lad style of the text and the jocular presentation of the argu-
ment clearly indicate that the Þrymskviða is one of the more
recent poems of the Edda. The ludicrous disguise of the
champion of the gods is unthinkable in the older tradition,
where it would have been completely excluded by the explicit
abhorrence of the Æsir for transvestism and other forms of
ergi (“unmanly behavior”), as illustrated by the Lokasenna
(23–24), for example.
The text, however, indicates the importance of Þórr’s
hammer, Mjo ̨llnir, which is not only associated with the
thunderbolt, as its name perhaps indicates (it has been ety-
mologically connected with Russian molniia and with Welsh
mellt, “lightning,” but it can also be cognate with Old Norse
mala, “grind,” mo⁄lva, “crush”) and appears to be used to hal-
low the bride (Þrymskviða 30: “brúði at vígja”). This latter
function has sometimes been associated with fertility, as the
hammer can be considered a phallic symbol, but there is ob-
viously more to the consecration with Þórr’s hammer, as the
description of Baldr’s funeral indicates (Snorri Sturluson,
Gylfaginning 49): “Þórr vígði bálit með Mjo ̨llni” (“Þórr hal-
lowed the pyre with Mjo ̨llnir”). This would be done either
to restore the god to life or to protect him from danger on
his journey to the world of the dead. Since Baldr does not
come back until after Ragnaro ̨k, the second hypothesis pre-
sumably prevails. It is furthermore confirmed by the repeated
mention of Þórr as protector of the dead in memorial inscrip-
tions on rune stones, especially in Denmark and southern
Sweden, the earliest being found in Rök, East Götland, in
the mid-ninth century. Thus, the inscription of Glavendrup
(which is found on the Danish island of Fyn and dates to
about 900–925) reads: “Þur uiki pas runar” (“May Þórr hal-
low these runes”).
The control of Þórr’s hammer over life and death is also
illustrated by the following tale about Þórr’s goats (Gylfagin-
ning 44): One day, while on a journey with Loki, Þórr decid-
ed to ask a farmer for hospitality for the night. For the eve-
ning meal, Þórr slaughtered his own goats, and after skinning
them, cooked them in a cauldron. When the stew was ready,
he invited the farmer and his family to share it with him and
his travel companion. The next morning, Þórr rose at day-
break and went to the goatskins with the leftover bones.
Raising his hammer, Mjo ̨llnir, he consecrated them, and the
goats stood up as if nothing had happened to them. Howev-
er, one of them was found to be lame in a hind leg. When
he noticed it, Þórr realized that a thigh-bone had been split
for marrow, and he was angry with the farmer and his house-
hold for doing such a stupid thing. The farmer was terrified,
and Þórr’s angry reproach sounded like a death knell to him.
As his frightened family screamed, he begged his dangerous
guest for mercy and offered him all he had in compensation.
Þórr relented and specified that he would take along the far-
mer’s two children—his son, Þjalfi, and his daughter,
Ro ̨skva—as bond servants.
The association of Þórr with goats is abundantly docu-
mented. They pull his chariot; the Húsdrapá (st. 3) calls him
hafra njótr (“user of goats”), and the Hymiskviða (st. 31) de-
scribes him as hafra dróttinn (“lord of goats”). The picture
of Þórr riding a vehicle drawn by goats appears repeatedly
in the literature (e.g., in Hauslo ̨ng 15), and according to a
story, perhaps from the late twelfth or early fourteenth centu-
ry but preserved in Flateyjarbók (1387–1390), when king
Óláfr Tryggvason entered the pagan temple at Mærin in the
Trondheim district, he found a statue of Þórr, adorned with
gold and silver, seated on a splendid carriage drawn by finely
carved wooden goats (Turville-Petre, 1964, p. 82).BIBLIOGRAPHY
de Vries, Jan. Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, vol. 2. 2d rev. ed.
Berlin, 1957.
de Vries, Jan. Altnordische Literaturgeschichte, vol. 2: Die Literatur
von etwa 1150–1300; Die Spätzeit nach 1300. 2d ed. Berlin,
1967.
Dumézil, Georges. The Destiny of the Warrior. Translated by Alf
Hiltebeitel. Chicago, 1970.
Lindow, John. “Thor’s Duel with Hrungnir.” Alvíssmál 6 (1996):
3–20.
Lindow, John. “Thor’s Visit to Útgarðaloki.” Oral Tradition 15
(2000): 170–186.
Ljungberg, Helge. Tor. Undersökningar i indoeuropeisk och nordisk
religionshistoria. vol. 1. Uppsala universitets a ̊rsskrift 1947: 9.
Uppsala and Leipzig, 1947.
Perkins, Richard. Thor the Wind-Raiser and the Eyrarland Image.
London, 2001.
Ross, Margaret Clunies. “Þórr’s Honour.” In Studien zum Altger-
manischen. Festschrift für Heinrich Beck, edited by Heiko
Uecker, pp. 48–76. Berlin and New York, 1994.
Turville-Petre, E. O. G. Myth and Religion of the North: The Reli-
gion of Ancient Scandinavia. New York, 1964.
EDGAR C. POLOMÉ (1987)
JOSEPH HARRIS (2005)THOTH was the god of wisdom from Hermopolis in
Middle Egypt. According to the Hermopolitan cosmology
(which is best known from texts found at other sites), the
eight primordial gods representing “hiddenness,” “darkness,”
“formlessness” (?), and the “watery abyss” produced an egg
that appeared at Hermopolis when the inundation subsided
and from which the creator god appeared and brought every-
thing else into being. When mentioned in the Heliopolitan
Pyramid Texts, this creator god was Atum, but in the local
Hermopolitan tradition he could have been Thoth.
Thoth was the moon god and as such was the compan-
ion of Re, the sun god, but he also had his own following
among the stars in the night sky. One mortuary tradition,
probably originating at Hermopolis, permitted the dead who
knew the correct spells to accompany Thoth in the sky.
Thoth was the son of Re, but he also represented the injured
eye of the falcon-headed sky god, Horus, whose sound eye
was Re. For unknown reasons Thoth is identified with bothTHOTH 9167