The Germanic Thunderweapon Part I: Mjollnir’s True Power
What Norse mythological sources really say about Thor’s hammer
If you happen to know anything at all about Thor’s hammer, Mjollnir, you are likely aware of all of the most exciting features: that it buzzes with lightning, weighs a figurative ton, and requires any would-be user to be worthy in order to wield it.
But what if I told you all of this is wrong? What if I told you there is no lightning, no heaviness, and no worthiness involved? Would you be ready for such an earth-shattering revelation? The answer to this probably depends on how invested you have become in traditional, pop-culture depictions of the weapon. But around here, the only traditions we care about are ancient ones. So let’s take a look at what ancient literature actually has to say about this legendary weapon.
It so happens that all of the explicit details we have regarding Mjollnir’s properties come courtesy of our dear friend Snorri Sturluson, the most likely author of the Prose Edda. As a reminder, the Prose Edda is a 13th-century, post-pagan scholarly work, so it is not without its flaws. But many of its recounted narratives are verifiably accurate1 so it’s a generally trustworthy source, once you get a feel for how to properly trust a 13th-century Christian scholar’s information about a religion that pre-dates him by about 200 years (more on this another time).
Snorri is, of course, a fallible human who sometimes shows himself to be a bit self-contradictory (e.g., is Vali the son of Odin or Loki? Is Hel the afterlife of the unrighteous or of those who die of sickness and old age?) As we might expect, there is a bit of Snorri-weirdness to be found in the details about Mjollnir if we pay close attention, and for that reason, it’s hard to take all of his details about this particular topic at face value.
In Gylfaginning 21, Snorri introduces us to Thor’s three signature items (and indeed it is this specific passage that has caused history to view them as his signature items):
Hann á ok þrjá kostgripi. Einn þeira er hamarrinn Mjǫllnir, er hrímþursar ok bergrisar kenna, þá er hann kemr á loft, ok er þat eigi undarligt. Hann hefir lamit margan haus á feðrum eða frændum þeira. Annan grip á hann beztan, megingjarðar, ok er hann spennir þeim um sik, þá vex honum ásmegin hálfu. Inn þriðja hlut á hann, þann er mikill gripr er í. Þat eru járnglófar. Þeira má hann eigi missa við hamarskaftit.
He (Thor) also owns three valuable treasures. One of them is the hammer Mjollnir, which rime-thurses and mountain-risses2 know when it is raised aloft, and this is not extraordinary. It has crushed many a skull of their fathers and kinsmen. He owns another exceptional treasure, a strength-girdle, and when he fastens it upon himself, then his god-might is doubled. He owns a third thing which is a very great treasure. These are iron-gloves. These must he not be without against the hammer-shaft.
Various careless translations of this passage over time have likely given rise to the idea that Mjollnir is extremely heavy and requires a strength-girdle in order to use it. However, neither this passage nor any other passage comes anywhere close to naming the strength-girdle as required for wielding the hammer. In this particular case, what Snorri appears to believe are important for hammer-wielding (and, more specifically, “against the hammer-shaft”) are the iron-gloves, although he provides no explanation as to why.
If the wording of the paragraph was not enough to indicate intuitively that Snorri is not naming the strength-belt as necessary for using the hammer here, we can bear this out through a bit of textual analysis. Note that Snorri has attempted to create symmetry in the prose via three forms of equal treatment applied to each of Thor’s treasures. Each receives a named introduction (“the hammer Mjollnir”, “a strength-girdle”, and “iron-gloves”), a short veneration (“which [evil creatures] know”, “exceptional treasure”, and “very great treasure”), and a purpose (“crushed many a skull”, “god-might is doubled”, and “[necessary] against the hammer-shaft”). This symmetry indicates what is already obvious: that the third purpose, necessity in using the hammer, is reserved exclusively for the third item, namely the gloves.
Strangely, there are no other sources, even among those which come from Snorri himself, supporting the idea that either of these items is necessary for using the hammer. Given that Snorri has not explained why he believes the gloves are necessary, we are within our rights to wonder where this idea came from, and whether or not it is correct. As we will see, apart from simply lacking support for this idea, surviving source material actually tends to contradict it.
The Absent Gloves and Girdle
In the poem Þrymskviða, the jotun Thrym steals Mjollnir and demands marriage to Freyja as payment for returning it. Thor and Loki are able to con their way into the wedding by disguising themselves as a bride and bridesmaid, at which point Thrym orders the hammer to be brought into the ceremony and placed into the bride’s (i.e., Thor’s) lap. Thor then takes up the hammer and uses it to kill all of the jotuns in attendance.
From this tale we learn a few things about Mjollnir:
It is necessary for Asgard’s defense. (From stanza 18: þegar munu jǫtnar Ásgarð búa, nema þú þinn hamar þér um heimtir “at once will the jotuns occupy Asgard, unless you recover your hammer”). This might be because its power can be harnessed by anyone using it, or it might be because Thor can not properly defend Asgard without it. A clear reason is not given.
There is no worthiness required in order to lift Mjollnir, as indicated by the fact that it is stolen by jotuns and carried into Thor’s lap by jotuns. This idea was invented by Marvel Entertainment and doesn’t warrant another mention.
Thor is not the sole individual powerful enough to lift the hammer, which is also indicated by the fact that it is carried by jotuns twice in this story. We will continue to see Mjollnir lifted by even more characters as we continue.
Apparently, one need not be in possession of a strength-girdle or special iron gloves in order to lift or use it, given that Thor has foregone his standard attire in this story in favor of bridal vestments. It is not clearly stated that Thor is without his girdle or gloves here, yet they are plausibly absent given his disguise, and he is able to slay jotuns with Mjollnir regardless. Either way, there is no mention of the jotun(s) who stole the hammer having stolen either of these items alongside it.
As it turns out, the gloves are never mentioned alongside the usage of Mjollnir anywhere in our sources. There is one case wherein we are told that Thor fastened on his strength-belt just before attempting to strike a sleeping giant3, but this does not make the girdle necessary, and even in this narrative, the gloves are nowhere to be found.
Additionally, the poem Vafþrúðnismál notes in stanza 51 that, after Thor’s death in the world-ending battle of Ragnarok, both of his sons “Modi and Magni shall have Mjollnir” (Móði ok Magni skulu Mjǫllni hafa) with no mention of the girdle or the gloves. This would indicate again that other individuals are fully capable of using Mjollnir without any special equipment.
What is particularly striking is the fact that the girdle and gloves are absent at the moment when Thor’s hammer is created, given to him, and has its powers explained to him. So let’s talk about that.
Mjollnir’s Origin Story
Skáldskaparmál 43 in the Prose Edda provides a story wherein Loki convinces the dwarven brothers Brokk and Eitri to create three precious items for the Æsir. The brothers create a golden ring that generates more golden rings, a light-emitting boar that can run faster than a horse across the sky, and the hammer, Mjollnir, which they give to Thor. Snorri describes the event as follows:
Þá gaf hann Þór hamarinn ok sagði, at hann myndi mega ljósta svá stórt sem hann vildi, hvat sem fyrir væri, at eigi myndi hamarrinn bila, ok ef hann yrpi honum til, þá myndi hann aldri missa ok aldri fljúga svá langt, at eigi myndi hann sækja heim hönd, ok ef þat vildi, þá var hann svá lítill, at hafa mátti serk sér. En þat var lýti á, at forskeftit var heldr skammt.
Then he (Brokk) gave Thor the hammer and said that he would be able to strike as greatly as he wanted, at what whatever was before him, that the hammer would not break4; also if he threw it, then it would never miss and never fly so far that it wouldn’t find its way back to his hand; also if he wanted, then it was so little that he might carry it in his sark. But there was a flaw in it that the shaft was rather short.
From this account we learn a few more things:
Mjollnir does not break, no matter how hard Thor intends to strike with it. This may be the key to understanding why the combination of Thor and the hammer are nearly invincible: simply because it allows him to release his strength fully unbridled. For a people like the ancient Norse who were well acquainted with the realities of gun-less warfare, the threat of brittle weapons breaking when struck against other hard objects was an ever-present problem. Thus, unbreakability is an extremely sensible property to expect in a magical weapon designed for an impossibly strong character. With Mjollnir, Thor need not restrain his strength for fear of breaking his weapon. Rather, he is able to strike as greatly as he wants, at any target, without worry that the weapon will fail.
Mjollnir does not miss when thrown, although it is possible this notion is somewhat contradicted by some details in the story of Thor’s fishing trip with Hymir.5
Mjollnir will never fly so far that it can’t find its way back to Thor’s hand. This is typically interpreted as meaning that the hammer returns almost like a boomerang after being thrown. To be clear, there are no sources that explicitly describe the hammer reversing course to return to Thor’s waiting hand. However, we do often see Thor throw the hammer (for example down to the bottom of the sea during his fishing trip with Hymir) and yet afterward he is still in possession of it without being described as journeying to retrieve it, so this is not an unreasonable interpretation.
Mjollnir can be carried by dwarves. Whereas in Þrymskviða we saw the hammer transported by jotuns twice, in this account we see it carried by two individual dwarves. In the quoted passage, Brokk brings the hammer to Thor and just a little before this we are told that his brother Eitri “took a hammer from the forge. He then handed all the treasures to his brother Brokk and bade him take them to Asgard” (tók hann ór aflinum hamar. Fékk hann þá alla gripina í hendr bróður sínum Brokk ok bað hann fara með til Ásgarðs). Though it is not clear that dwarves were considered especially small during the pagan period, they are certainly beings who lack the same physical prowess as Thor himself, once again indicating that there are likely no restrictions on who can and can’t lift the hammer.
Mjollnir is small enough to be worn by Thor as if it were a pendant. For context, a sark (O.N. serk) is a pull-over shirt, as opposed to something like a coat that closes in the front. It extends below the waist and is typically used as an undershirt. If worn beneath another shirt, the ensemble would commonly be cinched with a belt. With this in mind, the only practical method of wearing something “in a sark” is to wear it around the neck as a pendant. Otherwise, how would one ever retrieve it without undressing first? The image of Thor wearing Mjollnir in this fashion also mirrors the wealth of hammer-shaped pendants discovered in the archaeological record dating from the Viking Age. However, this need not mean that the hammer is literally the size of jewelry.6 Thor is often described as a large man and Mjollnir is a little small for a hammer. This on its own may be sufficient to allow him to hang it around his neck.
To reiterate the point that led us to this story, Thor is not given a pair of iron gloves when first receiving his hammer and he is not told that any items are necessary for its use when its properties are explained to him.
How the Gloves Appear in the Myths
As it turns out, Thor’s iron gloves appear in only one surviving story, and that story exists in two forms. The first is a pagan-era poem called Þórsdrápa composed by the skald Eilífr Goðrúnarson, and which is quoted in full in the Prose Edda. The second is Snorri’s own retelling of that same story, also included in the Prose Edda.
The short version of this story is that, for some reason, Loki decides to convince Thor to make a journey to the home of a jotun called Geirrod. Along the way, Geirrod’s daughters make a couple different attempts to attack Thor, but he is able to overcome them. In the final confrontation that ensues, Geirrod attempts to kill Thor by throwing a glowing hot iron ingot at him, having pulled it with tongs straight from the fire. Thor, however, catches the ingot and throws it back, killing Geirrod instead.
In Þórsdrápa, Thor behaves as he does in other stories after this, killing other members of Geirrod’s court with his hammer after dealing the death blow to Geirrod himself:
Glaums niðjum fór gǫrva | gramr með dreyrgum hamri; | of salvanið Synjar | sigr hlaut arinbrautar. | Kom at tvíviðar tívi, | tollurr karms þás harmi, | -brautar liðs, of beitti, | bekk- fall, jǫtuns rekka.
Extremely angry, he destroyed with bloody hammer Glaum’s descendants [giants]. The beater [Thor] of the frequenter [giant] of hearth-stone-Syn’s [giantess’s] dwelling gained victory. No lack of support befell the double-wood-stave [bow-tree, warrior], the god of the wagon, who inflicted grief on the giant’s bench-fellows.7
Additionally, Þórsdrápa refers to Thor as njótr njarðgjarðar (user of a strength-girdle), and also describes him as wielding a hneitir hógbrotningi skógar (handy weapon of the forest), which Snorri’s account will clarify momentarily. However, there are no gloves mentioned anywhere in the poem. Thor does indeed catch and throw Geirrod’s iron ingot, but no hand-protection is described.
Snorri’s account is much more detail-rich than Goðrúnarson’s poem. He includes, for example, an explanation that the reason Loki convinced Thor to make the journey to Geirrod’s home was because he had previously been captured by Geirrod and had only been given his freedom in exchange for an oath that he would trick Thor into paying Geirrod a visit without his hammer and strength-girdle (no mention of any pre-existing gloves).
Thor, however, is fortunate in that he stays the night with a jotun woman named Grid who warns him that Geirrod is up to no good and lends him three plot vouchers that will help him on his coming journey: an extra strength-girdle she happens to have, a pair of iron gloves, and a staff called Gríðarvǫlr (Grid’s Wale). This staff (likely made of wood) is apparently what Þórsdrápa is referring to when it mentions the “handy weapon of the forest”.
Throughout the rest of the story, Thor is able to use the strength-girdle to resist the mighty current of a river, press against the ceiling with the staff when Geirrod’s daughters attempt to lift up his chair (thus breaking their backs), and catch Geirrod’s hot ingot with the iron gloves before throwing it back at him.
Both versions of this story agree that Thor is in possession of a strength-girdle and a staff, however they disagree on the hammer and gloves. In Goðrúnarson’s poem, Thor has his hammer, but there are no gloves mentioned. In Snorri’s retelling, the whole point is that Thor does not have his hammer with him, but he does have a pair of iron gloves.
Thus the one and only story in which the iron gloves appear is also the one and only story where Thor does not have his hammer.
This story triggers another raised eyebrow over Snorri’s breakdown of Thor’s three signature items, given that he mentions the iron gloves in that explanation, but forgets to mention that Thor ought to have a wooden staff as well. The staff is at least corroborated by one of Snorri’s cited sources, but the gloves are corroborated by absolutely nothing.
If I had to make a guess as to what’s going on here, it would be that the gloves probably originated alongside the staff in the journey to Geirrod’s home, serving the purpose of allowing Thor to catch and throw the hot ingot. Over time, and especially after the pagan period was over, the gloves may have come to feature more and more prominently in Icelandic folklore, causing Snorri to consider them worthy of a mention in his own work, but leaving him unable to cite any sources corroborating Thor’s continued use of them.
It is therefore possible (though this can not be proven) that, in an effort to explain why Thor has the gloves, Snorri may have invented the detail that he needs them. Certainly a wealth of evidence suggests that Thor normally does not need them, and were it not for Snorri’s inexplicable and unsupported assertion that they are necessary for wielding the hammer, they would be remembered by history as obscure items, appearing only once as plot vouchers in a story where Thor’s hammer is not present.
Mjollnir’s Other Properties
In Gylfaginning 44, Thor and Loki stay the night with a farmer and his family. During his stay, Thor kills the two goats that normally pull his chariot so that they may be eaten for dinner. All of the bones are collected and placed upon their respective goatskins. The following morning before dawn, Thor “took the hammer Mjollnir and raised it up and blessed the goatskins. Then the he-goats stood up…” (tók hamarinn Mjǫllni ok brá upp ok vígði hafrstǫkurnar. Stóðu þá upp hafrarnir…). In this case, we see the hammer involved in the resurrection of dead animals, by a process involving the verb vígja which generally means to bless, consecrate, hallow, or otherwise affect some kind of holy, ontological change.
Along the same vein, Mjollnir comes into play again as a ritual hallowing object at Baldr’s funeral in Gylfaginning 48. After Baldr’s wife Nanna collapses from grief and is carried onto the pyre next to her dead husband, it is set on fire. At this point, “Thor stood by and blessed the pyre with Mjollnir” (stóð Þórr at ok vígði bálit með Mjǫllni). We are not told exactly what benefit the pyre receives from Thor’s blessing, however it is clear that Thor is strongly associated with death-related hallowing-rituals.
This pattern is repeated in the archaeological record wherein we find the runic phrase ᚦᚢᚱ ᚢᛁᚴᛁ (Þórr vígi, “Thor bless”) appearing in some ancient inscriptions8 carved as memorials to the deceased, seemingly meant to invoke Thor’s blessing (and possibly protection) upon the monument or the inscription itself. Indeed Mjollnir was once thought of as a powerful apotropaic symbol, it being well-known to rime-thurses and mountain-risses when it is raised aloft, and with those very creatures often being blamed for the basic afflictions that plague mankind9.
A Quick Q&A
What is abundantly clear from our sources is that the ancient Norse people came to view Thor and his hammer as a package deal. If Thor does something magical, he includes Mjollnir in the process. But what we don’t know for sure is how much of Thor’s power is tied to his use of the hammer as opposed to how much is inherent within his own being. Questions like, “what did Thor do before the dwarves made Mjollnir” must unfortunately remain at least partially unanswered (although we can see how he behaves without it in the story of his visit to Geirrod, wherein he simply uses other weapons as available).
With that said, let’s consolidate what we can say with relative certainty about Mjollnir and its powers:
Are any restrictions given on who can wield Mjollnir? No.
Is Mjollnir necessary for blessing or resurrecting things? Unclear. It is used that way, though this is not named in the list of powers explained by Brokk.
Does Mjollnir allow its wielder to strike with supernatural strength? There is no evidence for this.
Is Mjollnir abnormally heavy? No. There is no evidence for this and no reason to assume it either.
Is the strength-girdle necessary for wielding Mjollnir? No. But it does allow Thor to hit even harder.
Are the iron gloves necessary for wielding Mjollnir? No. Snorri inexplicably asserts that they are, but all evidence points in the opposite direction.
Does Thor wear Mjollnir in the style of a pendant? It would appear so.
Does that mean Mjollnir is really tiny or shrinks? This seems like an unnecessary leap. A person could make a wearable pendant out of an average hammer in a tool chest right now, and that hammer doesn’t even have a defectively short handle. It would just be a rather large pendant, even more easily worn by a rather large man like Thor.
Is Mjollnir unbreakable? Yes.
Does Mjollnir return to Thor’s hand after being thrown? It would appear so.
Can Mjollnir be thrown to any distance? It does not appear so. Rather, Thor is simply unable to throw it so far that it can not return afterward.
Does Mjollnir prevent missing a target when thrown? Apparently so, although this leaves us to wonder why the World Serpent is still alive.
Does Mjollnir have thunder or lightning powers? Probably not (at least, not by the late Viking Age in Iceland) as this is never clearly attested in any source.10
Having compiled this information, it is curious why the gods become so afraid that Asgard will be overrun by jotuns when Mjollnir is stolen by Thrym. It would seem, based on the clarity of information that has survived, that Thrym has only stolen an unbreakable hammer that doesn’t miss when thrown and returns like a boomerang. It may be extraordinary, but the object itself hardly seems like a game changer among classes of beings with such enormous power as gods and jotuns inherently have.
We are left to assume that it may indeed be the combination of Thor plus Mjollnir (the embodiment of strength plus an unbreakable weapon that can endure such strength) wherein the real secret lies. It may not be that possession of the hammer grants any person Thor-like abilities, but instead that missing the hammer is enough of a hinderance to Thor that he can not properly defend Asgard without it.
Fascinatingly, Snorri’s details often conflict with details found in the Poetic Edda, which contains literature that is linguistically date-able to having been composed during the pagan period. Whereas we might therefore expect Snorri’s details to be incorrect, they are often corroborated by other pagan-era sources such as carved picture stones illustrating mythic scenes as they are described in Snorri’s versions. This is not to say that the Poetic Edda is instead incorrect, or even that Snorri should be trusted over eddic poetry in every case, only that common stories circulated in various forms during the pagan period, and Snorri’s information can not be discounted simply for contradicting earlier literature. For more on the dating of eddic poetry, see Þorgeirsson, H., Árnason, K. (Ed.), Carey, S. (Ed.), Dewey, T. K. (Ed.), Aðalsteinsson, R. I. (Ed.), & Eyþórsson, Þ. (Ed.) (2016). “The dating of Eddic poetry: evidence from alliteration”. In Approaches to Nordic and Germanic Poetry Málvísindastofnun og Háskólaútgáfan, Reykjavík.
Old Norse words like jǫtnar, þursar and risar are all commonly translated as “giants”, however this is a bit of a misnomer, as these individuals only rarely appear as gigantic in mythological source material. Here I am simply anglicizing the Old Norse, and it is up to you to understand that these are words that are all intended to be roughly interchangeable, referring to the powerful clan of beings that oppose the gods in mythological narratives.
In this case, a rare, literal giant, namely Skrymir. From Gylfaginning 45: Hann spennir sik megingjǫrðum, ok óx honum ásmegin. Ok í því bili vaknar sá maðr ok stóð skjótt upp… (He fastened a strength-girdle on himself and his god-strength grew in him. And in that moment the man awakened and stood up quickly…)
The verb here is bila which is often translated to “fail”. However, when the acting noun is a weapon, the context denotes breaking or cracking, as this is the way in which a weapon “fails”. See either the Cleasby & Vigfusson Dictionary of Old Icelandic or the Zoëga Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic.
In Gylfaginning 48, Thor is fishing with the jotun Hymir and catches the World Serpent on his fishing line. He attempts to kill the serpent but Hymir cuts the line, allowing it to sink back into the sea. Snorri then writes: En Þórr kastaði hamrinum eftir honum, ok segja menn, at hann lysti af honum hǫfuðit við hrǫnnunum, en ek hygg hitt vera þér satt at segja, at Miðgarðsormr lifir enn ok liggr í umsjá. “But Thor cast the hammer after it, and people say that he struck off its head against the sea-floor, but I think it to be the truth to say that the Midgard Serpent yet lives and lies in the encircling sea.” Here, Snorri explains that he is aware of conflicting information. If Thor’s hammer never misses, it ought to have found its mark against the serpent’s head and killed it as “people say”. On the other hand, Snorri is aware that Thor is supposed to die in a fight with that same serpent in the coming battle of Ragnarok. He chooses here to canonize the interpretation that the serpent is still alive, but in so doing he may be undermining his claim that the hammer never misses when thrown. This is exactly the type of contradiction we ought to expect to find in an oral tradition spread across thousands of miles and many generations, thus it is not unreasonable to assume that some people anciently believed Thor’s hammer would never miss when thrown, as we are told.
Jackson Crawford has suggested that this means the hammer shrinks so that Thor “can wear it as a pendant, and disguise himself as just an average, every-day viking or metal head.” This is not a falsifiable interpretation, however we are told in this passage that Mjollnir has a flaw that makes it a bit smaller than a hammer might normally be. This idea of being naturally small enough to be worn by Thor within a sark could be Brokk’s attempt at spinning the hammer’s defect into something positive. There does not appear to be any direct implication of size-change here in my reading. Note that Snorri does not use any verbs such as verða (to become), þverra (to decrease), vana (to wane), or anything else that would indicate a transition in size. Rather, he tells us that the hammer simply var (was) little. With regard to the remainder of the claims made in the linked video, please note that Crawford was apparently attempting to answer an interview question off the cuff when describing Mjollnir’s powers without having been given a chance to refer to his sources beforehand. As a result, a few of his claims are not entirely source-accurate, but I am unaware that he has repeated those particular claims elsewhere. In any case, one should not turn to that video in particular for a comprehensive description of Mjollnir’s abilities.
Faulkes, A., trans., Snorri Sturluson: ‘Edda’ (London: J. M. Dent, 1987), http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/EDDArestr.pdf, p. 85
See, for instance, the Velanda Runestone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velanda_Runestone
Se my post “The Thundergod is Humanity’s Hero”.
There are some obscure hints at a possible association with lightning which I will discuss in another post, but no instances of the hammer being described as causing any thunder or lightning. See Taggart, Declan. How Thor Lost His Thunder: The Changing Faces of an Old Norse God. Routledge, 2019.