The Germanic Thunderweapon Part IV: The Axe Man
When is a hammer not a hammer? When it's an axe.
The linguistic relationship between “hammer” and “stone” in Germanic languages is surprisingly close. The Old Norse word hamarr referred not only to a blacksmith’s tool, but had another meaning of “crag, rock, cliff”1. In fact the earlier, Proto-Germanic root *hamara is defined by Kroonen as “hammer; back of an axe; crag; precipice”2, indicating an early association between these concepts. But as Blinkenberg astutely notes, we don’t need philology to tell us that the earliest implement used for hammering was a stone3.
The Indo-European ancestors of Germanic-speaking people arrived in southern Scandinavia and southwest Finland during the Nordic Neolithic, around the 3rd millennium BC. They belonged to an offshoot of the Corded Ware culture4 that we call the Battle Axe (or Boat Axe) culture5 due to the unique, often boat-like shape of the stone battle axe heads they produced. Many of these shapes have a clear wedge-like front and hammer-like back, creating a satisfying intersection between “axe”, “hammer”, and “stone” in the pre-Norse timeline.
For this reason, many scholars have looked to the boat axe as an early incarnation of the Germanic thunderweapon. One of them, Lotte Motz, sums up their thinking thusly:
…de Vries assumes that Þórr’s hammer had originated in an axe of stone. Hilda Ellis Davidson suggests that the hammer was substituted for an earlier axe when men became impressed by the fires of the blacksmith’s forge. Oscar Montelius believes that a hammer replaced the earlier tool when the original meaning of the word hamarr had been forgotten6.
All of these are guesses we could have made for ourselves with just the linguistic history of “hammer” at our disposal. But Motz’s point of view is perhaps even more interesting. She goes on to argue that the notion of the axe was never fully replaced, but joined by a host of other visualizations of the weapon including a club, a hammer, and a thunderstone7.
Some of Motz’ arguments have been challenged by more recent archaeological finds8, but I tend to think the notion of a thundergod with an array of weapons may not be entirely off track. Motz notes (as do many others) that some so-called “Mjollnir pendants” actually take the shape of an axe blade, rather than a hammer9. These axe-like Mjollnirs can be freely viewed online at the Eitri database10 and have been categorized as type A1 amulets in the Beard taxonomy system11.
Eitri is not guaranteed to catalog 100% of all Mjollnir discoveries, but its 326 entires (at the time of this writing) are often sufficient to uncover trends in the history of such items. Beard herself, as creator of Eitri, notes that “the hammer shape over time seems to show a subtle evolution from ax-like amulets with short or non-existent handles to hammers boasting a distinct cruciform shape”12. But since we have the ability to examine the data for ourselves, it deserves a closer look.
Currently, Eitri catalogs only six axe-like Mjollnir finds. Two are from Uppland, Sweden, three are from Britain, and the last is not a pendant, but a carving on the Hørdum picture stone wherein the figure holding the axe is clearly not Thor13; it’s Hymir standing next to Thor as he fishes for Jormungand. I’m not sure this entry really belongs in the database.
The Swedish finds are not particularly early; they are dated to 800-1000 AD, the core of the Viking Age and a time when hammer pendants were already common. Both occur on an amulet ring bearing a few small pendants each. One ring holds three axe-like pendants and the other holds two axe-like pendants alongside two obvious hammers. The inclusion of hammers next to axes is enough to induce skepticism over whether the axes are really intended to represent Thor’s weapon, but these finds are also vastly outnumbered by contemporary Swedish hammers. There are even several examples of Swedish hammer finds dated earlier than the axes, six of which can be placed firmly in the Migration Period (400-540 AD), making them hundreds of years older.
The British finds come from Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire in England, and from Flintshire in Wales. Respectively, these are dated to 450-1066, 400-600, and 750-1100 AD. Interestingly, they can not be identified as part of a common style14. Only one of these finds can be conclusively dated earlier than the hammer trend. With regard to the others, if we accept later dates, they are vastly outnumbered by hammers in Britain. If we accept earlier dates, they are rivaled by equally many club-shaped, “thunder amulets” as described by Werner15, leaving us to wonder which, if either, of these shapes is actually intended to represent the thunder god’s weapon. Then, of course, there is also the problem of the Swedish Migration Period hammers which are more numerous than the British axes.
Beard brings up a few of these points16, but only as notable facts mentioned after her assertion that there appears to be a subtle evolution from axes to hammers. As I see it, the pendant data does not paint this picture very clearly, if at all. If we assume, for instance, that an axe-wielding predecessor of Thor arose in southern Scandinavia and made his way to Britain during the Migration Period, we would find that the data does not disprove this, but also does not suggest it by any stretch of the imagination.
In my view, better arguments come from looking to related mythologies. In Finland, the god Ukko17 (whose name provides the root for a common Finnish word for thunder) bears remarkable similarities to Thor and has been known to wield a hammer, a club, a thunderbolt in the form of a wedge or bow-and-arrows, and an axe18. He is also believed to be an Indo-European transplant into Finnish mythology, care of the Battle/Boat Axe culture19.
Salo asserts that “Ukko and Thor correspond so closely to each other that they must be one and the same god”20. He believes that the original Finnish thunder god was an eagle with stone talons21 and that during the Bronze Age, the anthropomorphic, Scandinavian thunder god (along with his stone hammer-axe) was introduced into Finland22.
As it turns out, stone axes continued to be manufactured in Scandinavia all the way through the end of the Bronze Age. During this time, stone axes were not only inferior to metal axes, but the ones being made were often functionally impractical, sometimes crafted from beautiful but weak material or featuring shaft holes that were too narrow to actually add a shaft. These impractical stone axes have been found everywhere from Scandinavia and Finland to the Black Sea, and from the Rhine to the Volga23. Salo concludes that they must have had a cult function and notes that one particular find from Horozheno is decorated with what appear to be four lightning symbols, thus supporting a link between the axes and a Bronze Age god of thunder24.
If we turn our attention to Baltic lore, we find a red-bearded thunder god named Perkunas25 who wields an axe and rides in a chariot drawn by a goat. Here, as with Ukko, there are such strong similarities with the Norse Thor that, as Dixon-Kennedy notes, some have suggested Perkunas may simply be another Thor variant with an axe26. Interestingly, Perkunas is also known to shoot fiery arrows that appear on earth as small, stone axes27, items often referred to as thunderstones.
Not to be forgotten, the Slavic Perun28 is another thunder god with a goat-pulled chariot who traditionally carries many weapons. Specifically, Perun has been known to wield thunderbolts (sometimes called “thunder arrows”), a bow for shooting those arrows, a spear, a cudgel, and an axe that, like Thor’s Mjollnir, returns to his hand after being thrown29. Belemnite fossils, similar to other thunderstone incarnations, were thought to be the remnants of Perun’s thunderbolts30.
It is not entirely clear that Perun and Perkunas truly are Germanic imports from Scandinavia rather than unique Balto-Slavic evolutions of the Indo-European thundergod. There could easily be a shared tradition inherited from Corded Ware ancestors among all three, or possibly some mutual exchange of ideas over time. What is clear is that whenever a Thor variant/equivalent develops outside of Scandinavia, he nearly always seems to come equipped with both an axe and arrows. This is perhaps where the axe pendants found in Britain and Sweden could possibly serve to reinforce the notion that the axe tradition persisted in some form among Germanic people for a time. With regard to the arrows, we can potentially turn our attention to the development of Germanic thunderstone folklore. Even the English word thunderbolt implies an association between arrows and thunder (albeit this word is not attested in writing earlier than the mid 15th century).
One notable exception to the pattern may be the Sami thunder god Horagalles who, from what I understand, is often depicted with multiple hammers. (Note: I won’t cover Horagalles in detail here because I‘ve had trouble finding good sources.) But sometimes Thor variants and equivalents do end up with a hammer or club, just not as frequently as an axe.
Whereas Motz suggested that the Germanic thunderweapon began as an axe and was later joined by a host of other concepts, I might suggest just the opposite: that the early Germanic thunder god may have carried an array of weapons that ultimately converged over time into the famous image of a hammer that we know and love today.
In terms of why such a consolidation might have occurred, I can only speculate. However, I imagine it is probably a combination of factors including the linguistic equivalence between words for hammer and stone, perhaps a pagan need to unify around a few core beliefs in the face of ever-encroaching Christianity, perhaps the trend of wearing hammer pendants itself influenced the ancient Germanic mind to focus more intently on the hammer to the exclusion of other weapons. Maybe I’m wrong about all of these reasons. What do you think?
Motz, Lotte. “The Germanic Thunderweapon” in Saga-Book, no. 24, 1997, p. 341.
Kroonen, Guus. Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. (Brill, 2013). p. 206.
Blinkenberg, Christian., The Thunderweapon in Religion and Folklore: A Study in Comparative Archaeology, (Cambridge: The University Press, 1911). p. 60.
Introductory information at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corded_Ware_culture
Introductory information at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Axe_culture
Motz, p. 331
Beard, Katherine supervised by Gunnell, Terry “Hamarinn Mjǫllnir: The Eitri Database and the Evolution of the Hammer Symbol in Old Norse Mythology”, 2019. p. 44.
Motz, p. 339.
Beard, p. 133.
Beard, p. 136-139.
The image can be viewed here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Thorstenen_Hoerdum_Kirke.JPG
See, for example, entry ETR-00301: “no close parallels have been identified”.
Werner, Joachim. “Herkuleskeule und Donar-Amulett.” Jahrbuch Des Romisch Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz, no. 11, 1964, pp. 176-199. (Also, see Part II of this post series.)
Beard, p. 138.
Introductory information at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukko
Salo, U. “Agricola’s Ukko in the Light of Archaeology: A Chronological and Interpretative Study of Ancient Finnish Religion”. Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis, vol. 13, Jan. 1990, pp. 107-108.
Salo, p. 117.
Salo, p. 108.
Salo, p. 180.
Salo, p. 159.
Salo, p. 149-150.
Salo, p. 150.
Introductory information at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perk%C5%ABnas
Dixon-Kennedy, Mike. Encyclopedia of Russian & Slavic Myth and Legend. ABC-Clio, 1999, p. 216-217.
Beresnevičius, Gintaras. Lithuanian Mythology. ch. IV.
Introductory information at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perun
Dixon-Kennedy, p. 217.
Dixon-Kennedy, p. 217.
So many people stop at the sagas and this look backwards with evidence is refreshing! And I love your clear arguments!
Interesting essay, glad to have found a Norse mythologically dedicated and Norse weapon Substack (Just discovered you mon ami). Loved this post.