The Norse Gods: Thor

[Music] hello my name is jacob and i'm a norse pagan and welcome to the first episode of the first god week where i'm going to take a whole week of episodes to discuss one deity at a time and this week we're going to start with the thunderer himself thor now if you want to know more about this series how it's going to be kind of set up and the future deities we may be talking about please check out the announcement video i made about it to find out more information otherwise i want to dig right into it that way you can watch it get all this boring stuff out of the way so we can get to the fun stuff like talking about how to actually honor thor in a modern world um but it is very important to understand source material it is important to understand how many inconsistencies we have in this faith i think it's important to read as many sources as possible to watch as many videos as possible that way you can have a list of all the things we know and then you can decipher what is best used for your personal practice um so without further to do let us hop into the actual written sources and the actual facts of thor so starting with the poetic edda which is going to be our primary source for most of this um most of the thor stories do take place in the poetic edda a few which take place in the prose edit as well but starting with poetic edda there are 15 god stories um related to the gods else what not at least listed in the jackson crawford translation um so of those 15 stories seven of those involve thor four of those stories also involve him as the main character which is fascinating because i find that he at least in my personal ear to the ground in the norse pagan community is not that honored of a god in the sense that i don't find many people saying oh he's my patron or oh i want to commit more time to learning for maybe it's because there's not as much mystery around him i'm not quite sure we'll explore that in the future videos in this series um but yes i have listed for all the stories that he is in within the poetic edda so i'm just gonna go through those stories um give you a summary of kind of what happens um and what we can learn from those stories starting at the top which is ironic because it's also the end is volaspa in stanza 54 um is thor's part and ragnarok where thor will be killed by the world serpent um so this is interesting because it's your first four way into the poetic edda you both have the creation of everything and then the end of everything as well including the death of thor so there's not too much to be read into this this is something that i find is more common knowledge uh if anyone if anything is known about thor outside of the marvel movies um it is that he is killed by the world serpent at least his uh his beef with the world serpent the next story in the poetic edda that thor makes an appearance is grimness small and it's in stanza 23 it's pretty short the story is about odin and frigg having an argument um and odin eventually like disguising himself to go prove his side of the argument um and listing a bunch of facts now before i say thor's hall's name remember i'm a filthy american i speak filthy american english and i apologize for the uh any min miss pinocchio for any mispronunciation i barely speak my own damn language um so i do apologize i'm not by any means trying to take any accreditation away from iceland sweden denmark norway all these countries that can pronounce he's much better than i will um but at the end of the day i'm trying my best so thor's hall is bilstein and it said bill skanier is the most spacious hall in all of asgard with 540 halls for accommodations of the thralls according to norse mythology the norse pathology book i have here but um what i see in the point is that it has 540 rooms and it is the largest of the halls of asgard um so again not too much we can take from this in itself besides the fact that thor has a hall it's large um and you know he lives a large life so the next story is the first story we see him as a main character um this is also hot so happens to be my favorite story in the poetic edda and it's harvest the old um this is the story of thor and odin in disguise his graveyard arguing across a river or a fjord um as thor comes back from a recent campaign um against the giants and so there's a lot of insults thrown between the two which is i mean some of them are quite aggressive um considering his father and son yelling at each other but the things to learn here is that he is very protective of his family because the moment that odin goes after his wife um and his you know extended friend groups and friends uh family he gets very protective of them it seems he cares less for himself in this situation more for his family's sake now he does get quite mad at odin um for all the insults and it becomes more of a boasting match than anything else about halfway through um and eventually ends in sort of a stalemate as thor has to go all the way around um but an amazingly entertaining story if you haven't checked it out um please reharvest the old it's absolutely amazing it's short and it's just it's just pure fun so this next one is another story where he is the main character um this one i definitely apologize for the pronunciation it's hims either hints himness creeper it is that is my 15th take and i think i did okay so this story is um another well-known story i believe it is in uh neil gaiman's norse mythology if i'm not mistaken it's the story of thor and tyr going off to take back the largest cauldron in order to brew beer for a feast at acres hall now this story is very well known because this is also the story where thor goes to fish out the world serpent um so he uses an ox head to fish out the world surfing and it ends up dragging the boat along with it obviously doesn't end up catching it but it is a you know quite a fantastical story about him doing this um and then this is also a story where he is tested by highnear which is the uh which is the giant who ended up having the cauldron um and thor has to pass this test in order to get it back and that's to break an indestructible cup um and the answer ends up being um now thor does try to smash it with his brute strength but he ends up on smashing on the head of jaime himself um as was suggested by one of his um his lovers concubine something like that um so he ends up breaking it um and winning back the cauldron on the way back he ends up getting play uh hammond's here to end up getting chased down by the giants um he ends up killing them all um so i don't know how much there is is read into this but it's a it's a wonderful story once again it's a very entertaining story and i know we have um there is archaeological evidence which i'll put up if i can find it um of a depiction of this event of him fishing for the world servant with an ox head um so it's something that we know is pretty prevalent of course most of the information we do have recorded at least in the form of poetica and the prose edda we for the most part can determine that they were written down by christians so it's sometimes hard to determine what is real um and what it can be you know what has been influenced by christianity and of course what is consistent across the board because you might find something written about thor in one small area and then find something completely different as we will get to here in a moment you'll find that there's so many inconsistencies so to see that the story exists and there's also an engraving that exists that also talks about this makes me feel pretty good and hopefully everyone else pretty good this story is actually something that was told in the previous and scandinavian times so the next story that features thor not as the main character um but he is prevalent in it um and it comes in the end is lokasenna um which is the story where loki is passing insults to everyone um you know all the gods this is one where we see many of the gods listed by name um and they keep on saying oh you better you stop this before thor comes back you'll whip your head off all these things and of course thor does come back um and you know once again it shows that protective instinct of you know well one going after loki for all these insults i don't i don't think there's too much that can be read into this story besides the fact that once again thor is very protective and you know this is just another interesting part of the ragnarok cycle so to speak um the next story that thor once again is the main character of is thurms this one again is one of the more known stories for anyone that knows anything about norse mythology you probably know the famous story of thor in the wedding dress so i don't find that the story has too much to look into as far as like is there any revealing things about thor besides it's funny i mean this is a funny story this is written to be a funny story this was told as a funny story of this big burly red bearded warrior having to wear a wedding dress to get back his hammer which was stolen from him um so just a really funny tale um you know it ends very abruptly they have all this build up him talking to freya and loki to try to get this hammer back and you know freya you know actually getting afraid to marry this giant so he can actually get his hammer back um but eventually he just dresses as freya um and goes to marry the giant and of course once he finally gets his hand on the owner he then kills all the giants while wearing the wedding dress again hilarious story um even today yes i don't think there's too much to look into as far as like the worship aspect but again just a fun tale that we have recorded um about thor hopefully you're seeing a theme here of what we seem to have about thor so the final story that we have um that feature store once again he is featured as the main character uh because once again there are four stories where he is featured as the main character in the poetic edda um and this one is actually one of my personal favorites as well which is elvis mall so this one's interesting um it's i would call it one of the more lesser known columns something that people don't bring up very often but is an interesting aspect of thor because quite frankly if you replace thor in this story with odin i think it makes more sense but it's interesting that it is so this story is about the dwarf that shows up at thor's home to try to take his daughter um his daughter's hand in marriage and thor doesn't allow it and so he ends up getting into a wit contest with this all-wise character so this is actually a great mythology exploration it shares a lot of the mythology and the landscapes and the understandings and it's actually just a really fun poem highly recommend reading it and this is also where we see thor trick the dwarf into staying up all night and seeing the sunrise and turning the dwarf to stone sound familiar lord of the rings fans this is the story that influenced the hobbit um where gandalf um and bilbo trick the uh trolls to staying up all night and getting hit by the morning sun and turning into stone um so it's interesting because we always considered gandalf to be this um odin type figure and here we have that story actually coming from a thor story and this goes into a longer reaching idea that i found within other sources that suggest that thor is more like odin than we give him credit for that even in sweden i saw reference this is very this came from this book uh tales of norse mythology um that thor actually was known as the wide brim hat god uh in sweden and that um the wide worm hat is associated with storms and thor at the same time um so this idea that thor is i mean he's the son of odin so it makes sense that one of the traits he gets is some form of wisdom and most of the stories we see him as this you know brutus character but we see this more as the wise man the wanderer i mean for half the time he's away from asgard um and so again really interesting story so that kind of ends the poetic edda at least the stories that we have within it so going through the prose edda there are a few stories that feature thor he is mentioned throughout the poetic edda um it would take far too long and it's really not even worth it to discuss all the times he has mentioned because there's so many loose times but there are several really prominent stories that we've probably heard as well you also find these featured in norse mythology by neil gaiman which is a much better way to read them honestly because the prose edda is an annoyingly hard book to read it's boring i don't trust it um but you know we wouldn't have a lot of the stories we have now i know i can be hard on it sometimes but it just has a stink to it and it's just it's hard to navigate it's hard to read not a big fan anyways the first main story featured in um the prose edda is the tale of god or loki um so this is the story of thor and loki traveling together now of course this is interesting because i think this is where a lot of the marvel influences at least the movies come into play where they seem to be a little bit more friends sort of but um you know they are traveling together seeming to get along most of the time it's an entertaining story i really enjoy it um even within the pros added to some extent uh but this the story also has multiple layers it really is uh divided into three main parts um the first is which is loki and thor traveling and eventually meeting a small peasant family that they end up spending the night with which is interesting god's just traveling around find a small family and they said hey can we spend the night um as part as the hospitality aspect of this thor ends up killing his two goats which can be resurrected every day to eat that night for dinner one of the children ends up like taking one of the bones when thor resurrects um the the goats the next day um they are one of them has a limp so he knows that someone tampered with the bones and so they end up having to take the child with them on the journey once again this is something i found in tales of norse mythology it seems like there are like murmurings that this is something that was common is that thor would take um human companions along with him um that he did treat them well um and was quite known for being a god of the peasantry um so they end up taking this child along with him on the journey um and they end up the second part of the story is running into a giant named james crimea now thor wants to kill this giant but it's very boastful giant it you know says you know thor can't kill him blah blah blah they end up traveling together and thor tries to kill him three times and fails again this is kind of a funny story because every time thor tries to kill him um you know the uh the scry mirror just wakes up like oh an acorn fell on my head a picture of it's like this job of the hut you know just every time that uh he fails um and it kind of goes nowhere like scrambling eventually just kind of leaves them it's weird uh and then you have the uh when they actually get to meet gargoloki um and they have the contest of wills uh two of which being thor's one of which being loki's thor's are quite interesting uh thor has to drink from an endless horn um and drain it dry as a contest of his ability to drink and so um this is where he starts drinking from the horn and he drinks so much that he actually ends up lowering the sea levels because the horn itself the trickery behind it um is that it's attached to the ocean and so you know to actually drink it would be drink the ocean and that's why it's a test but he ends up drinking it so much that there it causes a deficit in the ocean which is the story of how we got our tides really fascinating story and then the other story well loki's little part in it is he has an eating contest and fails um but thor also fails his next challenge which is to wrestle somebody and to fight somebody um and okay loki says oh fight this old woman and thor last says oh you can't throw this old woman at me blah blah ends up fighting and loses because you cannot fight old age because the woman yourself was actually a resemblance of old age um so of course this you know you know angers loki angers thor because they were bested by these challenges and so they leave um thor is really angry and thinks oh i'm gonna you know i'm gonna kill these you know these giants because that's what thor does and so he turns around but um loki and his kingdom are gone um so a really fascinating stale that's hail with a lot of layers which is why i do enjoy it but once again i think you should read it in norse mythology by neil gaiman that is the majority of the written sources there are some more in the prose edda but it's mostly small little murmurings um like one is fruckneyer like he kills group near um this is like um kind of talk about my bulk nut video a little bit um is that um was a giant um that said he couldn't be killed um he also challenged odin to a race loses um and then thor like you know wants to go duel them and thor basically like one shots and kills them um and this is the story of krugner um and he ends up taking um crew veneers horse as a prize and gives it to magni his son and of course this of course there's a story of how the owner was forged which you can actually read in neil gaiman's norse mythology as well in a more modern language highly recommend it um but you'll see that story feature there as well and it always seems like no matter what what no matter what story is happening um whether it's in the prose or the poetic thor always seems to be floating around he's at least mentioned once or twice like even within the small uh the miniature vowel spell i forget the name off the top of my head but the smaller volusia which features more afraid as a character flores mentioned like briefly um i didn't add it into this list just because it was such a brief mentioning uh but thor is a very prominent god to be mentioned in any story um and it seems like i mean i would argue that thor is pretty darn tied with odin for the most written about the dna that we have currently um but that does not mean we don't have misconceptions um so one of the things that really made me tear my hair out when researching into thor was his children now i don't care about this as much as a practitioner of the faith but it's still as a mythology aspect it is really really annoying so let me give you a breakdown okay so most of us know that thor is married to sith right that is his wife um there are accounts that he had a lover this lover's name was ein saksa or yarn saxa meaning iron stone or iron dagger iron sword um and this but weirdly enough this woman was a giant and so it's weird but anyway so there's you know sif that most of us know for sure there's uh iron saxa or yarn saxa uh that seems to be possible as well um and then there are the three main children most people know magni and multi is two sons once again i apologize about pronunciations but there is also thruther or through um she is his daughter now i also seen accounts of laurie or lorith as one of his daughters as well but i have basically found nothing on her it was written in the tales of norse mythology book here the main sources i used for this were obviously pros out of pocahontas uh neil diamond's uh norse mythology tales of norse mythology by helen gerber and the norse myths and gods guide to gods and heroes by uh caroline larrington so yeah those were all my sources that's where i'm getting a lot of these from and each one says something slightly different about thor at least about his marriage and about his children so let's break this down all right so normally the most common thing i have found is that thor is married to sith who bore him maggie and modi and further i have also read accounts that says that sif only bore him magni and modi um and that iron saxa bore him through there which would make sense because thruther is considered a giant test so it makes sense that she would come from iron saxa or iron iron saxa and then i've also seen accounts that say iron saxa bore him magni and that's if or him modi okay and then i've also seen accounts that are saksa ah so this is where i started to lose my mind a little bit because it seems like no matter what i read them in some everything said something different um whether it was the poetic edda the prose edda sales north mythology or the norsemen the gods of god as a hero they all said something different but i think what can be said is that thor was married to sith for sure that he may or may not have had an affair or a love interest in young saksa but it doesn't seem to be very long and then at best it bore him one child it makes sense that we will be through there who would be considered the giant test again i have a problem with this theory and this this idea because thor hates giants they're his mortal enemy they he hates them he kills them on the regular why would he lie with one and again maybe this is coming from odin i'm not sure i'm just here to present the facts to you it's confusing especially in the in the you know the marriage and in the children but once again i don't think this matters too much as people that want to follow him as a deity within paganism i don't think it should matter too much to figure out who he was actually fathers to a father to and married to from what i can deter from the poetic edda and other sources it seems like that he was a very loyal husband um when he was actually married to sith again not sure about this yarn saxa um and whatnot but unlike odin who definitely seemed to sleep around a lot but thor definitely seemed to be very committed man so he definitely seemed to be the man for marriage if you want to look to as well as along with freyr um but he seemed to be a good father a good husband a good son a good man and once again i've seen many mentionings of him being the common person's god whereas odin was more the king's god um and thor definitely earned these stripes because um within history he was actually the primary deity of both norway and iceland um and that definitely had some prominence in sweden as well um so thor being a prominent deity definitely helps in the creation of the honor as something that people wore um i plan on doing a full meowner video where i'll explore this more but obviously many of us wear mjolnirs around our necks to signify our norse pagan religion and i think that fits very well considering that he is the god of the people it would make sense that many of the people would wear one of his symbols um even going into today all right all right i feel good this was a lot of information um i wanted to share it with you so that way you could have it all condensed in one video what does all this mean um as far as like history again it seems like it seems like thor is one of the most consistent deities that we know he's a very complex character he's not one-dimensional if you just read one story you'll find that maybe thor's a very one-dimensional character i don't find this to be true if you read all the stories that are written about them and all the information we have about him i find him to be a very complex character um that i think people need to follow more because he's the god of the people he's not just the god of thunder he's got the god of so much more we can definitely determine that thor was a strong god a very masculine figure within the faith but one thing i do want to leave us on as well is it seems like he is also the comic relief of the faith at times or at least in norse mythology with the stories of harvest the old um and within uh uh where he dresses in the um the wedding dress um and even albus mall is a very entertaining story um i would find that the most of the stories talked about where he's the main character some of the most entertaining within the um within the poetic edda um and even even the tale of garda loki is one of the most complex tales that we have um so i think he's a god to be remembered and god to be hailed he was definitely very prominent in the pre-christian scandinavian times and i do believe that he needs more attention now um more people need to look for him um a lot of people tend to look to odin when they first get into this faith let me tell you odin ain't around that much you know who's going to be around a lot more four um i know in the past i've said that thor is you know you're feeling during thunderstorms that's great but you can film other times as well but we're going to explore that in a different video more in depth this was the written facts at least within the books i have um the inconsistencies within the books i have um the stories that he's talked about and said yeah you have them as well the next video coming out in this god week studying for is going to break down the marvel problem and why i think many people don't follow thor in this modern world so video coming out this wednesday please check it out we're going to be breaking down the marvel problem with thor and then later this week i'm going to be releasing a video talking about the modern practice of venerating thor honoring thor as a modern practitioner of this faith i hope you enjoyed this first episode of god week i hope you enjoyed it with thor i hope to continue this series if you enjoyed it please let me know down below what other deities you would like me to talk about and until next time until the haul skull you

Channel: The Wisdom Of Odin

Views: 15,522

Keywords: heilung, Paganism, Viking, pagan holidays, Freya, sacrifice, books, offering, winter, Asatru explained, norse pagan, the wisdom of odin, pagan christmas, Norse myth, religion, holidays, heathenry, Norse Pagan Religion, Vikings, shamanism, yuletide, Norse Paganism, Norse mythology, Wiccan, Thor, shaman, Asatru religion, pagan, ritual, asatru, yule, old gods, yggrasil, norse pagan ritual, Norse, wicca, Asatru for beginners, Norse paganism for beginners, Nordic, list, gods, Asatru ritual, heathen, Odin

Id: EndjJ-BZHiE

Length: 26min 33sec (1593 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021