These are not the hammer

[oneiriad]

Right, so, I was watching Omar Marzouk's new show the other day, the one where he is systematically working his way through making fun of the various major religions, and I watched him flounder a bit with the Norse myth neopagans, because honestly, it's a little hard making fun of a religion that involves such things as Thor-the-warrior-god-and-original-drag-queen. I mean, it's kind of hard to top that.

Anyway, I've been thinking a bit about that myth, since then, and an interpretation of it occurred to me, which I don't actually think I've ever seen before (though if somebody has, do please link me?), that I wanted to try out.

So, for those unfamiliar - Thor the thunder god looses his hammer, and - because great, manly men gods can't live without their "hammers" - he has to descend to a woman's position, wear women's clothing and marry the very man who took his hammer from him. Except, at the very last moment - he reclaims his hammer and his manly position - by killing his fiancé and the entire wedding party...

So, a very silly story, right? Except we know that the old Norse actually had some pretty strict views about gender and what was appropriate for men and women to do. Furthermore, this myth - like the rest - wasn't written down until centuries after the rise of Christianity and might have been more or less watered down over the years.

So, this is my thought. What is Thor's hammer, if not his manliness? - to quote someone else: "The hammer is my penis." How does someone take away someone's manliness? Well, the vikings had a fairly straightforward approach - rape. Rape a guy, he becomes argr, he becomes less than a man. From what I've read, it was hardly unheard of for defeated enemies to be both raped and castrated.

The interpretation I am proposing is therefore: maybe Þrymskviða is less a silly story played for laughs and more a watered down story of a great warrior, defeated and humiliated by his enemies, who nevertheless manages to rise back up and reclaim his former position as, well, a manly man. Because maybe those originally writing it down (you know, Christian scholars) would be less than comfortable writing about such matters.

Any thoughts?

Comments

[kabal42]

That is a very interesting theory. Intuitively it doesn't sound implausible. I hope blnchflr sees this, being the one with a degree in Icelandic sagas.

[calvinahobbes]

Okay, I have been besieged by the BFF this weekend, hence the late reply! Okay:

I must say that the last time I seriously studied Norse mythology was in the 5th grade (but I was serious!), so it's been a while and also at that time I probably wasn't thinking metatextually about Thor's crossdressing (but it's my favorite Valhalla comic. add one more item to the list of "[CH] must have been a strange child").

I like your interpretation, and I find your hammer theory eminently buyable. But my question is this: Isn't it a bit like selling the old Norse communities short to suggest that a myth of adventure, crossdressing, and honor lost and regained was at one time 'simply' a rape narrative? I am not saying that Thor's bridal fare was not exactly such a story, but I think it detracts a lot from the power of myth and story telling to suggest that some monks were the ones to wrap it in metaphor.

If the ancient Norse communities did indeed have such strong segregation of male and female roles, argr would certainly be a threat to each and every man in that community -- it would constitute a latent fear, a constant threat to his position and livelihood. In such a community, a story of a man who loses his "hammer" and almost becomes another man's "wife" -- that's hardly a metaphor to begin with... But, as far as I understand myth, it is that thin veil of metaphor that enables people to tell the stories in the first place -- because "it's not real".

Those are my thoughts?

[oneiriad]

Well, I don't think I meant that the monks would have been the ones to wrap it in metaphor - for one thing, the Vikings seem to have never met a kenning they didn't like. Rather, perhaps, they let a layer slip away? Assuming the layer was even there anymore at the time of the writing - don't forget, Iceland turned Christian more than a century before Snorri got to writing anything down, and oral culture tends to get modified over the years to suit the narrators - the change from pagan to christian was a huge cultural change and maybe there was some spillover?

Of course, truthfully, we don't really know that much about gender norms among the old Norse. We know (roughly) the meaning of argr and ergi and that it was mildly put rude - on the other hand, apparently some men chose to practice sejd, the women's magic, and they too were ergi - I read somewhere that they might have literally played a woman's part to be able to use woman's magic (can't remember where and not too sure about it, anyway) - and somehow, while possibly viewed as distasteful to do voluntarily, I suspect rape would be counterproductive if it gave the victim magic powers. Anyway. Also, Saxo writes that some women would become warriors and act like men, and apparently there are some interesting graves around.

Alas, in the end, social mores and gender norms are some of those things - like the mythology itself - that we only know through Christian writers - and middle ages european christianity wasn't exactly receptive to people acting outside of their opinions about how gender show be. For all we know, the old Norse might have had something interesting going on, like other peoples around the world.

All that aside, I don't think that having the theft of Mjölnir being interpreted as a metaphor for rape would automatically detract from the story being "a myth of adventure, crossdressing, and honor lost and regained". What I was mostly objecting to, was the fact that mostly, we seem to imagine the story being something the Vikings laughed at - found hugely entertaining. I just think that it might be more than a silly story.

In fact, if read as a metaphor for rape and the restoration of a raped man's manliness - it becomes a very useful myth. After all, the old Norse fought - and sometimes they lost. And dying that way, well, that was fine, a one-way ticket to Valhalla, and being taken captive and tricking one of your captors into holding your hair as they were about to chop off your head so that they chopped off his hands instead, well, that was all good fun. And then, sometimes, apparently it wasn't good fun at all, being the loser. In such a case, I imagine the myth could be used as a model for a man who found himself in such distress, as an answer clothed in the shape of a myth - admittedly, said answer seems to be "kill the guy and his whole family and his little dog, too", but then, that seems to have been a pretty common answer back then...