The Common Man’s God – Thor

Thor’s reputation as someone who works hard, fights hard, and parties hard sets him up as the common man’s god. Dr. Jackson Crawford also calls Thor the greatest “drinking man” in the Norse universe.

Thor’s Battles in the East

Despite his well-known proclivities toward feasting and celebration, Thor’s work ethic often puts him in the middle of battles with giants while the other gods remain at home in the west. Although the enemies of the gods do not always live in the east, the myths most often describe Thor traveling there to fight giants. Crawford suggests that one reason for this may be the structure of Old Norse poetry itself. The “yuh” sound in Jötunheim alliterates with any vowel, and “austr” is the only direction that starts with a vowel.

Crawford also proposes that there may have been only one mythological route to Jötunheim, which passed eastward through Midgard. A third explanation is geographical: the Icelanders who preserved many of these myths descended from Norwegians, whose wilderness regions lay primarily to the east. The site tells two of those eastern journeys, Thor and Loki Go to Utgard and Loki, Thor, and the Giant Geirrod.

The Common Man’s God, Thor, in the Eddas

Thor isn’t always stern. Some stories make him look comic, even foolish: in the Poetic Edda poem Thrymskviða, he has to disguise himself as a bride, veil and all, to get Mjölnir back from the giant who stole it.

He is also genuinely frightening. In Lokasenna, Loki insults every god at Aegir’s feast. When Thor arrives, Loki trades a few jabs with him, too, but when Thor threatens him with the hammer for the fourth time, Loki leaves: “I know that you will strike.”

Fate of the Common Man’s God, Thor

The prophecy of Ragnarök seals Thor’s fate. During the final battle, Thor will kill the Midgard Serpent, Loki’s monstrous son. It is the same serpent he once hooked on a fishing line. After taking nine steps, he will collapse and die from the serpent’s venom.

Vikings wore Thor’s hammer around their necks. Archaeologists have found around a thousand Mjölnir amulets across Scandinavia, many from the late Viking Age, when Christians wore crosses and some Norse answered with the hammer. The dwarves Brokkr and Eitri forged the real one after a wager with Loki; Snorri says it never missed, always returned to Thor’s hand, and could shrink small enough to carry inside his shirt. Reliable, strong, straightforward: no wonder ordinary people loved him.

Readers can find more stories of the common man’s god Thor in Thor and Hymir Fish for the Midgard Serpent and Thor and Hrungnir Battle.

Two videos follow. In them, Jackson Crawford explains who Thor is and why Thor fights “in the east.”