How Thor Lost His Thunder
How Thor Lost His Thunder is the first major English-language study of early medieval evidence for the Old Norse god Thor. Today, Thor is com- monly imagined summoning lightning and thunder with his hammer while battling against monsters and giants. This book examines the basis of these images within the Iron Age and early medieval evidence. In doing so, the cultural background of Thor’s cult and mythology is explored and some of his lesser known traits are revealed, including a possible connection to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Iceland.
This geographically and chronologically far-reaching study considers the earliest sources in which Thor appears, including in evidence from the Viking colonies of the British Isles and in Scandinavian folklore. By tracing the changes that have occurred in Old Norse mythology over time, this book questions fundamental popular and scholarly beliefs about Thor for the first time since the Victorian era, including whether he really was a thunder god, and prompts new inquiries into areas like the afterlife beliefs of Thor’s worshippers.
Considering evidence from across northern Europe, How Thor Lost His Thunder challenges modern scholarship’s understanding of the god and of the northern pantheon as a whole and is ideal for scholars and students of mythology and of the history and religion of medieval Scandinavia.
Declan Taggart is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of English at University College Cork. His research interests include Old Norse mythol- ogy, religion and literature, together with the role of human cognition in shaping religious concepts.