparent, and neither Thor
nor Sif found it funny.
In fact Thor was so angry he threatened to break every bone in Loki’s body, and Loki
pleaded and begged with Thor to let him go, and in return he promised he would travel
to realm of the Dwarves, Svartalheim, and would get the dwarves to make a new head of
hair for Sif, even more beautiful than the one she was now without.
Thor agreed and let Loki go to see the Dwarves.
But how was Loki able to get the Dwarves to make new hair?
They would surely want payment, and Loki came up with a plan to approach the sons of Ivaldi
and the brothers Brokr and Sindri, and play them off each other, challenging each to come
up with the best gifts.
However, Brokr and Sindri would not take part in the challenge, not without a wager, and
they said that wanted Loki’s head should be theirs if they won the challenge.
Loki had no choice but to accept.
And so the Dwarves set to work.
The sons of Ivaldi forged a new head of hair for Sif, but also two other gifts, a viking
long ship, Skidbladnir, the best of all ships, so light and thin it would always find a favourable
wind and could be folded up and placed in one’s pocket.
And Gungnir, the deadliest of all spears, that would always hit its target.
Brokr and Sindri were skillful dwarves, and Loki could not afford for them to win, and
so as they worked, Loki transformed himself into a fly so he could fly around and cause
mischief.
And so as Sindri’s pulled his creation out of the fire, the fly stung his hand, but this
didn’t stop Sindri, and his creation, that of a living boar with golden hair was perfect.
This boar was Gullinbursti, a golden bristled boar, who gave off light in the dark and could
run better than any horse, even through water or air.
Sindri then went to work on another piece of gold as Brokkr worked the bellows.
The fly bit Brokkr on the neck but it didn’t stop him from working the furnace, and Sindri
drew out a magnificent ring, called Draupnir.
A ring that every ninth night produced eight new golden rings of equal weight to itself.
But there was one more item the dwarves wanted to make and Sindri put iron on the hearth,
and told Brokkr that they had to be precise and meticulous in its working as any mistake,
no matter how small, would be most costly.
Hearing this Loki immediately flew on to Brokkr’s eyelid and stung him there, and his eyelid
swelled up blocking his sight and meaning he blew the bellows one moment too much.
Out of the fire Sindri produced a hammer of unsurpassed quality, a hammer which would
never missed its mark and would return to it owner after being thrown, but it wasn’t
perfect, and had but one flaw, its handle was short.
Sindri was upset with himself as it had almost ruined the piece, which he named Mjolnir.
Nevertheless, sure of the great worth of their three treasures, Sindri and Brokkr made their
way to Asgard to claim the wager they thought due to them, Loki’s head.
Loki made it to the halls of the gods before the dwarves and presented the marvels he had
acquired.
To Thor he gave Sif’s new hair and the hammer Mjolnir.
To Odin went the ring Draupnir and the spear Gungnir.
And Freyr received the Skidbladnir and Gullinbursti.
The gods were immensely grateful to receive these gifts, with Thor especially grateful
for Mjolnir, which he saw as being immeasurable help in the battle against the Jotun, and
so all the gods agreed that Sindri and Brokkr had made the better gifts, if only just, and
so said that Loki owed the dwarves his head.
The dwarves approached Loki, knives drawn, but Loki was cunning and argued that his neck,
which they wanted to cut, was not part of his head, and so it could not be cut off.
The gods reluctantly agreed that Lok had a point, and so instead let the dwarves sow
Loki’s mouth shut, and after that they returned to their forges.
And that is the myth about how Thor came into possession of Mjolnir.
Now that myth didn’t develop out of nowhere, and knowledge of Mjolnir would have been well
known before this myth was created, in fact before the time when even Thor was a god.
The hammer must have been considered sacred before then, and let me explain how we know
this.
The name given to Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, is derived from the Proto-Germanic “meldunjaz”,
with the root of this being “malanan”, meaning "to grind" in the way a grind stone
is used to crush wheat into flour, and so this could be interpreted as the hammer having
a meaning of grinder or crusher.
And there is some belief that the grindstone was considered the head of the hammer in early
myth.
And this word is cognate with the English word “mallet”, a term we use to describe
a kind of large hammer, and it too comes from the proto European “mele-“ to mean grind
or crush.
And so the root of the word, and therefore the awareness of the hammer, could be 5,000
years old if it originated from the Proto Indo European.
Now I have touched on storm gods in the third video on my series on the Proto Indo Europeans
Creation Myth, but to summarise some of it now, the proto European storm gods had common
tropes, themes, across Europe, and were associated with goats that flew through the sky, and
they used hammers, although more often axes.
And these storm gods that were known by cross by the various European cultures, had names
that stemmed from same source name, that of Perkanus.
And because we see this name was cognate with the storm god names across Europe, and those
gods had similar themes, we can infer that the storm god itself stemmed from an original
Proto Indo European source too.
Thus linking the timeframe of the hammer with that of the storm god who used it, to the
Proto Indo Europeans.
Perhaps pushing back the age of Mjolnir to 8,000 years old.
And because this name existed before we see any trace of the word Thor or its cognates,
it almost certainly existed before Thor was considered a god by the Old Norse culture.
And as stated in my Proto Indo European videos, Thor was more of a sky god deity, incredibly
powerful, rather than just a storm god.
He was never known as a god of thunder, and this is backed up by the Old Norse having
a storm god whose name was called Fiǫrgynn, and that name was cognate with Perkanus.
Now the explanation to show this relationship is too long to show here and so you may want
to watch that Proto Info European video if you want to understand how this happened,
and I’ll link that above my head as I talk.
But it is one thing being able to trace a word, a name back thousands of years, but
how do we know the god had a hammer back then?
That this was part of the storm god image that cultures had?
That the hammer had a power?
Well first we have the Thor’s Hammer trinkets, popular today, they were also popular about
a thousand years ago, with many trinkets found being dated to around the 10th and 11th century,
what would be considered the later part of the Viking era, and found not just in Scandinavia,
but also Europe and in the UK.
Now the 10th century is quite late in Old Norse history and far later than we would
expect to see representations of Mjolnir, and so looking elsewhere there is some belief
that the oldest Thor’s hammer trinket was found in Guilton, Kent, in England, with is
the South East tip of England and the point closest to mainland Europe.
I’ll put a picture up of an image of the hammers up now as two were found together.
These have been interpreted as an early version of Thor’s hammers.
They were however found with a number of other miniature tools, such as trowels, a spade,
and a spear, and were hanging from a belt rather than a necklace.
The trinkets themselves date from the 6th century CE, some time before the Vikings came
to England, and look to originate from the already Christianised Merovingian Empire,
which represented what is now France, some of Germany, Switzerland, Austria.
And this area, being close to Kent, did influence Kent somewhat.
So in all truth these are probably not Thor’s hammers, but pendants with a similar use in
terms of being worn to offer charm or protection to the wearer, that have come from continental
Europe.
And so if we discount these, the next oldest hammers are actually also not from Scandanavia,
but from Northwestern Germany.
An area that had trade links to Denmark in the Viking Age and beyond.
The oldest hammer is dated to around 700 AD, and has a long handle, and so does not represent
the Old Norse myth’s short handled version.
It’s context is also very unique and cannot necessarily be placed as a trinket a person
was wearing.
And because of this there is some scepticism about when this could be considered the first
Thor’s hammer trinket.
The Thor’s hammers that do meet the trinket criteria were found on islands off the north
western Germany, just below Denmark, but they are of interesting design, again with a long
handle, and found in Saxon burials.
But most interesting of all is that they are dated to the 8th or early 9th century.
And whilst they look like some examples of Thor’s hammers found at Denmark, especially
similar to those found at Denmark’s largest Viking ring castle in Aggersborg, the ones
found in the Old Saxon territory are two hundred years older than the similar looking ones
found in Denmark.
The trinkets found generally in Scandanavia are younger and perhaps the best known trinket
designs, although due to being found in uncontrolled and poorly documented circumstances there
is not much context we can put around these., and they were all made of embossed silver
and highly elaborate details on them, and match a short handled design suggesting an
understanding of the Old Norse myth.
So whilst these hammer trinkets show an understanding of Mjolnir, they are younger than the myth
of Mjolnir.
So are there any earlier hammers?
Well the answer to this is yes, but these were not made of silver or iron or bronze,
but were carved, into stone, then often painted with red orca.
And what I am specifically talking about are petroglyphs, or rock carvings, and in Scandanavia
these were usually linked to images of ithyphallic human figures, so humans showing their genitals.
And these have been found in a number of places with the best examples including Tanum and
Namforsen, in Sweden, and Atla in Norway.
The images I’m showing, show men swinging axes, and occasionally hammers, suggesting
the axe and hammer could have been used as a fertility symbol back then, perhaps in an
association with the power a hammer weapon would have compared to a spear.
And to link this further with the storm god images of the Vikings, one of these figures
here is grasping two hammers and has a horned head, much like a goat.
And finally, to help age the myth, it is also known that one of the symbols also used to
represent thor’s hammer by these people was the swastika, and this must have been
introduced into Scandanavia at quite an early time as evidence shows that the Lappish Sky
God Horagalles, derived from Thor, and took this symbology as some images show him holding
two hammers and this swastika.
And these carvings are at least 3,000 years old.
So long before the Old Norse myth of Mjolnir, and after the proto indo Europeans culture
would have started to influence the Scandinavian region.
And that is where we have our first example of a sacred hammer which would eventually
become Mjolnir.
I hope you found that interesting, and if so please like the video, it costs nothing
and it does mean a lot to me.
And until the next one, please stay safe, stay well.
And this, was Crecganford.